The book opens with one of the most horrific scenes imaginable. White is in the throes of labour while elsewhere, in another hospital bed, her father’s life hangs in the balance. This section, A Haunting, is about the 'agonising, drawn-out horror show’ of his slow decline and eventual death from early-onset Alzeimers. Dada is softer than we are. He loves the thing somehow. His memories sustain the love and the thing he sees once a month is tidied up by us, neatened for his consumption. Without it in his eyeline constantly, it is easier for him to recast this thing as a tragic ailing wife and mother. He doesn’t have to look at it every day. It doesn’t hover nearby at all times, ruining his life. During the early chapters, I found myself musing that there were parallels between this book and The Colony by Audrey Magee, with both set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland and featuring a resident artist character. I think they make good companion reads but do steel yourself for some seriously disturbing content.

Once Aoileann has worked out a plan, she decides that she is going to manipulate the situation so that she is able to leave the island with Rachel when she goes – Will she be able to adapt to mainland living, or is her mental health too badly damaged? And will Rachel live (or die) to regret her decision?As the story opens, Aoileann is approaching the age when she has been told she will have to assume primary care for her mother, particularly as her grandmother has a new job in a folk museum opened by those from the Mórthír, to attempt to bring some tourism to the island. Aoileann becomes determined to do something to prevent this becoming her life but also is determined to discover exactly what happened to her mother to make her this way, why the islanders view her as accursed, and why 'the bed-thing' has worn its fingers to bloody stumps of bone attempting to scratch messages into the floor. I'd like to remember this book through the 3 main "themes", I guess, that stood out to me, using a quote that encaptures each. Móraí works there on its opening. It has an artist-in-residence, Rachel, who arrives with her infant son. Aoileann meets her on the beach and finds a focus for her perverse understanding of love.

With bloodless, spidery hands, Islanders drew the frightened near-drowned from the shore and led them up to the island’s interior. At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her. Through our thin shared wall, I can hear the makings of my mother gurgle through her body just like the water in the walls of the house…Later chapters explore the challenges faced by women in a society that values the female body over the mind, and demands nothing less than perfection from both. White contributes some of her own uncomfortable experiences, from sexual assault to self-harm. A small and well-defined central cast of characters held sway over this story, with their dour and brooding persona and aura of impending doom. They were all pretty uncompelling, disturbing, loathsome individuals, and not one of them did I have any real empathy with, or sympathy for. Yes! They were definitely given a strong voice with which to tell their story, however it got to the stage where I simply couldn’t trust a single word which came out of any of their mouths! At best they were complex, volatile and unreliable, at their worst they were manipulative, duplicitous and malevolent. Every time I had the slightest urge to feel even slightly sorry for any one of them, within seconds they had said or done something else to have me seething and truly angry with them, all over again. A cast of ‘extras’ were alluded to, but thankfully didn’t appear in any important capacity, as I don’t think I could have stood the strain. Everything changes when Rachel, an artist and young mother, arrives to the island. Starved of attention and shunned by the islanders because of their superstitions, Aoileann finds a source of affection in the nurturing and jovial young woman.

It is when she is on the beach that she meets Rachel, an artist and single mother of a young baby that Aoileann finds herself immediately drawn to. Watching Rachel with her baby causes Aoileann to see the maternal connection that she has never had, the love that so many take for granted she has never experienced. She becomes fixated with Rachel and longs to be as important to her as her baby seems to be. One thing White says she drew on when writing were “deep-seated fears” surrounding motherhood and mental illness.Aoileann has never encountered a Mother or Mothering. There are references to her heartbreaking younger attempts at mother-daughter interaction with the "bed-thing", and how that connection was never found with Móraí either. Aoileann has grown up never witnessing closehand a Mother, or a woman's existence. She's taken in with Rachel, like sea-swimmers are with the bite of the ocean. You don’t have to be doing your needlepoint but parlaying it into an Etsy shop or something like that. I feel we don’t say enough that it’s very good to be very sh*t at your hobby … I’m in a skate group called the Huns of Anarchy and they’re amazing. Some of them are just so spectacular, dancing and doing all the moves and stuff. And I’m fairly happy with the level I’ve achieved. I don’t think I’ll ever be a better skater than I am now.” She’s also been learning to pole dance and roller skate, endeavours which are “massively good for slowing me down a bit, making me be more in the moment and trying not to think a million miles an hour.” Someone far more coherent than I could string these into a structured review, but for now, all I can say is: read it!