📖 Book Review ~ Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell

Simon & Schuster
30 January 2025

Thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

 

On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.

This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.

What will it take for Ciara to reinvent her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan’s control – and what will be the cost?

Tense, beautiful, and underpinned by an unassailable love, hope and resilience, this is the story of one woman’s bid to start over.

📖 My Review..

With ‘home’ no longer a safe place Ciara Fay makes the momentous decision to flee from an abusive marriage in order to take herself and her daughters to safety. With no plan in place, little money and no close family support Ciara faces the bureaucracy of the Irish housing system and comes up against so many obstacles that sometimes it feels as if she has left one difficult life only to encounter another which is just as obstructive.

Nesting is a difficult book to read as not only does Ciara’s husband present a real danger to her and her children but from necessity she reaches out to a social system which is beyond broken and which doesn’t offer much respite from the horror of simply surviving on a daily basis.  My heart broke for Ciara as she struggles with motherhood, poverty, and a husband who is hellbent on destroying her spirit, her body and her soul. However, despite what life throws at her Ciara will not be beaten, she fights for herself and her children, knowing that whatever meagre amounts she can give in terms of material possessions she more than makes up for in abiding love and the sheer determination to survive against all odds..

All credit must go to this exceptional debut writer who has highlighted the emotional aspect of homelessness in a very thoughtful way. I won’t forget Nesting in a long time.

About the Author

Roisín O'Donnell is an award-winning writer. In 2018, Roisín won the prize for Short Story of the Year at the A Post Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the same prize again in 2022. She is the author of the story collection Wild Quiet, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award. Her short fiction has featured in numerous publications, including The Stinging Fly, The Tangerineand the Irish Times. Nesting is her debut novel. She lives near Dublin with her two children.

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📖 Book of my Month ~ Grace of the Empire State by Gemma Tizzard

Headline
28 January 2025

Thanks to the publisher for the invitation to read this book

As the Great Depression bites, show dancer Grace's Irish immigrant family can't afford the rising rents, nor the medicine that her little sister urgently needs. When her twin brother is injured and can no longer work on the construction of the half-built Empire State Building, Grace steps up - literally. She trades her dancing shoes for worker boots, braving deadly metal work hundreds of feet in the sky.

But survival isn't guaranteed. Failure could mean not only losing her job, but also her life, and the livelihood of her family and team. Sparks fly across the great metal beams, as a terrible accident and a split-second decision leaves Grace re-evaluating everything that she thought she knew about herself.

📖 My Review..

It’s not often I experience vertigo when reading a book but from the nerve wracking opening chapter of this fascinating novel my heart was quite literally in my mouth as I observed Grace O’Connell take those first few steps out onto the shell of the Empire State Building in 1930s New York.

When her twin brother Patrick is injured at work and with her family’s, already precarious, financial state affected by the deep depression, Grace takes her brother’s place in a four man team of riveters employed to work on the outer shell of the Empire State Building. This is no place for a woman but with her identity hidden, and masquerading as her brother, Grace grows in skill and confidence but is always aware that being hundreds of feet above street level, with nothing but steel and air below her, definitely brings its own dangerous challenges.

The author has captured to perfection the sheer scale of the danger faced by all those who once worked on this iconic building. The constant fear of falling, the heat of the metal, the unpredictability of the weather and the absolute terror that Grace would be discovered meant that I raced through the book in a couple of sittings. I was eager to learn more about this intrepid young woman whose love for dancing gives Grace the strength and poise she needed to keep her balance on the steel beams. The  city of New York, deep in depression, came alive, the hustle for jobs, the unscrupulous landlords who took but never gave back, the overwhelming power of friendship and the deep abiding loyalty of all those who tried to protect Grace’s secret.

Grace of the Empire State is so impeccably researched it brought history alive in a really authentic way and so, knowing absolutely nothing about the construction of the Empire State Building I was inspired to look at the archive photographs of Lewis Hines, the official photographer, and marvelled at the bravery of the ‘sky boys’ those structural workers who risked their lives as they put the gigantic steel frame together.

It’s definitely going to be one of my reads of the year and for that reason I am delighted to make Grace of the Empire State the Book of My Month for February.

About the Author

Gemma Tizzard has a degree in American Studies, with a particular interest in twentieth century American history and untold women’s stories. From Berkshire, she now lives in Southampton, where she works as a marketing manager. She also writes romantic comedies and was longlisted for the 2021 and 2022 Comedy Women in Print (CWIP) Unpublished Novel Prize. Grace of the Empire State is her first historical novel.

Keep up with Gemma Tizzard on Instagram @gemma_tizzard.

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