Novels like this are essential to humanity.
Hmm, that’s overstating it a little. Let me start to explain that.
We read novels for many reasons. Entertainment is one, of course, and when we need to escape from our everyday lives, or experience things that we haven’t and may not be likely to .
Or reading may uplift us, or help develop our ability to empathise – to be able to imagine what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes for a little while.
Or we read because sometimes being able to see life from a different perspective helps us sort out the crap in our lives, or at the very least shows us we are not the only ones with crap to deal with. And a problem shared is a problem … well, you know the rest. This is one of those novels.
It’s set over the course of only a few days. Gretta Riordan’s normally meek and mild husband has gone out to buy a newspaper, but instead has cleared out his bank account and disappeared. The story as such centres around their grown children coming together for the first time in a long time to support their mother and find their father.
But what a tangled web has been woven within this family over the years. O’Farrell deftly handles the flashbacks, with such a light touch that you forget they are flashbacks. You feel as though you are living the entire life of this family within a few days.
Gretta and Robert seem the typical retired couple, locked into a mind-numbing routine that seems to be of their own making.
Monica’s flinty personality is at odds with visions we have of her in childhood, the eldest and favourite. The reasons for the walls she has built and the misunderstanding with her young sister slowly becomes clear.
Michael Francis’ marriage is failing terribly and information about the cause is eked out tortuously.
Aoife is the youngest by far – a surprise baby to an older Gretta – is the wildcard. Her secret, so devastating to herself but not so bad in the scheme of things, is obvious to us from early on. The torture comes not from us being kept in the dark, but from watching her hide it from her family and boyfriend.
The rifts and quirks, the joys and trials of this family and the relationships within in give comfort to everyone who has ever felt their family was the weird one on the street. The reader can’t help but relate to at least one of this bunch, and understand that every family is weird. To be a ‘normal’ family is to be abnormal.
