Review by Booklist Review
As in her critically acclaimed novel Trespasses (2022), the women and girls in Kennedy's debut story collection are treated harshly by the men in their lives--romantic partners, but also brothers and sons. Yet they respond with unexpected resilience and resolve. In the title story, the wife of a shady real estate magnate abruptly goes from socialite to pariah when he flees a failed housing development and leaves her to face the public and personal repercussions. Elsewhere in the collection, a former "mean girl" regains her social standing by accusing her new neighbor of a terrible crime. And in the devastating "Garland Sunday," a late-in-life abortion creates a rift between an empty-nester couple until the husband's father reveals a shocking secret that puts the couple on a path to reconciliation. Kennedy's complex female characters, spare prose, and strong evocation of rural life in Northern Ireland will appeal to fans of Alice Munro and Anne Enright.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Irish novelist Kennedy (Trespasses) centers these incisive stories on women at precipitous turning points in their lives. Sarah, the protagonist of the title story, resides in a derelict housing estate built by her husband, Davey, before he ran off. She learns from a neighbor that she's known as "the gangster's moll from down the hill," the nickname earned because of Davey's record as a neglectful landlord, and she bides her time before the estate is repossessed. Though most of the stories unfold in an Ireland clinging to past glories, Kennedy sometimes goes afield, as in the wry "Beyond Carthage," in which Therese, recovering from breast cancer surgery and estranged from her husband, suffers through a rainy and depressing vacation with a frequently inebriated friend; Therese had been thinking of a place like the Canary Islands, but instead they're at a gloomy concrete resort in Tunisia during the "wrong season." The masterly and compassionate "Garland Sunday" epitomizes Kennedy's aptitude for contrasting traditional and contemporary Irish sensibilities, as 40-something Orla, whose husband has turned against her because she chose to have an abortion, attempts to win him back at a Gaelic festival, where she's struck by her connection to the "unearthly" women of ancient folklore, one of whom commits infanticide. Each story reverberates with a sense of the far-reaching effect of choices made or imposed. It adds up to a remarkable and cohesive collection. Agent: Eleanor Birne, PEW Literary. (Dec.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
How much agency does a person have, especially in moments of turmoil, is the question at the heart of Kennedy's first volume of short stories, set in a contemporary Ireland divided by wealth and education. Characters here are defined as straining to get by or complacently secure. In "Hunter-Gatherers," a bookish woman new to rural life is aggravated both by her gamekeeper husband's inept attempts at "self-sufficiency" and his rich, obnoxious hunting clients; in "What the Birds Heard," a professional in data science runs away from her husband to a gentrified cottage on the coast and into the temporary arms of a local workman who disdains her as "posh." Feeling trapped, these and many of Kennedy's women exhibit passive resentment toward the men in their lives. Others face their own complicity in the messes the men create. In the title story, an abandoned wife deals with the financial disaster her husband created but also her guilt at having turned a blind eye when she could have made a difference, while the mistrustful pregnant farm wife in "Imbolc" wishes she'd never suggested her husband grow pot to cover their debts. Kennedy sometimes challenges typical assumptions. In "Belladonna," a working-class girl misreads--as does the reader--the inner workings of her neighbors' marriage. Similarly, in "Gibraltar," empathy shifts unexpectedly from the dissatisfied wife toward her coarse, self-made husband, who remains devoted to his unloving wife and to the daughter he knows is not biologically his. Portraits of men in emotional turmoil--particularly the forester in "Wolf Point," who accepts that his young English wife is an unfit mother--are particularly moving in a book mostly focused on women, as are fleeting moments of union between men and women surrounding their children. "Garland Sunday," about a damaged marriage, ends the book on an oddly hopeful note celebrating forgiveness and resilience. Irish in its lyricism and landscape, universal in its portrayal of the vagaries of the heart. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
