CULTURE CLUB
CAMBRIDGE EDITION Book Club Enjoy the last of the summer sunshine with a great read – this month’s picks include a Belfast coming-of-age story and baking-themed murder mystery
WORDS BY CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS
LAZY CITY
BY RACHEL CONNOLLY Stricken with grief after the sudden death of her close friend Kate, Erin has left London and returned to Belfast where she is temporarily working as an au pair, helping her employer Anne Marie carry on in the wake of uncovering her husband’s betrayal. Erin’s mother still lives a few streets away, but their tempestuous, abusive relationship means home is not a place of safety. Upon arriving back in Belfast, Erin attempted to live with her mother but it did not end well – the book opens early morning, where the two of them have bumped into each other for the first time since Erin’s departure. Adrift, Erin spends her days hungover and most nights drinking or taking drugs, blotting out life – either accompanied by her friend Declan, her ‘it’s complicated’ lover Mikey or Matt, an American who’s in town teaching while trying to write a novel. This book perfectly captures that unique combination of hopelessness and hopefulness that comes from being young, being knocked for six by an event and seeking refuge back in your hometown. It should be the place you feel most secure, yet there’s background radiation at work, crippling you from the inside out. The uneasy sense that somehow you’ve failed to launch,
is harder than it was. Belfast’s Catholic churches still bring Erin an odd feeling of peace, the rituals and familiarity soothing in the chaos – and she ducks in and out of them sporadically as the story progresses, tiny moments of cool clarity amid the chaos of her surroundings, where she turns over recent events in her mind, weighing up the aftermath of a friend’s death and gently stepping
smouldering with injustice at the way life has worked out, the uncertainty of how to get back on track, all the while surrounded by people you’ve known or known about since you were a child – yet now you’re adults and the world Smouldering with injustice at the way life has worked out towards a future – whatever shape that might take. Rachel Connolly writes exquisitely: stark yet detailed, devastating yet grimly funny, perfectly capturing the unblinking harshness of the damage that grief can wreck on a life. Fresh, knowing, harrowing and unforgettable, this is not to be missed.
HOMECOMING Belfast local Rachel Connolly’s coming- of-age novel captures the lethargy of a young adulthood that’s been taken off course by loss, seated in the city of her own upbringing
18 SEPTEMBER 2023 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
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