Postscript

Popular Irish author Cecelia Ahern returns with the long-awaited sequel to her best-selling novel (and blockbuster movie), PS I Love You.  

A tender, moving story about a widow who helps a group of terminally ill patients leave behind heartfelt messages for loved ones.

Cecelia Ahern continues the story she started in her bestselling debut, PS, I Love You. After Holly Kennedy--an Irish, 30-year-old--lost her beloved husband and soul mate, Gerry, to a brain tumor, he left behind 10 notes, one for each month, capped with his tender signature of ‘PS, I Love You.’ Each letter offered Holly guidance and wisdom as she struggled to carve out a new life. 

In Postscript, it’s seven years later for Holly—now 37-years-old and romantically involved with Gabriel, a divorcée who co-parents a contentious teenager. When Holly is asked to be a guest on a podcast to discuss Gerry’s letters--what they meant and how they changed her--her participation drives a wedge in her relationship with Gabriel. And when a group of terminally ill patients--fans of the ‘PS, I Love You’ letters--approaches Holly, enlisting her help to write letters of their own, Holly’s perspective on life--and love--shifts. Holly assists a 17-year-old, unmarried mother facing cervical cancer to craft a heartfelt message for her newborn; a father with a brain tumor longing to remain part of his family’s life; a husband with advanced emphysema with a penchant for writing playful Limericks; and a woman battling MS. In offering assistance, Holly examines how time changes those forced to reinvent themselves—both the dying and the living.  

Ahern (Flawed) is a passionate, sensitive storyteller. She employs great empathy as she probes dark themes and gives readers the pleasure of another entertaining, enriching story buoyed by hope and positivity.

Postscript (PS, I Love You: Book 2) by Cecelia Ahern

Grand Central Publishing, $27.00 Hardcover, 9781538746592, 304 pp

Publication Date: February 11, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (March 6, 2020), link HERE

The Woman Who Stole My Life

In The Woman Who Stole My Life, Marian Keyes delivers a warm and positive--at times hilarious--read about the effects of serious illness.

The story is told by charming and chatty, Stella Sweeney--age "forty-one and a quarter"--and the account of what happened when she was a 37 year-old Irish beautician; the wife of a "successful but creatively unfulfilled" bathroom designer; and mother of two rebellious teenagers. Stella's life was humbly ordinary until a strange illness overtook her, making her paralyzed and mute. The diagnosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome--a rare, yet usually temporary, autoimmune disorder--attacks the nervous system. Stella, mentally attentive, remained confined to an I.C.U. The only way she could communicate was via blinking, and the only person who understood her was her handsome neurologist, Dr. Mannix Taylor. During her long hospital stay, the two bond and share intimate details about their lives.

After her arduous recovery, an American tabloid publishes a photo of the Vice-President's wife reading a self-help book called One Blink at a Time—Stella's story, complete with clever, stoic aphorisms she spouted during her ordeal. Stella is surprised to learn it was self-published, behind her back, by dreamy Dr. Taylor. The exposure brings Stella instant international fame and fortune—and the possibility of new love. But at what price?

Keyes (The Mystery of Mercy Close) depicts the realities of illness for the patient and all involved.  Her comic take on Stella's journey--coupled with her distinctive brand of humor and wit--showcases her imagination in top form.

The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes
Viking, $27.95 Hardcover, 9780525429258, 464 pp
Publication Date: July 7, 2015
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (7/24/15), link HERE 

Mimi Malloy, At Last!

Family is the cornerstone of Mimi Malloy, At Last! a novel by Julia MacDonnell (A Year of Favor), a later-in-life, coming-of-age story about the nature of memory. The heroine, Maire "Mimi" Sheehan Malloy—who sneaks cigarettes and Manhattans and worships the music of Frank Sinatra—thought she was finally settling into her forced retirement. But when a leak springs in a closet ceiling of Mimi's modest apartment in Quincy, Massachusetts, the 68 year-old divorcee—one of seven children in an Irish-Catholic family and mother of six, disparate daughters—has her life upended. After the building handyman—a World War II veteran and widower, with a "bum leg...and a big heart"—addresses the leak, Mimi discovers a striking silver pendant with an aquamarine stone. How did it get in her closet? Mimi, having suffered mini-strokes that have left holes in her memory, cannot remember anything about the pendant or its history.

While Mimi and the handyman begin a relationship, Mimi's grandnephew enlists her help for a genealogy study for school. Mimi's sisters and daughters press for details from the "glory days" of childhood. However, a painful past, long repressed and filled with an abusive stepmother and a long-lost baby sister, suddenly emerges. Might the pendant somehow be connected?

MacDonnell's multi-faceted novel unspools via layered flashbacks. Mimi's no-nonsense narrative voice and a cast of well-drawn characters take readers on a humbling journey that explores the past and present; the bonds between parents, children and sisters; the power of secrets; and heroic acts of love.

Mimi Malloy, At Last! by Julia MacDonnell

Picador,  $35.00 hardcover, 9781250041548 , 288 pp

Publication Date: April 8, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (3/18/14), click HERE

First Pages in Fiction: Instructions for a Heatwave

The first paragraph of a short story and/or the first page of a novel can be a microcosm that sets the foundation for what's to follow in terms of tone, character and story intent.

Here are the first few paragraphs from the novel, Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell:

Highbury, London 

The heat, the heat. It wakes Gretta just after dawn, propelling her from the bed and down the stairs. It inhabits the house like a guest who has outstayed his welcome: it lies along corridors, it circles around curtains, it lolls heavily on sofas and chairs. The air in the kitchen is like a solid entity filling the space, pushing Gretta down into the floor, against the side of the table.

Only she would choose to bake bread in such weather.

Consider her now, yanking open the oven and grimacing in its scorching blasts as she pulls out the bread tin. She is in her nightdress, hair still wound into curlers. She takes two steps backwards and tips the steaming loaf into the sink, the weight of it reminding her, as it always does, of a baby, a newborn, the packed, damp warmth of it.

She has made soda bread three times a week for her entire married life. She is not about to let a little thing like a heatwave get in the way of that. Of course, living in London, it is impossible to get buttermilk; she has to make do with a mixture of half milk and half yogurt. A woman at Mass told her it worked and it does, up to a point, but it is never quite the same.


This is a story about a family thrown into crisis when the patriarch, Robert Riordan, a retired bank employee--husband of Gretta and father to three adult children--disappears on a hot summer morning in 1976. Gretta reaches out to her children in an effort to find Robert, but as the story unravels, it soon becomes clear that her children are more lost than her husband (on a psychological and emotional level), as each child is facing challenges in his/her personal life and in relationship to each other. The nature of secrets, estrangement and shame rise to the forefront of the narrative. 

O'Farrell sets up those first four paragraphs to reflect an ominous restlessness amid actions of normal, daily life. This would appear a day like many others ("She has made soda bread three times a week for her entire married life"), but something about this particular day is and will be different. For starters, Gretta is baking, operating the oven, amid a heatwave and the reference to the need to substitute buttermilk in the recipe ("A woman at Mass told her it worked and it does, up to a point, but it is never quite the same") might be a metaphor indicative that perhaps, amid the crucible of events that unfold over the course of the novel, the ingredients that make up this Irish-Catholic family might never be the same, either.  

The kitchen often symbolizes the center of family life and if you look at the language O'Farrell employs, the tactile sense of the bread reminds Gretta of a baby ("...a newborn, the packed damp warmth of it"), which seems reflective of the implications of Gretta's children in this story.

In a few short sentences, O'Farrell evokes a sense of the oppressive, stifling heat that mirrors the brooding, pressured confinement of the story and how, as stated later in the book, "Strange weather brings out strange behavior." It's also interesting to note that O'Farrell relies on an Irish comfort food to anchor and ultimately juxtapose the coziness of family life against the idea that the "heat" in these lives is about to get turned up.

See how much you can learn about a book from the first page?


Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95 Hardcover, 9780385349406 304 pages
Publication Date: June 18, 2013
To order this book via INDIEBOUND, link HERE

A Week in Winter

The Irish are great storytellers. This year, I hold a special affection for the work of Maeve Binchy, a writer of commercial fiction whose stories reflect wholesome values of a changing world - in Ireland and abroad. My first foray into Binchy's work was Circle of Friends, a story set in Dublin in the 1950s, where lies test the meaning of love. I've devoured Binchy's novels and short fiction ever since. Sadly, the author passed away last year. But readers can now enjoy her posthumously published novel, A Week in Winter. 

In this story, Chicky Star transforms an old mansion in Stoneybridge into Stone House, an Irish getaway destination that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. There, she welcomes a cast of eccentric characters who share a week of rest and relaxation. Binchy, a first-rate storyteller, brings together another diverse ensemble cast that provides readers with a cozy means of entertainment and escape.  

So after you indulge in your corned beef and cabbage and a pint of Guinness to celebrate St. Pat's, kick back and relax with this one!
  
A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy
Knopf, $26.95, hardcover, 9780307273574, 336 pages
Publication Date: February 12, 2013
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE