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A review by sarahtribble
Nothing But Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon
5.0
“[...] just like I was a different person now to the happy husband who was once married to Mary Rose, some new, half-living creature that had climbed out of the husk of that husband, someone I hardly even recognised as myself.”
“I was neither dead nor alive, but doomed to wander a desolate space between the two.”
2021 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist
Buddy read with Hannah and Charlie!
What a wonderful little book. Kathleen MacMahon has written a gorgeous, ponderous story about life after the death of a loved one, and how grief never really goes away; it just becomes more manageable over time. Grief follows you, haunts you, hovers over you at all times, a dark cloud over an otherwise sunny day. Oftentimes, it feels inescapable, incurable; when you are grieving, it is easy to convince yourself that you will never be happy again. But life, fickle little life, has a way of filling the holes that tragedy leaves behind, and this book captures that lifecycle in quiet, intimate detail. Although I'm not grieving anything quite as serious as a death, I am currently grieving something personal and painful, and this book made me feel as if my pain had been plagiarised and reworded better than I could ever hope to articulate it. It's quiet, contemplative, and hesitantly hopeful, and I would have loved to see it on the shortlist.
“I was neither dead nor alive, but doomed to wander a desolate space between the two.”
2021 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist
Buddy read with Hannah and Charlie!
What a wonderful little book. Kathleen MacMahon has written a gorgeous, ponderous story about life after the death of a loved one, and how grief never really goes away; it just becomes more manageable over time. Grief follows you, haunts you, hovers over you at all times, a dark cloud over an otherwise sunny day. Oftentimes, it feels inescapable, incurable; when you are grieving, it is easy to convince yourself that you will never be happy again. But life, fickle little life, has a way of filling the holes that tragedy leaves behind, and this book captures that lifecycle in quiet, intimate detail. Although I'm not grieving anything quite as serious as a death, I am currently grieving something personal and painful, and this book made me feel as if my pain had been plagiarised and reworded better than I could ever hope to articulate it. It's quiet, contemplative, and hesitantly hopeful, and I would have loved to see it on the shortlist.