Academy Street

This book is proof that an author doesn't need hundreds and hundreds of pages to tell a powerful story. Mary Costello has written a beautiful and intense story in 142 pages without a false note or misplaced word. Reading this reminded me of reading another melancholy Irish novel - The Story of Lucy Gault - which I similarly loved. I read both with a lump in my throat and near tears through much of them.

Academy Street is the story of Tess Lohan whom we meet at 7 years old, just as her mother has died. We follow Tess through episodes in her life and see how strongly she feels things but how distant she remains from much in her own life, unable to translate those feelings into actions. It's incredibly sad in a way, but Tess is such an show more honest character, and so often frustrated with her own inability to connect, that one roots for her, that she will find in her quiet existence a way to let life in. There is incredible grief in this short novel, and Costello's prose is so sharp in its description that I cried more than once. I think grief must be one of the hardest emotions to write convincingly, as it's so individual and private. It's often over-done in novels, becoming a caricature of itself. But Costello manages to make it very real and very true.

I just can't say enough about this one. It affected me deeply and I know I will be thinking about Tess and her story for a long time. One of the few books I can see myself re-reading - and more than once. show less

In the opening sequence of Academy Street, Mary Costello’s moving and minutely observed debut novel, seven-year-old Tess Lohan’s mother has died. The setting is a farm in the west of Ireland in the 1940s. Tess is heartbroken, her father devastated. Times are tough already, but, for the Lohan family, they are about to get tougher. Over the next 145 pages, Costello’s novel follows Tess from her bleak rural childhood to a career as a nurse in New York City, and through to old age in the new century. After her mother’s death, the household is shrouded in an atmosphere of penitential dreariness, from which it never wholly emerges. Tess comes of age, but she is a socially awkward, inward-looking young woman, painfully conscious of her show more deficiencies, unsure of the kind of life she wants to live. That life, it turns out, is elsewhere. In 1962, at about age 20, having completed her nursing training, she follows her older sister Claire to New York and finds a position. Gradually, haltingly, she builds a life of her own in the city and grows less dependent on family. She moves into an apartment—“a fifth-floor walk-up, at 471 Academy Street, in Inwood”—with Anne, another nurse, also from Ireland. The two become friends and often venture out to explore the city’s night life. But Tess is dissatisfied. Her reticent nature is constantly at odds with a yearning for companionship and love. Then she meets Anne’s cousin David. The attraction is immediate, profound and all-consuming. But when their brief affair ends, Tess is once again alone and her life is forever changed. This is a novel that swells with emotion. Costello’s depiction of Tess’s private inner world is intimate, often painfully so. We are in her head throughout the book, privy to every notion passing through her mind, every moment of confusion or regret, every agony of self-doubt. We share the sting of her distress over tragic and bewildering personal losses and guilt over what she sees as shameful moral failures. Costello’s haunting, elegant prose is stunningly evocative of the rhythms of daily life in rural Ireland of the 1940s and 50s and New York in the raucous latter half of the 20th-Century. From the first page, Academy Street grips the reader by the throat and immerses him in a life in a constant state of flux. Costello, from Galway, is also the author of a book of stories, The China Factory. This novel, which won the Irish Book of the Year Award in 2014, solidifies Mary Costello’s status as a writer of understated yet powerful and emotionally authentic fiction. show less

Even as a child, Tess Lohan is hampered by a quiet introspective personality. Costello's story begins in Ireland when the mother of seven-year-old Tess dies. No one tells the child what exactly has happened so her limited understanding of death creates imaginative pictures.

"A car is coming down the avenue. It is the hearse, she thinks, returning. With her mother sitting up in the front seat, smiling, and the coffin behind open, empty - a terrible mistake put right. They had come to the wrong house."

The story follows Tess's lonely life: growing up in Ireland then the move to New York and becoming a single mother of a son, Theo. Like real life, amid the humdrum days Tess has moments of great joy and as many of misery and disappointment. show more The early uncertainty of Theo's death in the tragedy of 9/11 mirrored the episode of her mother's death. Costello captured the contemplative world of Tess in this perceptive, beautifully written character study. show less

Nobody does pathos better than an Irish author. In this wonderful debut novel by Mary Costello, we learn much about Tess Lohan, although in real life Tess is the sort of woman who would be in the background and not be noticed by many of us. From the first pages when Tess was a young girl mourning her dead mother and through her schooling and nurse's training, she was a quiet loner. Even when she emigrated to America to be with her older sister, she slips into her nursing job making few friends along the way. One, however, had a cousin that awakened a spark in her that made her feel connected to him in a special way. Alas, the feeling wasn't returned and, nine months later, she became a single mother to Theo.

I usually don't give so much show more information about a book, but since this one is such a detailed character study, Tess's story is prominent. Costello does an excellent job of evoking an emotional response in the reader. It would be difficult to read her exquisite prose without a tear in the eye and a lump in the throat. Tess may have lead a timid life but she was able to experience the joy of having a career, raising a child, and forming a close friendship with one of her neighbors. She also developed the love of reading when Theo left home and went his own way. Through books, "she was of the mind that this evocation, this kind of dream living was sufficient, and perhaps, in its perfection, preferable to the feeble hope embedded in reality." (121)

Tess is a character that seemed real to me. I have known people like her, and part of me also has that same feeling of not connecting to the outer world at times. Through the exploration of her inner life, Ms. Costello has created a memorable character full of longing and life. I look forward to see what she undertakes in her next book. show less

"There is, in some of us, an essential loneliness..."
This pretty much sums up the focus of the novel about Tess Lohan. The novel is about the life of Tess, from her childhood in Ireland when our introduction to her is at the death of her mother and the distancing of her father. Despite having siblings, Tess felt herself to be a misfit and alone. She moves to America to become a nurse, has a child, develops a close friendship with a neighbor, suffers through a tragedy and ultimately finds herself coming full circle in the land of her origin.

It's a quiet, simple story written in sparse sentences, of a quiet woman, who hugs the shadows of life, who wants more out of life but is afraid to reach out and take what she wants because she show more doesn't believe she deserves it. It's a story of loneliness. I felt her loneliness in every page and I empathized with her because there is some of that loneliness in me too. show less

This story covers the majority of a woman's lifetime - born in Ireland, emigrating to New York city and living a reasonable life in some ways but failing to find fulfillment - all in less than 200 pages. This broad sweep inevitably means significant events are dealt with fairly briefly, and that isn't really my preferred style. Nonetheless, the painting of such a broad picture does have some advantages. The perspective is in many ways that of an ageing or dying person reviewing their life - and maybe that's just what this is meant to be? It's a story of loneliness but also of the value of friendship between women. Finally, it's a story of mistakes and regrets - perhaps also a sign of that underlying end-of-life reflection.

I've started 2021 with a wonderful, concise, emotional novel. Academy Street follows the life of Tess Lohan, from the death of her mother when Tess is six, through her old age. Tess is born in Ireland and immigrates to America when she is in her 20s. Costello describes Tess's life - both her internal character and her outward connections with others - in a series of what I would call vignettes of her life. Large time periods are skipped and events don't always seem completely explored, but in spite of this, or maybe because of it, I got to know Tess inside and out in just 179 pages.