Reviews

A fascinating, engrossing story about dark pasts, the stories we tell and the things we hide - as individuals, as families, as communities, as nations.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature follows Charlotte (Charlie) Regan, a queer woman filmmaker in her late twenties who is dealing not only with one of her parents being terminally ill, but all the ups and downs (mostly downs in her case) of being in a creative industry, as well as jealousy and sadness that her best friend Laura, who made her last film with her, is progressing far more with her career than Charlie is. Charlie and Laura's film is about Charlie's father, who is dying, and a tragedy that happened on the Irish island when he was a child in the 1960s, of which he was the only survivor. It hasn't done very well and so Charlie supplements her meagre income with online porn, while high-flying Laura is set to move to LA. The beginning of the story is very gritty and depressing...so much so I almost stopped reading. I'm glad I didn't!

Charlie gets word that her and Laura's film will be shown at a film festival in Cork. Having had zero interest in the film to date, she and Laura decide they have to be there for its premiere - to close this chapter of their lives, if nothing else.

Charlie's father has never returned to Ireland since he left, and she has never been. It's not quite the homecoming she expected! What ensues is the uncovering of the truth about her family's past - which is far more horrifying than Charlie realised. Without giving too much away, the truth she discovers is connected to controversial and extremely dark aspects of Irish history, particularly the systematic abuse of women and children by the Catholic Church. Charlie grapples not only with her family's past but with her own present - what it means to be English with Irish parents, how she feels both at home and like an outsider in her father's birthplace. This is explored further by O'Donoghue in how she juxtaposes Ireland's reputation as a welcoming and friendly nation alongside its violent history.

[i]"The story was a changeling that morphed every time you tried to catch it in your hands. How could it be real? It was the sort of thing that you could believe about a concentration camp in the Second World War. But Ireland? A place where so many of our parents and grandparents were from? Where Saoirse Ronan was from? A country that had Topshop and Nesquik and chemotherapy and gay marriage?"[/i]

I really enjoyed the mystery at the heart of the novel - the more Charlie discovers, the more she is forced to consider why her father told the story in the way he did and why the villagers are so resistant to people digging around in the community's past. The novel is very much about the narratives we create in the name of self-preservation. Charlie learns that just because you discover a secret doesn't mean you are then entitled to tell about it. The truth can come later - and sometimes that's for the best.

Compelling and funny, with complicated characters and difficult themes, I was very impressed by this novel. I look forward to reading what Caroline O'Donoghue writes next!

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.