Tess Lohan appears to be a quiet child. But within lies a heart of fire. A fire that will propel her from her native Ireland into the hurly-burly of 1960s New York in a quest to find belonging. In this city she will face the twists and turns of a life graced with great beauty, but one forever floating close to hazard. Joyous and heart-breaking, Academy Street journeys through six decades and one incredible story.
My trouble with this book began with the blurb : "joyous", "heart-breaking", "incredible story". I'm still waiting for it. I read the book entirely, admired the writing style of the author and found it to be a very good prose for a debut novel - it was poetic sometimes, however I couldn't connect with any the characters.
Tess loses her mother, her sister, her aunt, her son, the man she loves, experiences longing but does mostly nothing about it : I found her passive and the many losses (well, over 60 years, one expects to lose people they love, but here they were concentrated in 179 pages !) she experienced felt like a sob story destined to make me feel sorry for her. I was told about how she felt, about how the others must be feeling, but I felt nothing myself. It should have been called "A life" but Maupassant went there before (and did much better).
Would I recommend it ? Oh well, it won an award, the Goodreads reviews are mostly enthusiastic, so go ahead, try it if you want ! But I'm really disappointed, I expected a luminous story and I was left dry. I gave it 3 stars because of the writing, anyhow.
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