And Carey's Job Well Done

"In the end he did nothing. Because he knew he could never have what he wanted: his home as well as his family. Because he looked at the two women of his life and saw they were not his to keep. In the end he returned to the only woman he had ever understood: Inis Murúch, the Island of the Mermaids. Where he set his table, each evening, for a family of three."


40-year-old Lisa Carey's first novel was first intended as "her thesis


for her MFA at Vermont College". I saw it near the shoe center (of all places) of a mall. I didn't expect it to be so emotionally heavy. In fact, judging from the title, I thought the book had a lot to do with mermaids. Because I'm a fan of fantasy books, and because the cover and the title were inviting, I bought the book. Little did I know that Mermaids Singing was to be one of my personal favorites.

The novel revolves around three main characters, who all get their own chances of speaking directly to the reader. This is one of the reasons why I like Carey's debut novel. There were shifting narrators. There's Clíona, the grandmother who has lived a life of bad timings; a third person POV for the late Grace, who simply loves everything that would cause her mother pain; and Gráinne, the granddaughter who is content to live with a mother who 'comes from nowhere'. Aside from that, there were also interesting time jumps. One minute you're in the past, meeting Grace's first love, and then you're in Boston, witnessing how Clíona tries to reach out to her distant daughter, and the next you're in the present, battling together with Gráinne as she waits for a father she didn't know until then she had.

Born in Inis Murúch, Ireland, Clíona sets off to a land far from home and returns only after she is a single mother who has Grace as a rebellious daughter. Feeling so alone in Boston, so far away from the island she loves, and with Grace treating her like a despicable monster, Clíona decides to marry an Irishman; he, needing of a mother for his many children, and she, needing someone to finance her and Grace back to Inis Murúch. Grace is defiant and stubborn to the highest degree, and she is more than determined to drag her mother to the hell she created for herself. But all changes when Seamus enters Grace's life and gives her a daughter. Clíona, happy about the turn of events, thinks that finally the sense of family would magnet Grace to stay in Inis Murúch. But perhaps because of her hatred towards her mother, or her desperate resolve to escape, or both, she leaves Seamus and brings little Gráinne with her. The two of them live their lives in Boston, content with the company of each other and, occasionally, of men Grace brings home. Gráinne is never told about her roots, including a father she thought never cared enough to follow after them. Things go on like this until Grace finds out that she has cancer, and after her death, Clíona comes back for Gráinne. As the latter knows about the existence of a father, she also discovers more about her mother, her extended family, and herself in return.

There's a lot more to the story, and I leave the rest for you to unfold because I don't want to spoil them for you. All in all, Lisa Carey's first novel proves to us why she's one of them authors we should stay tuned to.

"In a sensual story of first loves, fatal decisions and alienation, Carey skillfully infuses her heroines with individual generational traits while lending them the same dreams-of mermaids and the ancient pirate queen after whom both daughters are named . . . an absorbing story. "

—Publishers Weekly