Saoirse
A Novel
-
- ¥1,700
発行者による作品情報
For readers of Colm Tóibín and Claire Keegan, Saoirse is a powerful novel set between the United States and Ireland about a woman who runs from her traumatic past and the secrets she carries to survive.
In Michigan, Sarah’s childhood was defined by fear and silence. As a teenager, she saw a chance to escape and took it. Now, in 1999, she is an artist living on the rugged coast of Donegal, Ireland, where she is known as Saoirse (pronounced Sear-sha)—a name that sounds like the sea and means freedom in the language of her adopted country. And free is precisely how she is finally beginning to feel. Her partner and two beloved daughters are regular subjects of her paintings, and together they have made the safe home she always longed for. But Saoirse's secrets haunt her. No one must learn of the identity she has stolen in order to survive; they cannot know of the dangers that she crossed an ocean to escape.
When her artwork wins unexpected acclaim at a Dublin exhibition, the spotlight of fame threatens to unravel the careful lies that hold her world together. Journalists and admirers begin to ask questions about the mysterious artist from Donegal, and she fears the unwanted publicity will expose all that she has done.
Saoirse is an evocative, suspenseful exploration of the intimate relationship between art and life and the lies we tell ourselves in the name of reinvention.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Irish author Hurtubise's engrossing U.S. debut, artist Saoirse Byrne's newfound success proves to be a mixed blessing when the Irish Times publishes an article about her work that threatens to bring to light her closely guarded secrets. The chapters alternate from Saoirse's happy new life in 1999 Donegal with her partner, Daithí, to her troubled past in North America. Saoirse was born Sarah Roy in Canada and raised in the U.S., where her stepfather forces her to traffic drugs from their home in Michigan to Florida as a teenager. Pursued by the law and her fellow traffickers, she flees to Ireland in 1990, when she's 18. On the flight to Dublin, she's chatted up by seatmate Paul Byrne, who gives her a place to stay and whose family supports her art education. Paul turns out to be physically and sexually abusive, however, especially after Saoirse meets Daithí, an old schoolmate of Paul's, and Paul picks up on their mutual attraction. With a slow drip of information, the narrative reveals what Saoirse went through as a teen, why she had to escape to Ireland, the ways in which Paul abused and manipulated her, and how she sublimated those traumatic experiences into her paintings. Hurtubise places her memorable heroine at the center of a propulsive and twisty plot, and makes Saoirse's desire for freedom palpable on every page. It's a knockout.
