Confessions

Airey's intoxicating debut is much more than just its plot: a saga following young women of Irish heritage across three generations. Sixteen-year-old Cora Brady, orphaned after her accountant father's death in the 9/11 attacks, roams restlessly through Manhattan and her own memories of her artist mother's death by suicide years earlier. A letter from an unknown aunt in Burtonport, County Donegal, which Cora recognizes as the setting of a choose-your-own-adventure computer game from her childhood, leads her to her parents' Irish homeland and an unusual house. Text from the game acts as a framing device, an inspired authorial choice that increasingly deepens in meaning. Beginning in 1974, in Ireland and New York, sisters Máire and Róisín Dooley come of age, finding romance and enduring displacement and emotional trauma. Much later, Cora's daughter Lyca seeks out her family's missing pieces. Each narrative, conversationally yet eloquently phrased, has a bracing openness that transfixes one's attention. Women seeking outlets for their tumbling emotions--via writing, art, and more--weave through this polyphonic story, as do the secrets and interpersonal connections that invisibly scaffold their lives.

Secrets and unplanned pregnancies shape the lives of two generations of women in Airey's bold and intricate debut. Cora Brady, 16, is orphaned when her father, Michael, dies in the 9/11 attacks. She spends weeks in a daze in New York City until she receives a letter from her aunt Róisín, the younger sister of her late mother, Máire, offering to take care of her in rural Donegal, Ireland. There, Cora learns she's pregnant. The narrative then flashes back to Róisín and Máire's teen years in 1970s Ireland, where Máire works as an artist for an ecofeminist group in their village. The group connects Máire with an opportunity to study at NYU, but her first semester is derailed after she visits her roommate Franny's family in Minnesota, where Franny's father rapes and impregnates her. Back in Ireland, Máire's boyfriend, Michael, begins sleeping with Róisín. When he learns what's happened to Máire, he moves to New York to be with her, unaware that Róisín is now pregnant with his child. A final section in 2018 follows Cora's daughter, Lyca, as she pieces together her family's messy history, including what happened to Máire, while Cora travels the world advocating for reproductive rights. Airey crafts a sharp psychological sketch of each woman as they contend with their parallel crises, adding nuance and depth without shying away from making a strong statement for reproductive rights. Readers will be eager to see what Airey does next. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, CAA. (Jan.)

Love, loss, and the search for fulfillment shape three generations of women in an Irish family. Airey's debut--a long, looping, switchback tale of secrets, shifting relationships, early pregnancies, and lost family regained--spans some 50 years, from the 1970s to 2023, many of them spent in Burtonport, County Donegal, and others in Manhattan. The story opens with 16-year-old Cora Brady in New York in 2001, seven years after her mother's suicide. Her father, an employee at the World Trade Center, will be one of those lost on 9/11. Rebellious, sensitive, and now alone, Cora is surprised to learn she has a legal guardian, Roísín Dooley, her mother Máire's sister, who lives in Ireland. Now, the narrative swings overseas and back in time, to the Irish farm where Máire and Roísín grew up. Máire has artistic gifts, and Roísín's talent is writing. A Black boy, Michael Brady, becomes Máire's lover, and he and Roísín arrange for Máire's appointment as artist-in-residence at a big house occupied by the Atlantis Primal Therapy Commune, known locally as the Screamers. (Máire and Roísín will eventually be involved in a video game called Scream School, based on this location, scenes from which are spliced throughout the narrative.) When Máire moves to New York to study art, a checkered story ensues. Airey delivers her narrative by switching among the principal characters' perspectives, not always chronologically. Roísín's section embraces her own love affair with Michael and then her move to the Screamers' house, now owned by an abortionist. Then comes a section devoted to Lyca Brady, Cora's daughter, and next a focus on Michael, who visits Máire in New York. Later, Cora and Lyca will arrive there too, completing the tale's rather-too-neat circularity. As family sagas go, Airey's first work is notable for its breadth, but its consistently downbeat mood lends a chill, and the structure will challenge some readers. Intelligent, intricate, but joyless storytelling. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.