New York, September 2001

"The voices became screams when the North Tower fell too. I turned off the TV and closed my eyes, covered my ears with my hands and thought about how ostriches bury their heads in the sand."

Cora Brady is home alone when live news coverage from the Twin Towers brings with it the realisation that her father won't be coming home. A heartbreaking start that gripped and led me straight into this immersive and beautifully written novel.

Originally from County Donegal in Ireland her mother had come to New York to attend art school and her father a childhood sweetheart had followed some years later. With both parents now dead Cora takes up her aunt Rosin's invitation and travels to Ireland.

Moving back and forth in time between rural Ireland and New York, this multi-generational novel tells of two sisters growing up in the 70's on a farm in rural Ireland, the different paths that led to them being separated by an ocean and the nearby house that had such a big impact on both their lives.

A slow burn, immersive and beautifully descriptive novel of family, friendship, choices and what might have been.

Catherine Airey’s debut novel was not totally for me. Tonally, it fell a little flat and the other books, that it seemed it wanted to emulate, felt stronger me, The writing, at times, was very strong but it never quite took off as I hoped it would,

As the title suggests, this book is about acknowledging the things in our past that we might find embarrassing or shameful, about the reluctant acceptance that some well kept secrets need to come out if we want to make sense of our lives not only for ourselves but also for the generations to come, who need to find their own place in their family’s past.

Central to it is the complex and complicated relationship between two Irish sisters, Róisín and Máire, growing up in Burtonport, County Donegal. One of them staying there her entire life, the other one making it to New York. Between the two of them stands Michael, drawn to both of them but compelled to follow his protective instincts towards the much more vulnerable Máire.

The story starts with Cora’s – Michael’s and Máire’s teenaged daughter – unsuccessful search for her dad, who did not return home after the events of 9/11. With both her parents gone now, her aunt Róisín in Ireland takes her under her wing but it is left to Cora’s daughter Lyca to unearth the secrets of the past. Lyca carries this burden with astonishing strength. Driven by a natural curiosity and an anxiety that comes with finding out what she does and what she doesn’t want to know; Lyca is often unsure how much of it to disclose- not wishing to hurt the people closest to her.
Interspersed within the story is a simple computer game, written by Róisín and played by all three generations – Máire, Cora and Lyca. You can only move on with the game if you make the right choice, echoing the main theme of this book: life is all about the choices you make and real second chances only exist in a game where you can rewind, reconsider and start out anew.

As it is the case with so many books set in Ireland, it is the women and their lives that provide the interesting, colourful and multifaceted storylines that give this book its depth. I really enjoyed immersing myself in it.

I am grateful to NetGalley and Viking/Penguin Random House for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

A very ambitious debut novel with many narrative strands, spanning generations and locations (New York and Ireland). I think I’ll be in the minority, but I didn’t connect with the characters or like them very much. I was enjoying being with Cora, the initial narrator, but after the first section, we only see her through the daughter’s eyes. The tonal shifts were difficult for me but I was interested enough to finish the novel.

This book is due to be published in Jan 2025. Many thanks to the publishers, Penguin and Viking, and to Netgalley, for a free review copy, in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.
I love a book that just dives straight in. This one opens with a bang, literally.

We meet Cora living in NYC with her father. It is September 11th, 2001. Cora has skipped school and grew impatient waiting for her drug dealer boyfriend to call around, so she drops some acid. Then she switches on the TV and sees the attack on the Twin Towers, where her father is working. A new perspective on ‘where were you when….’

[As a sidebar, I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the interior of the towers, triggering memories of my own visits there and eating at the ‘Windows of the World’ restaurant. There were 99 elevators in each! Sometimes the water in the toilet bowels was not level, as the towers swayed on their foundation.]

The book follows three women across three generations slipping between NYC and rural Ireland; Cora, Roisin (her aunt) and Lyca (her daughter). Cora seemed lonely in her life; she feels unseen. We learn Cora’s deceased mother Maire was an artist with mental health issues. This takes us to Maires backstory in Ireland where she was not at all nice to her sister Roisin. Through Maires later experiences in NYC, we learn danger is not where you would expect it and there are quite some unexpected shocks and twists.

There are many strong secondary characters, Franny, Scarlett and of course Michael. The book also covers those years in Ireland where abortion and homosexuality remained illegal or frowned upon. There is a scene where Cora put a t-shirt on her baby Lyca saying, “I should have been a choice”, and took her to a pro-abortion march. Gosh!

It is a complex but highly engaging family saga masterfully delivered. I could not put this book down!

Confessions by Catherine Airey is a strong debut with characters you become invested with as you learn about their family dynamics from each perspective.

A propulsive novel, that takes on so much of social, political and cultural history in Ireland and the US over 3 generations. It has a host of characters, mainly female that are fully drawn out that at times you forget this is a book and not people that you know. Michael was a boy-o and I didn’t not like him, he just wanted his cake and to eat it as well. Also wasn’t sure the Sanjeet character added much to the story, but the female characters are strongly written.

It has 9/11, the AIDS crisis, Repeal the 8th, gaming, an LGBTQ element and lots more. It is complex, and I did wonder how it all tied up but that is what is enjoyable and indeed a strength to the story.

It’s being published Jan 2025, and I read a gifted digital arc from @vikingbooksuk
If it is still available on @netgalley , send your request in as I hope this is going to be a sensation.

A really interesting premise starting with 9-11 in New York in which a family (father and daughter) is torn apart by tragedy. We follow the daughter's subsequent travels back to her parental homeland and her learning more about herself and her family.

Confessions by Catherine Airey is a book about the lineage of women and their messy, yet realistic lives. It begins with Cora, talking about the death of her mother and then later, her father. It is an intriguing opening to the book, sampling the expert and complex characterisation that continues throughout. It sets up a narrative in which personal stories told by each of Cora's family members is interspersed with mysterious snippets of a game called 'Scream School'. There is no part of this book that is not entwined with another, and while that may be briefly confusing for on and off readers, it overall adds a brilliant layer of complexity to the novel.

The most notable feature of this book would be, of course, the characters. Throughout, each have a consistent voice and a distinct personality which carries through. One of my favourite parts about them is the fact that, no matter how far removed they are from one another, they each are connected in some way. This is through obvious things like relation but also through small physical details such as Michael, Cora's father, buying fries so she could dip them into her milkshake and then how Cora's daughter, Lyca does the same for her crush Sanjeet. As the book progresses, there are notable dynamics which are very interesting. The first I picked up on was the mother-daughter dynamic in which the daughter becomes the parent instead. This is seen in Cora mothering Marie due to her mother's mental struggles and how she loved reading Alice in Wonderland together as that was the only time Marie would "behave like a normal mother". This unorthodox relationship is also mirrored in Cora being emotionally managed by Lyca. At first, I found it odd that Lyca would only call her mum by her first name, but as the story progressed it becomes clear as to why she managed her Mum's immaturity the way she did.

Due to the intricacies of their demeanours and the explicit nature of their own personalities, each character comes across as fully developed and realistic which allows for believable connections between them. The battle between Roisin and Marie for Michael's affection is palpable yet also very subtle. The dysfunctional nature of their sisterly dynamic is the underlying theme throughout the book and that was something I enjoyed thoroughly. Reading Roisin's perspective on her childhood both through her youth and old age is a brilliant way to keep the reader's engaged. Roisin's story had the ability to stagnate due to her not encountering many significant changes in her life yet her sections of narration were wildly entertaining. The theme of familiarity and its slow development really added a solid backbone for this book. This allowed for more comedic elements to shine which is needed in what otherwise would be considered a 'heavy' novel. Mini insights to the characters like Marie not allowing Cora dolls but then letting her own a flashlight-doll hybrid adds so much to their development. I constantly found myself relating to the characters, like Lyca believing that if you looked away from a loading screen it would load faster, and thus found myself becoming more invested in their storylines.

Each character had a chance to narrate their own point of views and that is something I always love in a book. It highlights the unreliability of each character and gives the readers a deeper insight into their personalities. This was done especially brilliantly in Marie's portions of the book. Her complex mental health struggles created the most wonderful dynamic between reader and narrator as she was incredibly dysfunctional to read about. Her portions being written in second tense rather than first, like the others, separates her from the rest of the story and further highlights that dysfunction, although it was confusing to read at first. She was by far the most enjoyable character to follow along with, however, there were some instances of abuse which I believe the readers should be warned about before reading, such as the substance and sexual abuse.

Furthermore, the unreliability of each narrator and the sudden changes of time periods did confuse me a couple of times and thus made it hard for me to get totally invested. I found myself constantly trying to refer to previous sections of the book to find out what the connection was to my current chapter. Having two connecting instances/people at either end of the book does somewhat take away from the tension of the mystery and leads the reader feeling less satisfied with the reveal. That being said, seemingly untied loose ends were explained nicely in Lyca's section at the end of the book and were therefore rounded off well. Additionally, interspersing snippets from the Scream School game did drag out the tension but also created a mystery of its own. It allowed for a break between emotionally taxing and complex plotlines which was very needed. It's mystery was also rounded off well in Lyca's portion of the book, I just wish that there were more hints about where it was going to keep up my interest. Yet where the plot structure faltered, the language didn't. It kept the book feeling fresh with each new sentence and was entirely dynamic. Descriptions were done in magnificent detail while not being 'overly flowery' or filled with adjectives. Instead, it described emotions and scenes perfectly and in a way that was easy to read. I especially enjoyed the portion where Marie went to her university friend's family home for Thanksgiving and their whole dynamic ended up symbolising American gluttony. Writing like this adds another layer of the realism that really is the core of this book.

In conclusion, if you want to read a book with no idea of where its going, read this one. If you want to become completely invested in a whole jumble of characters, read this one. While it does have moments where it looses its tension or chronological narrative, in the end you'll have found that you have read a perfectly satisfactory book. At that point, I urge you to read it again because I am sure that you'll pick up on new clues you didn't find the first time.

Amazing that this is a debut! An emotive read exploring love and loss from different perspectives, places, and points in time.

I loved the way this novel was structured, the story broken into pieces for the reader to put together as the novel progressed. My only criticism was that I felt a little too much was revealed at the end; the reader knew the full story and that was enough, without all characters needing to know everything too.

Interested to see the success of this novel following publication. Thank you to Penguin General UK via NetGalley for the ARC!

Wow. This was unexpected, and unique although not entirely in a good way! The first section was wonderful and totally drew me in, however I found other sections of the book disjointed and the game subplot did not fulfil it's early promise. Mixed feelings

A family saga which gripped my heart and refused to let go.

The novel opens with Cora, a teenage girl who has just found out that her father has been killed in the September 11 attacks. Her mother having already died, she has now been rendered an orphan, and has received a letter from her mother's sister in Ireland, inviting Cora to live with her.

From there, we go back in time to the 70s, to Cora's mother Maire and her sister Roisin. Of all the compelling protagonists (Cora, Maire, Roisin and, later, Cora's daughter Lyca) it's Roisin who touched me the most. At her heart, she is simply a good girl who wants to do right by her family and herself. Maire bullies her and later takes up with a young man named Michael, whose presence changes Roisin's fate as well.

Next, we come to Maire's story, ass he arrives in New York to study. This aspect of the novel is unremittingly tragic. Three men enter Maire's life, one after the other, sending a wrecking ball through her life. This was the hardest section in the book for me, and the author handles issues of consent so sensitively. We are also made privy to the situation back home in Ireland, as Roisin and Michael struggle to navigate through a life without Maire.

After this, we lurch forward to the 2010s for our final protagonist, Lyca, who is looking back and trying to figure out what really happened to her mother, grandmother and great-aunt, and the impact this has had on her life. Without spoiling too much, this focusses very much on the history of reproductive rights in Ireland.

As a woman, this novel will make you angry. The injustices that befall these women simply for the fact that they are female will boil your blood. But this will also leave you with hope and belief in the strength women gain from themselves and with each other.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the ARC!

An interesting read. A lot of concentration needed as there are a lot of characters and different eras covered. New York features a lot including 9/11..

This is a really interesting story. It follows a number of characters and switches between different time periods. It feels a bit disjointed but that actually works really well as no one in the book really has the full story themselves.
It ranges between New York and Ireland and across generations.
It's about women and families and secrets.

Confessions is the intergenerational story of women interweaved with a fictional game.
The story moves between Donegal, New York and Burtonport and between women of the same family.
Content warning: September 11 is mentioned a few times.
My favourite storyline was the storyline in 1974 set in Donegal.
Lyca’s discoveries were curious to follow, overall.
Plot: 4 stars
Prose: 3.5 stars
Characterisation: 4 stars
Overall, I recommend this book especially because of the settings and the multidimensional characters.

The blurb for Catherine Airey’s Confessions promises an involving tale of two Irish sisters, one of whom emigrates to New York to take up an art school scholarship ticking two of my literary boxes. Máire and Rósín’s stories span several decades beginning in the 1970s when they’re growing up in an Irish village not far from the house which one will paint and the other will eventually live in, making it the setting for a choose-your-own-adventure computer video game.
It opens in 2001 with Máire’s daughter before winding back to her sister Rósín in the ‘70s and ending with Máire’s granddaughter in 2023 after passing the narrative baton back and forth. Each section is prefaced with a scenario from Scream School, the computer video game which Rósín wrote based on the stories she and her sister wove around the house they were fascinated by. Airey smoothly unfolds this complicated, puzzle of a story, pieces of which click satisfyingly into place, largely through the distinctive voices of its female characters, exploring a multitude of themes along the way. To say more about the plot would be to ruin it. There’s a coincidence that may irritate some, but I was so immersed by then that I was more than happy to continue the ride. A long, intricately plotted, luxurious read, perfect for long evenings in January when it’s due to be published

Thank you for the ARC this is on my TBR list for my upcoming holiday. I really hope it lives up to the synopsis if it does I would think this will be a four star read with prizes to follow for the writer while it sounds a familiar homecoming type plot I think there will be more to it I look forward to reading it . FULL REVIEW TO FOLLOW Autumn 24

Very excited for this beautiful generational book and getting to read and experience the richness of these women’s stories. I apologize due to an unexpected severe health issue I’m slowly catching up on reviews, but will be offering a much more detailed review in the near future. I am honored and privileged to have the opportunity to read this book and share my thoughts as well as bring it to readers