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Fiction round-up: It’s family all the way in this summer’s best beach reads

Fiona O’Brien Picture by Shane O’Neill/Fennell Photography

Our top beach reads. Stock image

Fiona O’Brien Picture by Shane O’Neill/Fennell Photography

Faith Hogan. Picture by Keith Heneghan

Our top beach reads. Stock image

Anne Cunningham

July 03 2022 02:30 AM

Family is the focus in popular fiction this summer. Not surprising, given our recent all-locked-down-together status. And in these four novels, as in life itself, blood – even when it’s boiling –proves to be always thicker than the other stuff.

In The Houseshare (Hachette, €15.99) by Fiona O’Brien, Evelyn Malone is a mother and grandmother, living alone in a flat in a luxurious mansion overlooking south Dublin Bay. She’s old but still beautiful, glamorous, popular, and only the home’s tight-lipped resident housekeeper knows about her past.

When Evelyn falls and breaks a hip, her granddaughter Truth, a successful London barrister, flies over to mind her even though they barely know each other. Truth’s mother stays put in London, with no particular desire to ever meet her scheming, manipulative mother again.

The other residents, who all adore Evelyn, have no idea what she’s capable of. But there’s a reckoning on the way. With a large cast of colourful and contrasting characters, including a bunch of daily sea swimmers, this is definitely one for the beach.

Fiona O’Brien Picture by Shane O’Neill/Fennell Photography

Travelling from Dublin’s south coast to its north, Malahide is the spot for Carmel Harrington’s A Mother’s Heart (HarperCollins, €16.99) and it’s where transplanted New Zealander Rachel finds herself recently widowed with two very young stepchildren.

Blended families are one thing, but Rachel is in a godawful mess, with not two sets of doting grandparents but three, and only one set directly related to her.

Sheila and Adrian, the grandparents who live on the same road as Rachel, are particularly nasty. As interfering Sheila observes: “What name do you give to the wife of your dead son-in-law? The stepmother of your grandchildren? There were no Hallmark cards for that.”

Sheila is terrified Rachel will move back to New Zealand with the kids and so, in a pre-emptive strike, takes legal proceedings against her. And things go rightly south after that.

If you think you’ve got the in-laws from hell, read this novel and be grateful.

Faith Hogan. Picture by Keith Heneghan

In Faith Hogan’s The Gin Sisters’ Promise (Head of Zeus, €16.99) it’s not the in-laws with the problem, but three sisters bearing ancient grudges who can’t stand each other.

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All three live in London, each ignoring the others gloriously, until they are all thrown together back in their west of Ireland homeplace following their father’s sudden death.

Their widowed father wills his substantial estate, including a swanky distillery, to his daughters, but with conditions. To inherit their share, they must first spend six months together in the family home helping with the business and mending their metaphorical fences.

If things don’t work out between them, the whole lot goes to a trust fund.

Georgia has just been passed up for promotion, Iris is facing into a bitter divorce and actress Nola’s doing a lot more waitressing than acting lately – Georgia, Iris and Nola, GIN sisters, geddit? These women have no choice but to kiss and make up – if only it were that easy.

The midlands is the setting for Roisin Meaney’s Life Before Us (Hachette, €15.99) and it’s where Alice finds herself staying with her aunt Kate, after she discovers her boyfriend of six months is married. With kids.

She has chucked both her job and her houseshare in Dublin, convinced she’ll find work locally. But besides the occasional shift in her aunt’s restaurant, work – a real job – proves elusive.

Local schoolteacher George has plenty of work but no social life to speak of. While his housemate is anxious to get him out dating again, George just wants a quiet life and more time with his 12-year-old daughter.

As we follow Alice and George through the novel it becomes obvious they are made for each other. But thanks to a whole series of teasing and downright frustrating near-misses, they never seem to meet.

Alice is focused on finding a way to make a living, while George is preoccupied with his ex and his child. And then Fate steps in. Meaney’s 20th novel is yet another charmer.

Fiction round-up: It’s family all the way in this summer’s best beach reads

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