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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

The complexity of human relationships: Prosperity Drive by Mary Morrissy

21/5/2016

8 Comments

 

Edel Elworthy is confused about most things, but she’s pretty sure that her adult daughter, Norah, who has moved back into her childhood home on Prosperity Drive to care for her, is aware that she’s fallen at the top of the stairs. But she “thinks she understands why lately Norah has refused to come running. Payback” (p4). Though there’s something she feels she ought to tell her if only she could form the words.


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At the end of the book we meet a teenage Edel, a country girl working in a department store in Dublin. Watching Victor Elworthy waiting at the heel bar to get his shoes resoled, she knows she’ll have to move quickly. A couple of pages later, they’re visiting her family and Victor is teaching her to drive. Was it the shameful incident on a country road she wanted to confess to her daughter, or the vulnerability underlying the punishment she inflicted on her as a child?

Between these bookends we are plunged deep into the lives of not only the Elworthy family but their various neighbours from the middle-class suburb. Rather like the stories of Alice Munro, any one of these eighteen stories has enough substance for a novel, told with great economy and glittering prose. Each works as a stand-alone story while together adding up to, for me, less an impression of a particular place, but of the intricacy of human relationships.

Moving around in time, we meet the child behind the adult, often seeing the experiences that have shaped them of which the characters themselves are unaware. While the broad cast of characters can be confusing (I’d often start a new story asking myself whether I’ve met this character before), the slight irritation this induces is outweighed by the pleasure of encountering a familiar figure from another angle. There’s a parallel process between the reader’s sense of dislocation (not something I’d normally relish) and the overall theme of connection and disconnection: how figures from our pasts might stay in our minds, even if our relationship to them was slight; how we can feel alienated from those with whom our lives are more clearly intertwined.

Like My Name Is Lucy Barton and Hot Milk it’s particularly strong on the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, but my favourite was the story of the fierce adult literacy teacher making amends for a childhood betrayal. Perhaps because of the setting in Catholic Ireland, the theme of guilt and reparation is beautifully handled. The book as a whole makes me think of how the sacrament of confession might be, if it could be divorced from the need to appease an omnipotent supernatural being and from the hypocrisy of the established church; a setting out of ordinary human failings in a spirit of, if not quite forgiveness, at least compassion and acceptance that none of us are as good as we’d hope to be.

Despite the profundity of its approach, Prosperity Drive is not without humour, such as in this glimpse of Norah’s brief marriage (p197-8):

Louis had boasted to friends that he wouldn’t have a rolling pin in the house because theirs wasn’t that kind of marriage. Which meant that Norah had to use a milk bottle; for baking, that is. All her piecrusts had the letters MBL imprinted on them. Sometimes, faint vestiges of the warning on the bottles would also appear before the tart went into the oven: Must Not Be Used Without Permission.


In both language and sentiment, a beautiful book, regardless of whether it’s best described as a novel or a collection of short stories. Thanks to Jonathan Cape for my review copy and for introducing me to an author whose backlist I’m keen to pursue.

For my virtual annethology of Irish fiction, see also my St Patrick’s Day post from earlier this year.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
8 Comments
Norah Colvin link
22/5/2016 11:50:06 am

Hi Anne,
Thanks for your thoughtful review. I do like the sound of this one and, if I had time, I'd be downloading it straight away. There are so many aspects of it that appeal, but especially the intricacies of the relationships. I agree with your comment that there are those who we know fleetingly but stay with us, and others with whom our lives are entwined that we wish would just go away. (Sorry, you didn't say it quite like that - my interpretation). I'd love to know what Edel wishes to confess. Your opening paragraph and Norah's refusal to come running tells so much about them and their relationship.

Reply
Annecdotist
23/5/2016 08:46:18 am

I’m glad it appeals as I was really impressed with this one but wrote my review in a bit of a hurry at the end of a migraine! I think your interpretation is fine about the relationships we wish would go away. Mary Morrissy’s approach is really subtle with great psychological depth. But how can you resist another Norah?

Reply
Norah Colvin link
24/5/2016 12:25:06 pm

I thought you might think it was the character's name that attracted me! But actually it was your review that sold it. I'm sorry to hear you suffer migraines though. They are no fun. I'm amazed you achieve as much as you do.

Annecdotist
29/5/2016 02:41:48 pm

Yup, migraines are a pain (speaking of puns …) though i do tend to be able to read when I have them, even if I can’t do much else.
We seem to be encountering some excellent fictional Norahs (although they could never match the real one) – maybe there should be a series.

Charli Mills link
23/5/2016 10:25:26 pm

This structure is one I find interesting for two reasons -- one, I like the experimental quality of story-telling through multiple lenses, and two, I think readers have developed shorter attention spans (or time allotment) for reading and short stories might become more popular. The imprint on the tart from the milk bottle made me laugh! I need one of those!

Reply
Annecdotist
24/5/2016 09:45:03 am

That’s an interesting point about attention spans, Charli. It works the other way from me in that I prefer reading in longer chunks so that three or four short stories at a time can get a bit overwhelming (though certainly not this one).
Having visited the author’s website AFTER posting my review, it seems she sees this book as an anthology of short fiction, but the publishers have positioned it as “an exploded novel” whatever that is! Collections of short stories sell much better in the US than in the UK (and I’m assuming it’s the same in Ireland).

Reply
Norah Colvin link
24/5/2016 12:27:42 pm

Exploded novel? I hope that one doesn't blow up in their face!
(Sorry. I couldn't resist!)
I agree with Charli about the milk bottle imprint too, though I forgot to mention.

Reply
Annecdotist
29/5/2016 02:44:24 pm

I hope not. But there is something verging on the explosive in the strength of the writing – and you're always good at picking up the workplace I don't even notice!

Reply



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