A secret is a powerful thing. It can bond you with someone, but it can also fester – drain you of your life-force. The whodunit is predicated on a secret’s uncovering, which sets expectations high, making endings notoriously difficult to get right.
Beginnings, though, can be tricky too. We open here with the bodies of a couple getting pulled from a slurry pit. They belong to Ursula, a matriarch, imperious to the point of cruelty, and Jimmy, her peaceable farmer husband. Soon, gardaí question if this really was a terrible accident. Suspicion falls upon their son, Rob, who’d just had a blazing row with Ursula. Most of the narrative is from the perspective of Rob’s wife, Kate, as well as his fragile, traumatised sister, Christina, who harbours a family secret.
But, in the initial chapters, there are simply too many other characters – there’s Nellie; Sergeant Des Tuohy; a recollection of Rob’s dead brother, Mark; Jimmy’s brother, Kieran, and sister, Rita; not to mention Rita’s daughter, Julie. There’s too much exposition when the most pressing thing – the murder – should take centre stage. A drip-feed approach to character introduction would’ve been less taxing.
It’d be a shame if the overly busy opening deterred readers, because once McDonagh sets everything up, the narrative becomes engrossing. Her characters’ interiority is convincing, with relatable everyday struggles – dementia; who gets enduring power of attorney; navigating in-laws.
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McDonagh is also admirably unflinching in portraying the story’s nastier elements. Her depictions of mental health problems are clear-eyed and compassionate, exploring, via Christina, how a highly attuned sensitivity can be stigmatised as weakness. McDonagh’s extensive backstories occasionally bog the novel down, where it could’ve been tauter, but the characters’ veracity generally holds you.
The threads are mostly tied up satisfactorily. Some outcomes are telegraphed; others, not. The revelation of the killer strains credibility. But, beyond the conventions of genre, more home-grown subjects such as intergenerational trauma are handled sensitively and rendered well, with even the main antagonist’s behaviour becoming understandable, if not excusable. The family secret is well-trodden terrain, but gives the narrative a charge.
The ending of this accomplished debut begs further questions: although some secrets fester, might others be necessary to the very functioning of a family?
