Louise Nealon

Like the main character in Snowflake, Debbie, I'm a working-class culchie who went to Trinity (though are people from Kildare really culchies? Kildare's just kind of Greater Dublin at this point), so I went into this book with hopes that it would resonate me because of that shared experience. Sadly, however, I thought this was an even weaker novel than the much-vaunted Normal People, to which it has been compared. There are some passages of nice prose, and Louise Nealon does have a good ear for rural Irish speech patterns, but let's just say that I was unsurprised to get to the acknowledgements and find out that this started out life as an exercise in a creative writing course.… (meer)

A good read and a page-turner, for sure. I'm not a fan of first person narrative, but I liked the narrator, except when it felt like she was unreliable. The Uncle character is great, and since this is supposed to be developed into a series, it will be interesting to see who is cast in the role, and how they might further flesh-out his character. Story felt really honest and the humor was a highlight. Not a fan of the mother character or the dream storyline in general-- the dream thing didn't work the way I think the author wanted it to and for me it detracted from the parts of the story that I was interested in. On the other hand, the Uncle's abilities were believable and left me wanting more. There were a lot of things that felt unresolved in the story, and I don't like being left with the sense that the author is holding back for their next book. I'm not sure if that is the case or not. So for me, I like the first 1/2-3/4 of the book better than the ending.… (meer)