by Chole Michelle Howarth
I love any novel set in Ireland. I often thought of myself as part Irish, but according to Ancestry, I’m only 2% Irish…give or take 10%. Nevertheless, I have a love for the people, the country and the culture. That said, I naturally gravitated to Sunburn when a copy became available.
The novel starts “ Now is the time between birth and slaughter. Another Summer has arrived. I spend my days waiting for something to happen. Something glorious, even something tragic. Nothing ever happens.” (pg 1). Now, if it doesn’t exactly capture every teenager’s mindset at the beginning of summer, I don’t know what does.
Sunburn takes place approximately 30 years ago in the small Irish town of Crossmore. Lucy is our main protagonist, a young girl struggling with her identity, and she comments, “Recently I have really wanted to figure out who I am” (Howarth). This novel is about Lucy figuring out who she is. what her heart wants, what her family and friends expect from her, and what society expects from her. She has a best friend, Martin, a neighbour with whom she grew up, and the unspoken expectation that their friendship will turn into something romantic. In fact, Lucy is beginning to notice that Martin’s interest in her is shifting from mere camaraderie to something more romantic. In the meantime, Lucy finds herself drawn to her classmate Susanna, an attraction that confuses her and complicates her life, as she is at a time when she must make life-altering decisions. Will she stay and live a life with what is familiar, her town, her friends and family, making a life for herself similar to her mother? Or will she follow her heart, which means leaving the life she has lived thus far?
Howarth is masterful at capturing the mindset of a teenager experiencing not merely teenage angst, but the struggle to acknowledge the truth behind her identity.
Howarth’s prose is absolutely beautiful and thought-provoking. Some examples: “ I can’t stand being on the outside of what everyone else is feeling.”Sometimes knowing someone for a long time is the only reason you’d be friends with them. It isn’t much of a bond, and still it is unbreakable” “ Even at my small age, I understood that there were limits to love, and I felt sure that one day people would run out of love for me,” Lucy loves Martin in her own way he “makes her feel grounded” and this line absolutely broke me “ when he leaves, I watch from the back door as he disappears down the garden, out into the dark road, taking the last of today’s goodness with him.”
A beautiful novel with a discussion-generating plot and themes, all wrapped in beautiful prose.
A perfect novel to use in High School classrooms, either as a mentor text showing the effectiveness of character voice and the impact of first-person narrative, or as an independent novel study.
Thank you to Melville House and Netgalley for the copy.
Ink And Spine 