Confessions by Catherine Airey

This is a complicated novel that shifts between the past and present, between narrators, and also between truths--there are a lot of secrets herein. It opens opens in New York on 9/11. Sixteen-year-old Cora, who is playing truant, watches the news from her apartment, and knows that her father is dead. Michael was an accountant who worked on the 104th floor of the North Tower. Cora’s mother Máire died seven years earlier, so she is now an orphan. From here, the story cuts back to 1974, to rural Ireland, and a narrative told by Cora’s aunt Róisín. We see Cora’s parents, Máire (Róisín’s sister) and Michael (who lives next door) growing up in Burtonport, Donegal. Máire travels to the USA to study at NYU. She is a born artist, but troubled, and people prey on her. Michael joins her, trying to help. The second half of the novel stitches to and fro across the decades, ending in 2023. Passages are narrated by Róisín, Michael, and Cora’s daughter Lyca, who uncovers half a century’s worth of family stories and secrets, and must decide what to do with them. They shape shift in all sorts of ways besides who is narrating and this complex task is handled well--the story comes out surprisingly seamless despite a myriad of ways the story is told. The secrets Lyca uncovers are borne by the women of the family, and involve addiction, adoption, rape, mental illness, gay rights, abortion rights and intergenerational trauma: it takes on big subjects and as debut novels go, this one is impressive.