Bridgman reviewed Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Review of 'Trespasses' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I'm old enough to remember the era during which [a:Louise Kennedy|513351|Louise Kennedy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1678816563p2/513351.jpg]'s debut novel took place, the Troubles, which was the time from the late 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 in Northern Ireland during which 3,500 people were killed—over half of them civilians—as factions of Ireland fought to get the British out of Ireland.
The inside flap makes it sound like [b:Trespasses|60417483|Trespasses|Louise Kennedy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1644884868l/60417483.SY75.jpg|94106881] belongs on the romance shelf: "In Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a young woman is caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion." Not to disparage romantic fiction, but it's a lot smarter than most of those books and thematically doesn't have the same aims.
Trespasses is at times depressing, sexy, tender, and heart wrenching as well as informative, not in an academic way but one in which you can feel how it would be to live in a country …
I'm old enough to remember the era during which [a:Louise Kennedy|513351|Louise Kennedy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1678816563p2/513351.jpg]'s debut novel took place, the Troubles, which was the time from the late 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 in Northern Ireland during which 3,500 people were killed—over half of them civilians—as factions of Ireland fought to get the British out of Ireland.
The inside flap makes it sound like [b:Trespasses|60417483|Trespasses|Louise Kennedy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1644884868l/60417483.SY75.jpg|94106881] belongs on the romance shelf: "In Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a young woman is caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion." Not to disparage romantic fiction, but it's a lot smarter than most of those books and thematically doesn't have the same aims.
Trespasses is at times depressing, sexy, tender, and heart wrenching as well as informative, not in an academic way but one in which you can feel how it would be to live in a country occupied by a foreign army. The central character, Cushla, is a twenty-four-year-old woman. There's a deceased father, an alcoholic mother, a bullied child, a hostile teen, and a middle-age sophisticate. A novel taking place today instead of 1975 wouldn't be considered diverse unless it had people of a variety of racial backgrounds and sexual identities, but considering this is set in a small town outside of Belfast, the variety of characters is great.
He began to sing "The Town I Loved so Well," a song about how the Troubles had changed Derry. Everyone joined in; everyone but Cushla. As she listened, it struck her hard what an outsider she had become. In school and in college she had been surrounded by Catholic girls like her with whom she had swapped illicit copies of Edna O'Brien books and secrets. Cushla was the only one who lived outside Belfast, albeit just a few miles away. As things in the city worsened, she had begun to lose touch with them, and on the rare occasions they met now, they treated her like a tourist. She felt like one here, watching how easy the others were in themselves and with each other.
