Set over a year in contemporary Belfast, there is a propulsive quality to the writing
Anyone with even a vague knowledge of these novels could argue against this categorisation. The tag seems less about the respective books and more about a general lack of engagement from readers who didn’t spend time noticing both the material events of the novel, and the fact that plot often exists only to get us closer to the interior world of characters.
Rachel Connolly’s debut novel Lazy City will, I suspect, find itself branded with the “nothing happens” tag but this does a disservice to the author’s complex and authentic exploration of the effects of trauma on a woman in her late 20s. Set over a year in contemporary, there is a propulsive quality to Connolly’s writing that keeps us invested in the fortunes of her protagonist Erin as she tries to deal with the sudden death of a close female friend.
Unmoored by grief, Erin returns to her childhood home in Belfast hoping for comfort but instead is met with strife, envy and bitterness from a mother who resented her daughter going to college in the UK and who seems equally, grotesquely resentful of the recent tragedy in her daughter’s life. Related in a series of terse, compelling scenes, this competition of victimhood feels alarmingly real: “Now her brother. A brother in a bombing is always the trump card.
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