For readers of Colm Tóibín and Claire Keegan, Saoirse is a powerful novel set between the United States and Ireland about a woman who runs from her traumatic past and the secrets she carries to survive.
In Michigan, Sarah’s childhood was defined by fear and silence. As a teenager, she saw a chance to escape and took it. Now, in 1999, she is an artist living on the rugged coast of Donegal, Ireland, where she is known as Saoirse (pronounced Sear-sha)—a name that sounds like the sea and means freedom in the language of her adopted country. And free is precisely how she is finally beginning to feel. Her partner and two beloved daughters are regular subjects of her paintings, and together they have made the safe home she always longed for. But Saoirse's secrets haunt her. No one must learn of the identity she has stolen in order to survive; they cannot know of the dangers that she crossed an ocean to escape.
When her artwork wins unexpected acclaim at a Dublin exhibition, the spotlight of fame threatens to unravel the careful lies that hold her world together. Journalists and admirers begin to ask questions about the mysterious artist from Donegal, and she fears the unwanted publicity will expose all that she has done.
Saoirse is an evocative, suspenseful exploration of the intimate relationship between art and life and the lies we tell ourselves in the name of reinvention.
A stunner!
"Charleen Hurtubise is a novelist and artist of some renown in the UK and Ireland. Saoirse is her North American debut and it is a stunner. Told in alternating timelines and clever narrative shifts, the novel moves among Sarah/Saoirse's harrowing childhood in Michigan, her escape to Ireland with a new identity after devastating traumatic events, and the ""present day"" (1999), when she is living as an artist in Ireland with her partner and children. The success of her artistic career brings out the media and unwanted attention to the careful and quiet life that Saoirse has carved out, and she must fight to clear her name and protect her family. This novel is suspenseful, beautifully written, and deeply moving. Highly recommend. I will be eagerly watching for Hurtubise's next novel."
