Snowflake
Winner of Newcomer of the Year
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3.9 • 35 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF SUNDAY INDEPENDENT NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2021, AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS
'Wonderful and mad' Roddy Doyle
'Sparks with tender charm and humour . . . Fresh, bleakly funny' Sunday Times
'Tender, laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving' Louise O'Neill
'GAS and beautiful and truthful and touching' Marian Keyes, author of Grown Ups
'A novel for anyone who's ever felt lost in the world' John Boyne, author of The Heart's Invisible Furies
'Sharp, clever and affecting' The Independent
'Beautifully written . . . emotionally intelligent and thought-provoking' Daily Mail
'Astonishing' Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars
Debbie's brain isn't perfect. Debbie's thoughts aren't unique. Debbie's dreams are all too real.
Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams, which she believes to be prophecies.
This world is Debbie's normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve's eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy's drinking gets worse. Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself and her small life. But if the Whites are mad, they are also fiercely loving, and each other's true place of safety.
Startling, fresh and utterly unique, Snowflake is a story of messy families, messier friendships and how new chapters often mean starting right back at the beginning.
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME PICK
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Louise Nealon’s debut novel Snowflake will almost certainly draw comparisons to a certain Irish author who excels in navigating the growing pains of young adulthood. But while our narrator Debbie’s arrival at Trinity College, Dublin from her family’s dairy farm in the Irish countryside provokes the kind of fish-out-of-water feelings experienced by Normal People’s Connell Waldron, it doesn’t take long for Snowflake to reveal itself as a novel of unique standing. Debbie is a magnetic narrator, introducing us to her largely housebound mother Maeve—a magic yet eccentric woman who is convinced her dreams are visions of the future—and her benign, grounding uncle Billy, who is desperate for Debbie to live a more fulfilled life than her mum. Then there’s Xanthe, Debbie’s only Trinity College friend who, despite looking like she has it together, is suffering beneath the surface. Told in prose so engaging it makes it difficult to step away, Snowflake is a profound portrait of family relationships and the indelible mark they can leave on us, as we attempt to navigate who we really are. But it is also a tender exploration of the complexities of mental health issues, and the beautiful multitudes of each of Nealon’s vividly drawn characters in face of them. Laced with both heartache and hope, this is a surprising, special debut from a bold new voice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this fresh and often humorous debut, Nealon follows a wry young Irish woman as she negotiates family burdens. After insecure narrator Deborah leaves her family's dairy farm in rural Kildare County for Trinity College, she doesn't exactly blossom—"The only thing I'm learning in college is how to hide"—but she does befriend Xanthe, a rich, glamorous student with whom she shares a fascination with and jealousy of the other's lifestyle (Xanthe finds it "amazing" that Deborah comes from the "proper countryside"; Deborah thinks five euros for a cup of tea is "daylight robbery"). While Deborah struggles to adjust to college life, her family begins to crack under long-simmering tensions. Her single mother, Maeve, who claims not to know the identity of Deborah's father, is dating a farmworker not much older than her daughter and has a penchant for "inhaling fresh whiffs of reality and exhaling her own mystery." Billy, her gruff yet caring uncle, lives in a caravan on the farm and strives to protect Deborah from her mother's mood swings. The Dublin scenes don't particularly stand out from myriad other campus novels, but the narrative acquires a burnishing glow once outside the confines of academe. When on the farm, this tale of two worlds vibrates on an otherworldly frequency.
Customer Reviews
Full of interesting characters with depth and warmth
Would recommend to anyone who would like to slip into a different life or world. Very engagingly written with strong characters to get to know bit by bit. Really enjoyable and a bit different.
A bit bizarre
This is an interesting, sometimes funny read: a coming of age story of a young lady from the countryside, who is being encouraged by her uncle to study at university.
She has been brought up by Eccentrics, her mother who frequently self-isolates and has her room decorated with her handwritten dreams-but who gets officially diagnosed with Bipolar affective disorder during a hospitalisation. Also her uncle, who choses to live in a caravan on the farm, looking after the cattle, observing the stars in the night and drinking rather a lot.
Coming from this environment, settling in at uni is hard, but our young lady finds a more worldly friend and gets involved with other students easily.
Several new relationships evolve and her mothers illness leads to complications. When the uncle also end up in a crisis and tries to end his life, it is to everyone’s amazement the mother, who rescues him first. A therapist gets involved with methods that are not “by the book’ and ultimately, all strands of complications are being pacified. A family journey including the university-friend builds the peaceful ending and hope is there for future happiness.
I enjoyed many parts of this first novel, which convinces by being humorous and imaginative. However I struggled a little to believe that such overly chaotic family conditions could nurture sufficiently to make our heroine so successful. In the family there did not seem any planning, striving, money-managing or self-discipline going on, which might be charming but does not usually prepare young people for student life.
Maybe this is old fashioned thinking?
Still, I spite of the oddity, a nice read.
A very refreshing read .
I needed a gentle read to take me out of my own depressed brain . I have had this e - book in my library for a while , along with my rather large and ever expanding collection . I think that it must have come to my attention in a dream. It was just so good . The characters came alive on the page . The book was great! Enjoy it . Best Regards, Rob.