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A review by snoakes7001
The Ghostlights by Gráinne Murphy
5.0
The Ghostlights is a beautifully told story of life in a rural Irish community.
Twins Marianne & Olive grew up in Coolaroone, home to one of Ireland's famous moving statues of the mid eighties. Just as they were about to go to university, Olive discovered she was pregnant and ended up staying home to bring up her child and help her mother run the family B&B business. Marianne moved away and made a life for herself outside of Coolaroone and, as the story starts, has recently arrived home for Easter following a fight with her partner.
The sisters are chalk and cheese and regularly drive each other to distraction. They have a strong bond, but are equally defensive of their life choices, both believing that the other considers theirs the better path. Their mother's deteriorating mental health provides the family with a further source of tension. Then when one of the B&B residents is discovered drowned in a nearby lake, everyone is forced to take stock and try to work out what they really want from life and each other.
Gráinne Murphy injects just the right amount of dark humour to bring small-town Ireland vividly to life in this poignant novel of family, forgiveness and belonging.
Twins Marianne & Olive grew up in Coolaroone, home to one of Ireland's famous moving statues of the mid eighties. Just as they were about to go to university, Olive discovered she was pregnant and ended up staying home to bring up her child and help her mother run the family B&B business. Marianne moved away and made a life for herself outside of Coolaroone and, as the story starts, has recently arrived home for Easter following a fight with her partner.
The sisters are chalk and cheese and regularly drive each other to distraction. They have a strong bond, but are equally defensive of their life choices, both believing that the other considers theirs the better path. Their mother's deteriorating mental health provides the family with a further source of tension. Then when one of the B&B residents is discovered drowned in a nearby lake, everyone is forced to take stock and try to work out what they really want from life and each other.
Gráinne Murphy injects just the right amount of dark humour to bring small-town Ireland vividly to life in this poignant novel of family, forgiveness and belonging.