One Irish family. Three decades. One dazzling story.
THE DAZZLING TRUTH by HELEN CULLEN
Series: Standalone
Publication Date: August 18, 2020
Genre: women's fiction
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Synopsis
In the courtyards of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1978, aspiring actress Maeve meets pottery student Murtagh Moone. As their relationship progresses, marriage and motherhood come in quick succession, but for Maeve, with the joy of children also comes the struggle to hold on to the truest parts of herself.
Decades later, on a small Irish island, the Moone family are poised for celebration but instead are struck by tragedy. Each family member must find solace in their own separate way, until one dazzling truth brings them back together. But as the Moone family confront the past, they also journey toward a future that none of them could have predicted. Except perhaps Maeve herself.
In the courtyards of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1978, aspiring actress Maeve meets pottery student Murtagh Moone. As their relationship progresses, marriage and motherhood come in quick succession, but for Maeve, with the joy of children also comes the struggle to hold on to the truest parts of herself.
Decades later, on a small Irish island, the Moone family are poised for celebration but instead are struck by tragedy. Each family member must find solace in their own separate way, until one dazzling truth brings them back together. But as the Moone family confront the past, they also journey toward a future that none of them could have predicted. Except perhaps Maeve herself.
Praise for The Dazzling Truth:
“Love is here in spades... clear a weekend for this gorgeous read.”
—Library Journal (STARRED REVIEW)
“Cullen’s lyrical prose drives the immersive and heart-wrenching
narrative. This complex study of depression and its impact on family
dynamics will lure readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“With a group of well-crafted, intriguing characters, [Cullen]
realistically portrays a tight-knit group of people trying to grow up and
grow old under the shadow of a tragedy they can never understand. Readers
will enjoy experiencing a slice of life in this small Irish community, and
embrace the very interesting characters who live there.”
—Booklist
"Absolute poetry and a love letter to family and to the arts. The empathy
in this book is beautiful.”
—Maggie Smith, award-winning author of Good Bones and Keep Moving
“A perfect combination of deeply felt tragedy with great
hopefulness.”
—Anne Youngson, author of Meet Me at the Museum
“An extremely moving read. Helen Cullen handles the complexities of love,
grief, family life and mental illness with sensitivity and depth. A truly
gorgeous novel.”
—Ali Land, bestselling author of Good Me, Bad Me
“I devoured this, falling in love with the setting and with every
character—and when I reached the end, I wept because it is just glorious.
The Dazzling Truth is a sweeping family saga and at the same time, a
close-up on the everyday beautiful details that make up love.”
—Emma Flint, author of Little Deaths
“A beautiful bittersweet story of love, loss and families all set in the
most irresistible of locations. Tears were shed!”
—Graham Norton, BBC
“???????Cullen’s beautifully observed novel The Dazzling Truth charts a
family across 37 years, living through a tragedy on a remote island;
portraying mental health and the fall-out around it with enormous humanity
and integrity. Tonally reminiscent of recent Colm TóibÃn.”
—Caoilinn Hughes, author of Orchid and The Wasp and The Wild
Laughter
“A beautiful novel. Helen Cullen writes with such deft care and attention
about the things that hold us together when everything falls apart.”
—Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul
“Helen Cullen is so wonderful on the Irish family and the utter
complexity of motherhood, family entanglement and love. I was full on
weeping at the end.”
—Elaine Feeney, author of As You Were
“In The Dazzling Truth, Cullen has woven a powerful and poignant
narrative told over a lifetime; exploring unconditional love, heartbreak
and the beautiful flaws of human nature set within a family unit. She is
an astute and empathic writer and an incredible voice in Irish literature.
You'll fall in love with the Moone family and they will linger in your
heart long after you read the final pages.”
—Cat Hogan, author of They All Fall Down and There Was A Crooked Man
“The Dazzling Truth is such a tender read. Astute and compassionate, it
made me cry. It’s full of love. And it’s quietly magnificent.”
—Tor Udall, author of A Thousand Paper Birds
“A beautifully observed saga of abandoned dreams, loss and
self-discovery.”
—Alan McMonagle, author of Ithaca
EXCERPT
Inis Óg: 2005
Murtagh had woken that morning, once again, to an empty bed; the sheets were
cool and unruffled on Maeve’s side. He had expected to find her sitting at
the kitchen table, wrapped in her hound’s-tooth shawl, pale and thin in the
darkness before dawn, a tangle of blue-black hair swept across her high
forehead like a crow’s wet wing, her long, matted curls secured in a knot at
the nape of her neck with one of her red pencils. He had anticipated how she
would start when he appeared in the doorway. How he would ignore, as he
always did, the few moments it would take for her dove-grey eyes to turn
their focus outward. For the ghosts to leave her in his presence. The kettle
would hiss and spit on the stove as he stood behind her wicker chair and
rubbed warmth back into her arms, his voice jolly as he gently scolded her
for lack of sleep and feigned nonchalance as to its cause.
But Maeve wasn’t sitting at the kitchen table.
Nor was she meditating on the stone step of the back door drinking milk
straight from the glass bottle it was delivered in.
She wasn’t dozing on the living-room sofa, the television on but silent, an
empty crystal tumbler tucked inside the pocket of her peacock-blue silk
dressing gown, the one on which she had painstakingly embroidered a
murmuration of starlings in the finest silver thread.
Instead, there was an empty space on the bannister where her coat should
have been hanging.
Murtagh opened the front door and flinched at a swarm of spitting raindrops.
The blistering wind mocked the threadbare cotton of his pyjamas. He bent his
head into the onslaught and pushed forward, dragging the heavy scarlet door
behind him. The brass knocker clanged against the wood; he flinched, hoping
it had not woken the children. Shivering, he picked a route in his slippers
around the muddy puddles spreading across the cobblestoned pathway. Leaning
over the wrought-iron gate that separated their own familial island from the
winding lane of the island proper, he scanned the dark horizon for a glimpse
of Maeve in the faraway glow of a streetlamp.
In the distance, the sea and sky had melted into one anthracite mist, each
indiscernible from the other. Sheep huddled together for comfort in Peadar
Óg’s field, the waterlogged green that bordered the Moones’ land to the
right; the plaintive baying of the animals sounded mournful. Murtagh nodded
at them.
There was no sight of Maeve.
As he turned back towards the house he noticed Nollaig watching him from her
bedroom window. The eldest daughter, she always seemed to witness the
moments her parents had believed—hoped—were cloaked in invisibility, and
then remained haunted by what she had seen. Ever since she was a toddler,
Murtagh had monitored how her understanding grew, filling her up, and knew
it would soon flood her eyes, always so questioning, permanently.
He waved at her as he blew back up the pathway. Later, he would feel the
acute pain of finally recognising the prescience his daughter seemed to have
absorbed from the womb.
‘How long is she gone?’
Nollaig was now standing before the hallway mirror, her face contorted as
she vigorously tried to brush her frizzy mouse-brown hair into shape. She
scraped it together into a tight ponytail that thrust from the back of her
head as if it were a fox’s brush.
‘Ach, you should leave your gorgeous curls be, Noll,’ her father cajoled,
‘instead of fighting them.’
She smiled at him but slammed the mother-of-pearl hairbrush down on the
sideboard.
‘I don’t have curls, I have Brillo pads,’ she sighed. ‘Did she say where she
was going?’
Murtagh squeezed his daughter’s arm as he continued into the kitchen. ‘I’m
sure your mother is just out for a walk. Happy birthday, love. Lá breithla
shona duit.’
He placed a small copper saucepan of water on the range to boil and waved
the invitation of an egg at his daughter. She nodded begrudgingly and curled
into the green-and-gold striped armchair that sat in front of the stove.
‘With your white nightdress, you could almost pass for the Irish flag,’ he
joked, and was gratified with her snort of glee.
He watched the clock hand count three minutes in silence. Expected any
moment to hear his soaked wife splash through the door. He was poised, ready
to run towards her with a towel and hushed reprimands for her careless
wandering, but the boiling, cooling, cupping, cracking and spooning of each
egg passed uninterrupted. Nollaig yawned, stretching her arms and legs
before her in a stiff salute.
‘Why don’t you go back to bed for an hour?’ Murtagh asked. ‘We’ll all have
proper breakfast together later.’
She eyed him with suspicion but acquiesced. ‘If Mam’s not back soon,’ she
said, sidling away, ‘come and wake me. Promise? We’ll go out and find her.
Remind her what day it is, for God’s sake.’
Murtagh nodded, ushered his daughter out of the kitchen and watched her
climb the stairs.
Born on Christmas Eve, twenty years before, she was the only one of their
children who came into the world via Galway maternity hospital and not into
the impatient arms of Máire O’Dulaigh, the midwife of the island. She
resented it; how it made her feel less of a true islander. What was more,
the specialness of her own day for individual attention, her birth day, was
irrevocably lost in the shared excitement of Christmas. In retrospect, it
had been a mistake, perhaps, naming her Nollaig, the Irish for Christmas,
and further compounding the association. No nickname had ever stuck,
however. She wasn’t the sort of child who inspired others to claim her for
their own with the intimacy of a given name.
‘Born ancient,’ her little sister, Sive, always said of her, with bored
disdain.
And Murtagh sympathised. Nollaig carried the weight of being the eldest with
pained perseverance, heavy responsibilities that were self-imposed. Her
mother harboured a not always silent resentment of it, and it seemed only
natural, if unfair, that Maeve and Sive gravitated more towards each other;
the baby of the family shared her mother’s wit and wildness and often
expressed the irritation her mother tried to hide at Nollaig’s sense of
duty.
Excerpted from The Dazzling Truth by Helen Cullen, Copyright © 2020 by
Helen Cullen.
Published by Graydon House Books
About the Author
HELEN CULLEN wrote her debut novel, The Lost Letters of William Woolf,
while completing the Guardian/UEA novel writing program. She holds an MA
in Theatre Studies from University College Dublin and is currently
studying further at Brunel. Prior to writing full-time, Helen worked in
journalism, broadcasting and most recently as a creative events and
engagement specialist. Helen is Irish and currently lives in London.
Connect with the Author:
0 komentarze:
Post a Comment