Confessions by Catherine Airey: book review
Overview: The novel weaves through three generations of the same family. Two sisters, one of their daughters, and then her daughter come together in this lengthy, time jumping story. We begin with Cora in 2001 in the days leading up to 9/11 and the aftermath. Then, we're transported back to the 1970s to learn about sisters Máire and Róisín growing up in County Donegal, Máire's move to New York City and unraveling, Róisín's life having stayed behind, and, finally, we meet Cora again through the eyes of her own daughter, Lycra. There's a lot of story here as well as settings, times, and point of view characters, which present both opportunities and challenges for this ambitious debut novel. Overall: 4
Characters: 4 This book as a whole is difficult to review because it's incredibly long and segmented, and because of this, it both succeeds and fails in these categories at different times. The book starts off arresting because of the characterization. Cora is interesting to inhabit off the bat, and the writing style that accompanies her chapters is deeply engrossing. Each point of view character is given a particular voice, which is an effort I applaud, but the success of the execution of those voices waver. The book starts with Cora, though, for a reason because teenage Cora is one of the strongest characters the book has to offer. This is a mild spoiler, but I say it for the purpose of talking about the book as a whole and will give it in vague terms. When we meet Cora again at the very end of the book, she's grown and a mother. We find out, like every woman inexplicably in this book, that Cora was a teen mom, the events of which unfolded off the page. Adult Cora is an incredibly flat character. It could be said that it's because we're looking at her through the view of her now teenage daughter who isn't able to look at Cora with all the dimensions that exist, but I don't entirely buy into this argument. Cora's character also illustrates the giant problem with the characterization overall where we intimately inhabit these characters' heads for small snatches at different points in their lives and then massive amounts of time and major events elapse off the page. When we see these characters described again, they feel like totally different people. Of course, in the ensuing years they might have fundamentally changed, but it comes off as inauthentic to the reader when we aren't there to experience that progression with them.
A similar thing happens with Cora's mother Máire's story. She's an older sister and an artist and finds love in her tiny Irish town before being launched to New York to try to make it as an artist. Máire definitely goes through the most over the course of the book, and we see the great heaps of trauma she endures. It's not unexpected that this leads to major mental health challenges down the line, but again, we see Máire at a low when we leave her perspective but she feels like an inherently different character when rendered later on through other's eyes. I wished that Máire's story hadn't been so extreme and that we could've explored her more as an artist making her way in the city instead of watching her endure so much violence and hardship. I'm not saying that what happened to her was unrealistic in any way, but at a certain point, it did feel a little gratuitous, like the events were being used to keep the reader hooked in. I wish, with how she's written, that we would've been able to see her perspective after Cora's birth and visited the world through her perspective at that time to ground the impression we get from others.
Finally, there's Lycra who appears at the end of the book. Unfortunately, she comes across as simply existing to be a device to tie up the story. She feels hollow on the page, and the details she's given that are supposed to make her bigger than a plot device just feel underdeveloped and almost throw away as well. Lycra is the one who puts the family stories together as she's able to collect more of the puzzle pieces than any of the women before. Her story only exists to tell the others' stories in a more complete fashion and bring all the disparate pieces very obviously together in a way that the reader is able to mostly achieve on their own.
Plot: 4 Oh, the plot. In a way, the plot is the standout feature of this book and what some elements are sacrificed in the name of. It's a massive, multigenerational story where we see small choices have major repercussions, and there's also just a messy web of interpersonal problems that play out over decades between the characters including a love triangle, deception, shifting priorities, and secret half-sisters. I think one major point that Airey tried to make through the book is that history often repeats itself, but having nearly every character in this book experience unwanted pregnancy as a young woman just grew tiring at a certain point, and while Cora goes on to become a pro-choice activist, this is thrown out very hollowly and not really connected to this series of events in a meaningful way. It felt after-thought-like to try to justify that connective thread.
The plot is engrossing at times, I'd say, with the exception of the last chapters centered on Lycra, and make for incredible short story collections in their condensed little sections. Every time I settled into a world, I became fascinated. But, then, just as it got really good, Airey would drop the thread and move to a new character in an entirely disconnected time and place. We never picked back up where one section left off, so some of the most exciting and pivotal moments of the book happen off the page, only to be vaguely gestured to later. This was frustrating, and I had a hard time getting back into the book after every jump because the break was so harsh. I think it's difficult to balance changing time, place, and character on the reader so often.
I do understand the desire to do this, though, and the snippets over time she shows us are fascinating. It does create a wildly impressive web of small details that all connect back to each other and become significant at different points in the narrative. Somehow, she makes these details easy to remember so they do feel important when they come back around. The book is a bit overloaded, though, on details. Nothing is ever straightforward or how it seems from the outset. There are twists around literally every corner and so many intricately plotted coincidences, especially towards the end, that seemed a bit trite.
This is a novel that is nothing if not extremely ambitious, and it is interesting, playing in a world like that for a while. Airey takes on this historical novel with the meticulous eye of a mystery writer and does manage to create something truly impressive in that.
Writing: 4 It's so hard to talk about the writing in this book because Airey truly transforms so much between sections. This book doesn't inhabit an authorial voice as it's totally given over to the characters. Cora's original section of the book is by far my favorite for the prose. It was totally engrossing and alive both in emotionality and in setting. It's good this came first because I was weary about going into a 480 page book as it was. By the time I got less sure about the writing, I was too far in to quit. Which is to say, when we switched to Máire's POV and I was suddenly forced to read in second person, I wasn't super pleased. Still, New York came alive and so did Máire enough for just my general annoyance at the use of second person in novels to come through. Róisín's first person felt a bit shakier to me but still had the heft of the story and a genuine emotion behind it to be satisfying. Lycra just feels forgotten and underdeveloped, as I've noted, and this comes through in her voice as well. I don't know if Airey just ran out of steam or this was her idea of giving Lycra a more contemporary voice, but it just fell a bit flat for me. I wish the entire book had managed to capture that depth and intrigue that the initial section did.
I applaud the effort and the risk taking, though. The book is ambitious in every way, and for the many swings as it takes, Confessions manages to land a great deal of them. Even though this review does sound pretty critical, there were parts of the book I was totally head over heels for. And, also, I think it's a marked accomplishment to make a book that can provoke this many thoughts and internal debates. It's proof that the book is truly doing something. That's an achievement not guaranteed to all novels.
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