Lisa Carey (1)

There is definitely a whiff of the fantastical in my friend Lisa Carey's first novel, and - not discounting the siren call of the title mermaids who drift and sink and surface throughout the narrative - the majority of that magic comes from Carey herself, who flits with effortless grace through the lives and perspectives of three generations of women. The cracks between these women and the stories behind these cracks are what drive the story forward, but I was mesmerized by Carey's ability show more to assume such disparate voices and tell all of their stories with such a generous hand. She breaks your heart with the telling, but she also hands the pieces back to you by the end. Just brilliant. show less

An American woman with a troubled past arrives on a tiny island off Ireland to claim her inheritance: a small cottage in a tight-knit, secretive community with its own demons - and fairies. Brigid seeks solace, solitude and a miracle in her mother's birthplace. But will the same demons that drove her mother away also chase off Brigid? Her hopes of solitude are cut short by strange, angry Emer and her day-dreaming son Niall, who all become close in spite of themselves.

This is a book that I show more wanted very much to like from the premise. And for the most part I was won over by Carey's moody descriptions of the island and its people, the private passions and deep terrors they contain. It took me time to forgive the jarring over-explaining of just how and how much of an outsider Brigid is -- a feeling I have experienced and which is altogether more subtle than she captures with some pretty broad stereotyping on both sides. But forgive I did for the rest of the story which grabbed me and got me reading again, after a long time away. show less

"She thinks how odd it is, that the strongest convictions, like possessions, can lose all meaning when you are dying. Everything that she thought she was about has slipped from her, and the things she never wanted are clinging to her memory like the seaweed in the crevices at her feet."

This one spoke to me. It's about mother-daughter relationships, and it is told from differing viewpoints of three generations of women - grandmother, mother and daughter. I think mother-daughter relationships show more are so complicated; we want our own opinions and lives and yet we cannot escape, if that is the right word, the lingering shadows of the women who have shaped us. For good or for ill, our mothers are a part of who we are. Their voices sound in our thoughts and in our hearts, and their choices have far reaching consequences.

"He saw my mother differently that I had. After all those years of believing my mother a cold, unforgiving woman, it frightened me to hear myself likened to her. For the first time I had the notion that my father had seen my real mother, and I her facade, rather than the other way around. Perhaps I had merely misunderstood her, just as I believed that Grace (her daughter) misunderstood me.

My father died twenty-three years after his wife, and yet it was my mother I grieved at his funeral. I grieved that I had not known her, that she had died before I was a mother, before I had a chance to understand that no one is the mother she plans to be."

This book does such a good job of dealing with all of those feelings and of dealing with grief. Here, the grandmother and the granddaughter are left to deal with the loss of the woman that ties them together. Grace has died of cancer and her teenage daughter is left to deal with truths that she does not understand - she did not know that she had a grandmother and a father back in Ireland. She has only ever known America, and the fiction that her mother had created for her. Now she must travel back to Ireland with her grandmother and learn a new truth.

"I sometimes think that God planned our lives all wrong. What's the use in learning the truth so long after the opportunity to use it has gone by?"

This novel is just so well done. Every character rings true and the heartbreak and redemption that can be found in opening yourself to another are apparent on every page. This is one I know that I will revisit, and I have to thank Katie for pointing it out to me. I might not have found it on my own. Thank you, Katie. show less

This book sounded so good: beautiful setting, Irish mythology, man vs nature...

Two of the main characters are a set of Irish twin sisters: one friendly and likable, the other her opposite. Add to it an American and a gaggle of children. Despite eveything the author told us about the women, they didn't feel real to me. I just couldn't seem to care about them. Emer, the unlikable one who had the power to make people around her miserable, reminded me of someone I used to know, which may have show more colored my feelings towards her. But even the others couldn't hold my attention.

I thought the writing was good, the descriptions made the island come to life in my mind. There are two quotes that really stuck with me, the best one being on page 293: "It's like being kicked in the stomach, the truth, even when you suspect it."

Overall the book did not feel like a chore, but I got no satisfaction from having finished it. Maybe Emer's power to bring misery translated through the pages into this reader. show less