Nancy and Bernadette have spent every summer at the remote farm where their mother grew up. Despite the sullen nature of their uncle, Donn, and the religiosity of their aunt, Agatha, who returned from training to be a nun to keep house for him, it’s an idyllic place to a ten and twelve-year-old from London. But the bond between the sisters is weakening, as Nancy, now at the comprehensive school, wants to play at being a grown-up. And there are far darker forces at work than sibling rivalries. For in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, the English are unwelcome in certain parts and a lonely farm has every chance of being co-opted into the undercover war.
Thirty years later, having barely spoken to each other since childhood, the sisters return to the farm with their families on the pretext of seeing the place for one last time before it’s sold. It starts badly: Nancy’s American husband is both overly chatty and bored; Bernie is critical of her sister’s hypervigilance around Nancy’s fourteen-year-old son, who appears to have some kind of attention-deficit disorder (p79):
Thirty years later, having barely spoken to each other since childhood, the sisters return to the farm with their families on the pretext of seeing the place for one last time before it’s sold. It starts badly: Nancy’s American husband is both overly chatty and bored; Bernie is critical of her sister’s hypervigilance around Nancy’s fourteen-year-old son, who appears to have some kind of attention-deficit disorder (p79):
Children don’t want to get things wrong, they don’t want to antagonise people. They’d much rather get everything right, and you have to behave as if they’re trying to.
Bernie’s concern for Hurley reflects her own teenage years of being misunderstood, of being sent to therapists and labelled. And she’s returned to the farm with an even greater agenda than Nancy’s. Bernie believes that it’s Nancy’s denial of the events of that summer at the farm that made her ill. Nancy just thinks she’s mad.
Yet her nostalgic desire to recover the bond she felt with her sister in childhood, drives Nancy to explore both the ramshackle farm buildings and the landscape of the past (p136):
She wanted to see things from a new perspective. The people from a new perspective. She couldn’t distinguish what was real and what was imagined any more.
Memories emerge of her uncle’s friend, Tommy, “dangerous in a Byronic way” (p138), who nevertheless made her feel like the grown-up she longed to be, even if (p176):
being an adult means knowing when to ask questions when to let things be.
My title for this piece is taken from Kipling’s smuggler’s poem about turning a blind eye, which I recall from my own childhood. The Insect Rosary is a brave debut about sisterhood and the damage done to fragile minds when their truth is blatantly denied, within the context of a period of recent history which is still painfully contested. For the author’s take on the themes and structure of the novel, see my Q&A with Sarah Armstrong. Thanks to Sandstone Press for my review copy.
Bernie’s concern for Hurley reflects her own teenage years of being misunderstood, of being sent to therapists and labelled. And she’s returned to the farm with an even greater agenda than Nancy’s. Bernie believes that it’s Nancy’s denial of the events of that summer at the farm that made her ill. Nancy just thinks she’s mad.
Yet her nostalgic desire to recover the bond she felt with her sister in childhood, drives Nancy to explore both the ramshackle farm buildings and the landscape of the past (p136):
She wanted to see things from a new perspective. The people from a new perspective. She couldn’t distinguish what was real and what was imagined any more.
Memories emerge of her uncle’s friend, Tommy, “dangerous in a Byronic way” (p138), who nevertheless made her feel like the grown-up she longed to be, even if (p176):
being an adult means knowing when to ask questions when to let things be.
My title for this piece is taken from Kipling’s smuggler’s poem about turning a blind eye, which I recall from my own childhood. The Insect Rosary is a brave debut about sisterhood and the damage done to fragile minds when their truth is blatantly denied, within the context of a period of recent history which is still painfully contested. For the author’s take on the themes and structure of the novel, see my Q&A with Sarah Armstrong. Thanks to Sandstone Press for my review copy.
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