Name: Academy Street
ISBN: 9781922182449

Mary Costello

Academy Street is the heart-breaking and evocative story of one woman's life spanning six decades. Tess's childhood in 1940's rural Ireland is defined by the sudden death of her mother. Later, in New York, she encounters the ferocious power and calamity of love, and the effects of catastrophic fate. The novel resonates with the rhythms of memory and home as well as those of America's greatest city. This is an intimate story about unexpected gifts and unbearable losses, and the perpetual ache for belonging. It is exquisitely written and profoundly moving.

Academy Street

Irene Alegre

The female counterpart to John Williams' Stoner, Academy Street tells the story of the quiet Tess Lohan, an Irish girl who emigrates to New York at the age of eighteen.

Shattered by her mother's premature death, Tess Lohan grows up as part of a big family that more often than not fails to understand her. And who can blame them? As a character, Tess is hard to get, a shy, quiet and introverted girl who doesn't speak much and even goes speechless for months at some point during her childhood. Weak and fragile as a child, Tess decides to study nursing during her late teens and finally chooses to emigrate to New York, where her sister Claire is living the American Dream.

There, in the Big Apple, a reader discovers a young and hopeful Tess, colourful and excited about life, buying fancy dresses, trying to make herself pretty and desirable, making new acquaintances and walking around New York City like the young, independent woman she is. This, however, lasts not long. 

I will not go into all the details of the plot, because otherwise, what would be the point of reading the book, right? But I will go into some of the details. This is a spoiler alert.

It is a good thing that Academy Street is a novella and not a novel. Because, well, I disagree with the saying; you can have too much of a good thing, and then it's not a good thing any more. And is Academy Street 'a good thing', anyway?

"They are running down the road to Glynn's. Running, she feels free. In her bare legs, in the rush of air, she feels strong and free. She keeps up with Maeve, happy, almost dancing, almost forgetting what has happened."

Academy Street is an account of the life of an average Irish woman, and it is subtle in the details and memorable as a whole. Told in the present tense, the first part of the story feels fresh, throbbing with life and immediateness. It almost blurts out the words, the emotions. Tess comes across as a quiet, strange yet happy child. She is content within her tiny world, she is comfortable in it and it all makes sense to her. She runs around, she enjoys her natural surroundings, her large family, her neighbours and the people she meets on a daily basis. She fears her father but he doesn't really bother her; instead, he stays apart, lonely and saddened by the loss of his wife, mostly afraid of taking charge of the situation, of being there. 

"In the city she felt the stir of anxiety on the streets, and day by day it entered her. On the TV, missiles, warheads, ships steaming towards Cuba. The end of the world"

And then the second part begins, and rapidly takes the reader to the past, a slower tense that allows for reflection and feels a lot more calm, like a ballad. Tess arrives in New York and it's all new and scary, and then she falls in love. And then, she falls pregnant.

The story progresses and it doesn't pause, it doesn't go backwards or stop to go on for several paragraphs. It goes on, and on, and it is not forgiving with our main character. Tess evolves, transforms, becomes this estranged woman, an older, more complex version of herself as a child, difficult to understand, impermeable and impenetrable. A quiet coward. A loser. And then, that finale, those heartbreaking last chapters that made me gasp, almost cry, wonder and realize that, oh well, this is what life is. For real. 

"Dawn was the cruellest hour. The wind was sifting his bones, scattering his ash, leaving tiny pale shards in hidden corners. She wanted to roam the streets, scavenge in the sewers for his teeth"

I recommend this novella to anyone who enjoyed Brooklyn by Colm Tóibíin, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith and Stoner, by John Williams.

http://bookmallows.blogspot.co.uk/201...

Academy Street

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