Saints for All Occasions by Courtney Sullivan (Hachette NZ) $35
Sweeping family sagas of Irish Catholics emigrating to America to make new lives for themselves are common enough, but Courtney Sullivan nevertheless pulls you into her uncommon family so that you get caught up, despite yourself – and despite the pages and pages of backstory and the crisp, detached, sometimes ponderous writing style. (Though it is a style that – it must be acknowledged – has won her accolades from both The New York Times and Washington Post as well as Time magazine.)
In the 1950s, two sisters, Nora and Teresa, leave their small family farm in County Clare to emigrate to Boston, where Nora is to marry Charlie, from the neighbouring farm, and Teresa will study to be a teacher.
Nora, who has been weighed down most of her life with responsibility for her younger, flighty sister, does her best to start a new life for the siblings but wilful Teresa sneaks out at night to go dancing with the handsome Walter.
She ends up pregnant and – with Catholic warnings of going to hell for sinning against the Church – unable to have an abortion.
Once again, Nora finds a way to get her out of trouble, this time by marrying Charlie (even though she doesn’t love him) and pretending Teresa’s son Patrick is their own. It’s a decision that will haunt them both for the rest of their lives and pull them irretrievably apart.
Five decades on, Nora has four adult children while Teresa has chosen the cloistered life of a nearby nunnery.
Now badly behaved and boozy, Patrick is Nora’s favourite.
It is his death in a drink-drive car crash at the age of 50 that has the potential to mend the fractured relationship and bring the sisters back together. But with Nora still angry with her sister and unable to tell anyone the truth about Patrick, or any of the other secrets she has accumulated, this seems unlikely.
Told from the point of view of the two sisters, as well as Nora’s adult children, the characters are credible and, with the exception of Nora, relatable.
It’s hard to engage with a protagonist who allows herself few if any feelings. Buttoned-up, obsessively tidy, insisting on catering for all the many big family events by herself, Nora puts up a barrier to all her family, incapable of feeling love for anyone except Patrick, incapable of showing affection, or speaking freely. But it is Nora who anchors the novel, who gets under your skin, even if you want to shake her into confession.
Yet life, and fiction, is never that simple.
– Felicity Price