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"A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer. Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely--a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess from her girlhood in western Ireland through her relocation to America and her life there, concluding with a moving reencounter with her Irish family after forty years of exile. The novel has a hypnotic pull and a steadily mounting emotional force. It speaks of disappointments but also of great joy. It shows how the signal events of the last half century affect the course of a life lived in New York City. Anne Enright has said that Costello's first collection of stories, The China Factory, "has the feel of work that refused to be abandoned; of stories that were written for the sake of getting something important right. Her writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand" (The Guardian). Academy Street is driven by this same urgency. In sentence after sentence it captures the rhythm and intensity of inner life"--… (more)
User reviews
There are moments of joy in Tess's life: one great (if brief) passion; her son Theo's early years, when mother and child seem to be almost one; her unexpected friendship with a neighbor; the pleasures of reading and learning. Small joys, indeed, but enough to carry her through. Along the way, Costello takes us inside Tess's heart and mind, allowing us to eavesdrop on her quest to understand herself, her life, and those around her. The novel takes us into Tess's 60s, ending with (yes) another tragedy and more losses. But at least she seems to begin to make sense of it all.
If this sound like a bit of a downer--well, it is. On the plus side, I felt that I understood where Tess was coming from, how she thought, why she backed away from life. And the novel is beautifully written. Academy Street may not be for everyone, but if you enjoy deep character studies, you may enjoy it, as I did.
This pretty much sums up the focus of the novel about Tess Lohan. The novel is about the life of Tess, from her childhood in Ireland when our introduction to her is at the death of her mother and the distancing of her father. Despite having
It's a quiet, simple story written in sparse sentences, of a quiet woman, who hugs the shadows of life, who wants more out of life but is afraid to reach out and take what she wants because she doesn't believe she deserves it. It's a story of loneliness. I felt her loneliness in every page and I empathized with her because there is some of that loneliness in me too.
Academy Street is the story of Tess Lohan whom we meet at 7 years old, just as her mother has died. We follow Tess through episodes in her life and see how strongly she feels things but how distant she remains from much in her own life, unable to translate those feelings into actions. It's incredibly sad in a way, but Tess is such an honest character, and so often frustrated with her own inability to connect, that one roots for her, that she will find in her quiet existence a way to let life in. There is incredible grief in this short novel, and Costello's prose is so sharp in its description that I cried more than once. I think grief must be one of the hardest emotions to write convincingly, as it's so individual and private. It's often over-done in novels, becoming a caricature of itself. But Costello manages to make it very real and very true.
I just can't say enough about this one. It affected me deeply and I know I will be thinking about Tess and her story for a long time. One of the few books I can see myself re-reading - and more than once.
Lyrical prose that takes us to the heart of her characters and her own inner life. The language in this book is exquisite, a joy to read. We first meet Tess Lohan, a quiet young child, at her mother’s funeral in rural Ireland, We follow her to New York where she
My only criticism is that we know that Theo meets his father and are told nothing more. Disappointing.
It is a story of courage, despair, joy, fortitude passion and humanity. What it means to be human shown in one woman’s life.
A pleasant book to pass away a couple of hours in the evening.
An enjoyable read,
3.5 stars - enjoyable comfort reading fodder.
Perhaps I was given false expectations by the 'blurb' on the back. We all know we should not judge a book by its cover, but surely we should feel justified in making some judgement from the 'blurb'.
The description on the back of my copy describes Tess Lohan, the lead character, as someone who "appears to be a quiet child. But within lies a heart of fire." No, really, there is absolutely no fire in this woman, no fire at all. This is the story of a person who does not live, but to whom life happens. She is even, within the book itself, described thus: "There was, in her nature, a certain passivity, an acquiescence that was ill-suited to change or transformation". Tess is such a dull, lifeless character, written in such a dull, lifeless way, that I never, at any point whilst reading this book, felt any kind of emotional connection with her. It's perfectly possible to read and enjoy a book about someone to whom life just happens - Stoner is a perfect example. But John Williams is a far better writer than Mary Costello, and whilst Williams can draw you in, make you feel something for the character in spite, or maybe because of their inherent dullness, Costello, in my opinion, completely fails to generate any connection with her character at all.
This was the sort of book that seriously tries my vow to never give up on a book. Life really is to short for this much dullness.
'There did not seem to be enough hours or days or years left in her life to read all she wanted to
'She became herself, her most true self, in those hours among books. I am made for this she thought.'
'Years before, she had thought poetry beyond her.'
There are many more beautiful quotes to find in this book.