The “paper hearts” of Cecelia Ahern’s new novel are small origami crafted by Pip Sheridan, who lives and works in rural Ballybeg. To the great shame of her parents, Pip became pregnant at age 16. Since then, she has lived in the family home with her daughter Bella, now herself 16 years old, under intense maternal surveillance. These hearts, which contain short confessional poems that Pip writes and carefully hides, represent her lone means of free expression.
Paper Heart announces itself as romance fiction and tracks Pip’s ongoing affection for Bella’s father Jamie, who has returned home from Liverpool to support his father in a court case. It is also a powerful account of the collateral damage of an unplanned pregnancy in a shame-ridden society, one where the promise of protection goes awry and takes punishing forms.
Ahern effectively details how Pip accommodates the oppressive monitoring of her narcissistic mother, tolerates various instances of sexual harassment and endures the ubiquitous dust from the local quarry, which has infiltrated the homes, and lungs, of her family and neighbours. Pip begins to refuse these abuses when she opens up to more personal relationships, including one with a peripatetic astronomer named Io. The novel wisely depicts her discomfort in accepting help from others, even the more actualised Jamie. She intimately understands that any assistance, personal or professional, ultimately might be used to undermine or harm her.
This is yet another work of Irish contemporary fiction focused tightly on female interiority. It calls attention to the complex emotional life of a woman too easily neglected – the server who makes sandwiches at the local petrol station, the neighbour who rarely makes eye contact, the woman on a date with an aggressive rich guy.
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At its best, Paper Heart offers an immersive account of individuals trapped by harmful habits of thinking but eager to find new, more satisfying ways forward. Near the conclusion, Ahern introduces several highly dramatic plot devices that feel at odds with the novel as a whole. But throughout, she vividly conveys Pip’s suffocating distress, which enhances the relief of watching this character dig out of burdensome history in pursuit of her happy ever after.
