In her debut novel, The Irish Goodbye, poet and editor Heather Aimee O'Neill (Memory Future, Obliterations) gives readers a moving story of heartache and healing. The Ryan children once numbered four, until a boating accident and its fallout forever changed their family's trajectory.
Twenty-five years after the accident, the remaining siblings gather at their Long Island home for the first time in many years, bringing both their current woes and decades of resentment along with them. Maggie teaches high school English and is internally spiraling after ending an affair with the wife of one of her school's trustees. Cait lives in London with her twin children, Poppy and Augustus. She is a year past her divorce, recently unemployed, and unexpectedly back in touch with her high school boyfriend-of-sorts. Alice still lives in their hometown, where she tends to her parents and her family, while attempting to restart her career as an interior designer and reclaim an identity outside of caretaker.
O'Neill alternates between the sisters' points of view as they arrive for the Thanksgiving holiday, spinning a tangled web of the complexities that are so common among families. Although simply surviving life's difficulties--what the Ryans have been doing up till now--is a valid approach, The Irish Goodbye asks what a family could look like if its members banded together, making space for the best and worst of each other as they reforge a closer bond. How those closest to a person often cause the most pain is the heart of O'Neill's affecting novel, and it's a truism that feels universal, whether with blood relatives or chosen family. --Kristen Coates