First of all, thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK Cornerstone for sharing an ARC in exchange for a fair review.
It took me a while to get into this book. Some of it was the slog through the local dialect which was hard to understand at times. I'm not complaining of it, but it did take some time to get used to it. The beginning chapters also had a lot of characters to get to know. Once I got into it properly it became a lot easier and it kind of sucked me into that world.
Mary Rattagan is the youngest of a large Catholic family in Northern Ireland during "The Troubles" that dominated the last decades of the 20th century there. She has an abusive mother and a passive father. We visit at a few periods of her childhood and then the story is focused on her teens when her life plans got upended and the idea of escape from the hellish place was no longer possible. At sixteen a marriage is arranged for her with neighbor John Johns. She has no say in the matter and circumstances dictate that she simply accepts it and gets on with life. She goes on to have five children but their relationship is truly a strange one. They are at odds from early on and I guess what happens is neither is able to take steps to communicate with the other. It's like two strangers sharing a lifetime.
All the while, the horrors of Northern Ireland continue to take place, mostly as a backdrop. But the influence of that backdrop is massive and, at least for our main character, is a major influence on her ability to "grow up". The main part of the story covers the twenty five years of them being married and how some things changed with times while others didn't. While there is some personal growth involved, it doesn't always instigate changes in behavior. This was incredibly frustrating, especially towards the end when you wonder how people can exist as they have. It's a truly bizarre situation..
I will say this was very much a page-turner once I got going and it was only at the end I found it hard to get through. I think that had much more to do with frustrations with the main characters. It almost came to despair and even a the end I wonder about them.
Overall this was a pretty good read, and the atmosphere of the location and time period is excellent. There's also a good representation of the culture of "good" Catholics and so on. Overall I give this 3.5 stars.
