When 52-year-old Willow arrives at a rental cottage in a far-flung island off the coast of Eire, she determinedly retains herself to herself. The cottage is small and unheated, with a modest kitchen and a bed room with a single mattress. Unpacking some hair clippers, she units about shaving her shoulder-length blond hair to the “uncomplicated blunt crop of a hard-working nation lady”.
Willow, who was beforehand referred to as Vanessa, apparently doesn’t want to be recognised amongst her island neighbours, who’re understandably nosy about new arrivals. In her previous life she was married for 28 years to Brendan, a swimming coach who’s now in jail (the character of his crime, and the following scandal, turns into obvious in a while). The couple had lived in Dublin and had two kids, one in every of whom died tragically younger. The opposite, now an grownup, barely speaks to Willow who sends her intermittent texts and stares at her telephone prepared her to answer.
Informed within the first individual, this novella from The Boy within the Striped Pyjamas writer John Boyne is the primary in a quartet of interlinked titles named after the weather. Water is a shifting reflection on grief, betrayal and what it’s to attempt to escape from one’s previous. Loss of life in Paradise actor Niamh Cusack is the narrator, her supply capturing the heartbreak, fury and underlying defensiveness of a girl whose life has been upended by the actions of a person. Left alone together with her reminiscences, Willow should confront some troublesome questions, chief amongst them: was she oblivious to her husband’s crimes or wilfully blind?
Out there by way of Penguin Audio, 4hr 38min
Additional listening
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Isis Hainsworth reads Fagan’s highly effective and candid memoir chronicling her formative years rising up within the care system.
Songbird
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This detailed account of the lifetime of the late Fleetwood Mac singer and keyboardist, born Christine Good, is learn by Lucy Tregear.
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