Uplifting stories of friends, lovers, foes and family
Relationships, in their myriad manifestations, are the stuff of these four great novels. Goodbye, Birdie Greenwing by Ericka Waller (Doubleday, €25) follows the lives of three lonely women in Brighton. Birdie has just been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and breaks the news to her dog, her only companion. Her oncologist, Ada, misses her family and her life back in Poland. Single mum Jane can’t seem to make any friends since moving here from Bristol. No barrel of laughs, you might think.
And yet that’s exactly what this novel is. It’s extremely funny and yet maintains a huge well of empathy for these women, whose lives will inevitably intersect. It’s far too well-written for an “uplit” label and is, rather, a study in loneliness; its causes and consequences and the risks we sometimes need to take to avoid its clutches.
US author Emily Henry’s Funny Story (Penguin Viking, €15.99) is a romcom from a writer who has amassed a legion of fans. Daphne and Miles have both been dumped by their respective partners, leaving Daphne homeless. She moves in with Miles temporarily and in jig time discovers the two ex-partners are getting married. Both Miles and Daphne are invited although not expected to show up.
However, they do show up and they pretend, at Miles’s suggestion, to be a couple. But mockin’s catchin’ as they say round here, and even as they plan their deceitful caper, these two lonely hearts are becoming fond of each other. The problem is, they could ruin this valuable new friendship of theirs by embarking on a romance. Will they or won’t they? A smart and quippy story.
Marian Keyes’s My Favourite Mistake (Michael Joseph, €16.99) returns to the Walsh family, and one in particular – high-flying New York PR Anna Walsh, who returns to Ireland slightly burnt out and in full-blown menopause.
She takes a job in Connemara, on the site of a luxury coastal retreat being built by a friend.
The locals are up in arms about it all and Anna is hired to defuse the crisis. She’s assigned to work with Narky Joey, with whom she shares a regrettable past moment in New York, and things go a bit awry, both with him and the locals.
The entire Walsh clan shares more than a collective walk-on part in this seemingly chaotic (but very cleverly plotted) yarn, with the comedy here just vintage Keyes.
And in between handling damage done to the new development and engaging in some damage limitation among disgruntled villagers, Anna wonders if love is off the menu for women nearer 50 than 40. It’s quite a tome yet it zips forward like a bullet train, with oodles of belly-laughs along the way.
Greener by Gráinne Murphy (Legend Press, €12.99) has Helen return home from abroad to visit her widowed and ailing father, Jack, after a stroke leaves him incapacitated.
His home nurse is Annie, a close friend of Helen’s in their schooldays, while his garden is maintained by Laura, another ex-close friend. The women were a trio in their teenage years who thought they would be united forever.
Helen’s father was a famous actor in his day, almost always away working, while her mother remained emotionally unavailable to her only child. Helen finds that Annie and Laura are still close, although always feeling like the spare wheel within her own small family, rediscovers old bonds with these old schoolfriends.
A snowstorm throws all three women together overnight and some home truths, stirred by wine and whiskey, get an airing.
Steeped in emotional complexity, this is an elegant story about the fragility of relationships, about growing up and growing away. Similar in themes and style to many of Julian Barnes’ works, it’s a beautifully crafted novel.