Irish Fiction: Since her 1995 debut, Involved, Kate O'Riordan's writing has attracted praise and prizes aplenty (an Arts Council Award and a Sunday Tribune/Hennessy prize for Best Emerging Writer to name but two).Perhaps more impressive still, she's managed the daunting task of living up to such early promise, her voice maturing and gaining confidence with each successive novel, writes Catherine Heaney.
Her fourth, The Memory Stones, is part page-turning family drama, part exploration of memory and loss, and tells the story of four generations of mothers and daughters, delving into murky emotional ground with tenderness, subtlety and unnerving accuracy.
Nell is a successful, middle-aged woman living in self-imposed exile in Paris since leaving Ireland, pregnant, aged 16. Forced to return by the news that her daughter Ali, a troubled ex-heroin addict now living in Nell's childhood home, is in danger, she must also face up to the unfinished business of her own past - a strained relationship with her dead mother, the loss of a sister and the guilt of her exile.
Slipping back and forth between the memories that haunt Nell and the unfolding family crisis, O'Riordan's narrative peels away the layers of past hurts, fears and fragile hopes, revealing the stories that have shaped her characters' lives. Her descriptions of places - a Kerry pub, a Parisian cafe - are alive with detail, and she's also a master of pace, the sense of dread mounting as history threatens to repeat itself in the cruelest way.
Beautifully written - subtle, poignant, and at times funny - The Memory Stones is another result for O'Riordan, confirming her as a faithful observer of the silent, everyday truths that bind families together, for better or for worse.
Catherine Heaney writes for Red Magazine
The Memory Stones. By Kate O'Riordan, Pocket Books, 374 pp. £6.99