Rainsongs
Award-winning writer Sue Hubbard delivers a poignant story of transformation, conjuring the rugged beauty of County Kerry's coastline.
Newly widowed, Martha Cassidy has returned to a remote cottage in a virtually abandoned village on the west coast of Ireland for reasons even she is uncertain of. Looking out from her window towards the dramatic rise of the Skelligs across the water, she reflects on the loss of Brendan, her husband and charming curator, his death stirring unresolved heartache from years gone by. Alone on the windswept headland, surrounded by miles of cold sea, the past closes in.
As the days unfold, Martha searches for a way forward beyond grief, but finds herself drawn into a standoff between the entrepreneur Eugene Riordan and local hill farmer Paddy O'Connell. While the tension between them builds to a crisis that leaves Paddy in hospital, Martha encounters Colm, a talented but much younger musician and poet. Caught between its history and its future, the Celtic Tiger reels with change, and Martha faces redemptive choices that will change her life forever.
Book details
- Format
- Paperback
- ISBN
- 9780715652862
- Published
- 7 March 2019
- Pages
- 242
- Duration
- Dimensions
- 129 x 198 mm
- Genre
- Fiction
- Imprint
- Duckworth
Reviews
'An elegiac story of loss and valediction... Woolfian echoes pulse through haunting the reader'
'A wool-soaked odyssey on the Iveragh peninsula I could feel and smell the rain all the way through, and when the sun broke in now and then, I felt that too... tremendous and moving'
'A gently absorbing novel... wistful but never morose - tugging the heartstrings without milking the double bereavement at the novel's heart'
'A beautifully-written and evocative novel about grief and greed, art and life, isolation and emotion'
'A ravishing tale of an emotional journey in the wild beauty of Ireland... Read this book for the delicacy of its central story , the sheer delight of being led into the drama of this edge of the world with its landscape beaten by hectic weather and lit by unfiltered sunlight, and for the pleasure of Hubbard's intensely honed, sharply insightful story-telling'
'Ambitious and heartfelt... brings a poet's lyric gift to a compelling story'
'A lyrical evocation of Ireland's fragile, ancient coastline reveals a poet's sensibility. This multi-layered story of love and loss, of a woman 'erased by grief', who finds solace in the heart of a community that is threatened from within, is exceptionally moving. This book will stay with you'
'Has a unique and beautiful emotive quality that shines through its delicately constructed prose in a love-letter to Ireland, memory and parenthood, taking advantage of its mature narrator to speak with resonance and depth. In a contemporary world of instant connections, Rainsongs returns to an age just prior to the boom of social media 2007 in an exploration of what it means to be truly alone... champions the role of literature in an increasingly disconnected modern world'
