Academy Street: A Novel

by Mary Costello

Hardcover, 2015

Status

Available

Publication

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2015), Hardcover, 160 pages

Description

"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

LibraryThing member Cariola
Academy Street is a short, introspective novel about an Irish woman's mostly sad life. Tess Lohan's mother dies when she is only eight, and the loss, coupled with her father's distance and simmering resentment at being left to raise four daughters and two sons on his own, has left its mark on Tess.
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As she grows up, she finds it difficult to connect with almost anyone except her sister Claire, feeling somehow detached or different from others. And she has a hard time standing up for herself, even saying what she wants. So when it is decided that she train to become a nurse, she does. And when it is decided that she will follow Claire to New York and live with her aunt, she does. And life becomes even more stressful--or boring?--when Claire and her family move to the other side of the country. Tess's life seems to become a series of losses and estrangements.

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.
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LibraryThing member cameling
"There is, in some of us, an essential loneliness..."
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
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siblings, Tess felt herself to be a misfit and alone. She moves to America to become a nurse, has a child, develops a close friendship with a neighbor, suffers through a tragedy and ultimately finds herself coming full circle in the land of her origin.

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.
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LibraryThing member katiekrug
This book is proof that an author doesn't need hundreds and hundreds of pages to tell a powerful story. Mary Costello has written a beautiful and intense story in 142 pages without a false note or misplaced word. Reading this reminded me of reading another melancholy Irish novel - The Story of Lucy
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Gault - which I similarly loved. I read both with a lump in my throat and near tears through much of them.

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.
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LibraryThing member SandyHogarth
Mary Costello – The Academy

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
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brings up her son, Theodore, while waiting, hoping, for the lover, the one great and pure passion in her life, to come back to her. We see Theodore grow up, their closeness evaporating when he leaves home. Around her, members of her family and friends die or abandon her until the final catastrophe.
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.
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LibraryThing member TheBookJunky
A smoothly flowing story of one life, watching a young Irish girl grow up, always shy, obedient, and increasingly alone. God knows where she got the wherewithal to emigrate alone to New York City to be with her sister and aunt. Her passive and reserved nature are so successfully drawn by the author
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that I never felt at the end, despite being witness to most of her life, like this was someone I knew. She remained always an invented character. It was a steady flow of A to B to C etc, with little diversion or embroidery, or indeed even any significant introspection beyond a couple of flashes of sexual yearning.
A pleasant book to pass away a couple of hours in the evening.
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LibraryThing member AlisonY
A little in the same vein as Brooklyn, Academy Street is about an Irish girl who moves to New York in the early 1960s. Unlike Brooklyn, which had searing highs before the searing lows, Academy Street is a quiet book about a life full of losses and longing for love and happiness.

An enjoyable read,
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but probably not one which will stay in my head for long.

3.5 stars - enjoyable comfort reading fodder.
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LibraryThing member oldblack
This story covers the majority of a woman's lifetime - born in Ireland, emigrating to New York city and living a reasonable life in some ways but failing to find fulfillment - all in less than 200 pages. This broad sweep inevitably means significant events are dealt with fairly briefly, and that
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isn't really my preferred style. Nonetheless, the painting of such a broad picture does have some advantages. The perspective is in many ways that of an ageing or dying person reviewing their life - and maybe that's just what this is meant to be? It's a story of loneliness but also of the value of friendship between women. Finally, it's a story of mistakes and regrets - perhaps also a sign of that underlying end-of-life reflection.
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LibraryThing member TheEllieMo
The length of time it's taken me to read such a relatively short book is a reflection of my feelings for this book. Whilst being very worthy, dealing with an individual's sense of belonging (or lack thereof), the unspoken impact of her mother' early death, the novel itself is one of the dullest
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things I have read in a long time.

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.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
I've started 2021 with a wonderful, concise, emotional novel. Academy Street follows the life of Tess Lohan, from the death of her mother when Tess is six, through her old age. Tess is born in Ireland and immigrates to America when she is in her 20s. Costello describes Tess's life - both her
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internal character and her outward connections with others - in a series of what I would call vignettes of her life. Large time periods are skipped and events don't always seem completely explored, but in spite of this, or maybe because of it, I got to know Tess inside and out in just 179 pages.
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LibraryThing member almin
A favorite....the life of Tess Lohan from a child in Ireland to an adult in New York. Just Tess's story...the writing is beautiful and observations by Tess and others are so interesting and relatable.

'There did not seem to be enough hours or days or years left in her life to read all she wanted to
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read.'

'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.
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LibraryThing member icolford
In the opening sequence of Academy Street, Mary Costello’s moving and minutely observed debut novel, seven-year-old Tess Lohan’s mother has died. The setting is a farm in the west of Ireland in the 1940s. Tess is heartbroken, her father devastated. Times are tough already, but, for the Lohan
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family, they are about to get tougher. Over the next 145 pages, Costello’s novel follows Tess from her bleak rural childhood to a career as a nurse in New York City, and through to old age in the new century. After her mother’s death, the household is shrouded in an atmosphere of penitential dreariness, from which it never wholly emerges. Tess comes of age, but she is a socially awkward, inward-looking young woman, painfully conscious of her deficiencies, unsure of the kind of life she wants to live. That life, it turns out, is elsewhere. In 1962, at about age 20, having completed her nursing training, she follows her older sister Claire to New York and finds a position. Gradually, haltingly, she builds a life of her own in the city and grows less dependent on family. She moves into an apartment—“a fifth-floor walk-up, at 471 Academy Street, in Inwood”—with Anne, another nurse, also from Ireland. The two become friends and often venture out to explore the city’s night life. But Tess is dissatisfied. Her reticent nature is constantly at odds with a yearning for companionship and love. Then she meets Anne’s cousin David. The attraction is immediate, profound and all-consuming. But when their brief affair ends, Tess is once again alone and her life is forever changed. This is a novel that swells with emotion. Costello’s depiction of Tess’s private inner world is intimate, often painfully so. We are in her head throughout the book, privy to every notion passing through her mind, every moment of confusion or regret, every agony of self-doubt. We share the sting of her distress over tragic and bewildering personal losses and guilt over what she sees as shameful moral failures. Costello’s haunting, elegant prose is stunningly evocative of the rhythms of daily life in rural Ireland of the 1940s and 50s and New York in the raucous latter half of the 20th-Century. From the first page, Academy Street grips the reader by the throat and immerses him in a life in a constant state of flux. Costello, from Galway, is also the author of a book of stories, The China Factory. This novel, which won the Irish Book of the Year Award in 2014, solidifies Mary Costello’s status as a writer of understated yet powerful and emotionally authentic fiction.
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Awards

Dublin Literary Award (Shortlist — 2016)
Costa Book Awards (Shortlist — First Novel — 2014)
Irish Book Award (Winner — Novel — 2014)
Waverton Good Read Award (Longlist — 2015)

Language

Original publication date

2014

Physical description

160 p.; 8.5 inches

ISBN

0374100527 / 9780374100520

Local notes

Fiction
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