Catherine Airey’s debut novel, Confessions, is an ambitious and meticulously crafted exploration of family secrets spanning three generations of women bound by blood, betrayal, and shared histories. Set between rural Ireland and New York City, Airey weaves a complex narrative that feels simultaneously intimate and expansive, with a structure as intricate as the relationships it depicts.
The novel unfolds through multiple perspectives across different time periods, centered around a mysteriously significant house in Burtonport, County Donegal. Airey introduces us to Cora Brady in New York, 2001, as she grapples with the aftermath of losing her father in the 9/11 attacks; Róisín and Máire Dooley, sisters navigating their complex relationship in 1970s Ireland; and Lyca Brady, Cora’s teenage daughter in 2018, uncovering long-buried family secrets that connect these seemingly disparate stories.
What immediately strikes the reader is Airey’s bold narrative structure that resembles the “Choose Your Own Adventure” format referenced throughout the novel. This is no coincidence, as one of the central plot devices involves a text-based video game called “Scream School,” created by Róisín, which mirrors the house where much of the story takes place. The novel itself becomes a literary version of this game, with chapter headings that echo game instructions and transitions that blur the line between reality and fiction.
Character Depth and Emotional Resonance
Airey excels at creating characters with psychological depth and emotional complexity. Each woman in this multi-generational saga feels authentic in her desires, flaws, and contradictions. The fraught relationship between sisters Róisín and Máire forms the emotional core of the novel—their dynamic capturing the volatile mixture of love, jealousy, and protective instinct that often characterizes sibling relationships.
Máire is particularly fascinating—a volatile artist whose brilliance is matched only by her instability. Her journey from an isolated Irish village to New York’s art scene is rendered with nuance and empathy, even as we witness her spiral into self-destruction. Róisín, by contrast, emerges as the steady, reliable sister who stays behind, creating a life from the fragments left by those who departed.
In Cora and Lyca’s relationship, Airey explores the tension between a mother engaged with the wider world through activism and a daughter struggling to define herself outside her mother’s shadow. Lyca’s journey of discovery becomes our own as she pieces together her family history through diaries, letters, and video games discovered in the family home’s mysterious attic.
Themes of Identity, Memory, and Choice
The novel delves deep into how identity is shaped by the stories we tell ourselves and the secrets we keep. Characters grapple with questions that resonate far beyond their specific circumstances: How much of our identity is inherited versus chosen? Can we ever truly escape our past? What constitutes family—blood relations or those who sustain us through difficult times?
Memory plays a crucial role throughout, particularly in how traumatic experiences are processed, suppressed, or transformed through storytelling. Airey skillfully depicts the unreliability of memory and the ways people rewrite their own histories as a survival mechanism. In a particularly poignant thread, we witness how Róisín’s diaries become a space where she can reimagine her relationship with her sister, creating alternative versions of their shared past.
The concept of choice—and its consequences—runs through every narrative strand. From Máire’s fateful decision to leave Ireland to Lyca’s moral dilemma about sharing discovered letters, characters constantly face moments where their choices will irrevocably alter the course of multiple lives. The novel’s structure brilliantly reinforces this theme through its game-like chapter transitions that ask: A or B?
Setting and Historical Context
Airey demonstrates remarkable versatility in her evocation of different historical periods and settings. Her portrayal of post-9/11 New York captures the city’s wounded atmosphere with vivid specificity—streets papered with missing-person posters, the strange mixture of solidarity and isolation, and the distinctive feeling of a metropolis holding its breath.
The 1970s Burtonport scenes are equally convincing, depicting rural Ireland at a time of social transition, with the arrival of the counterculture “Screamers” commune disrupting village life. Later sections touching on Ireland’s abortion referendum in 2018 provide contemporary relevance while connecting to the novel’s exploration of women’s bodily autonomy across generations.
The house itself emerges as perhaps the most significant “character” in the novel—a space that holds memories, secrets, and multiple identities across decades. From boarding school to commune to abortion clinic to family home, its transformations parallel the evolving relationships between the women who inhabit it.
Structural Innovation with Occasional Missteps
Airey’s ambitious narrative structure—shifting between time periods, perspectives, and even formats that include letters, diary entries, and game instructions—is largely successful, creating a reading experience that mirrors Lyca’s detective work in piecing together her family history.
However, this complexity occasionally comes at the cost of clarity. In particular, the middle sections involving Scarlett Marten and the “Victorian school experience” front for an abortion clinic require careful attention from readers to fully grasp. Some narrative threads, particularly those involving secondary characters like Michael, feel somewhat underdeveloped compared to the richly realized female protagonists.
The novel’s pacing is also somewhat uneven—the first third establishing the multiple storylines moves more slowly than the increasingly urgent final chapters where revelations stack upon revelations. Patient readers will be rewarded, however, as seemingly disparate elements coalesce into a satisfying whole.
Prose Style and Voice
Airey demonstrates remarkable versatility in her prose, adapting her style to suit each character and time period. The sections narrated by teenage Lyca capture contemporary adolescent perspective with authenticity, while Róisín’s diary entries reflect a more introspective, lyrical sensibility.
Particularly impressive is Airey’s handling of Cora’s sections set in 2001, which capture the disassociated, fractured consciousness of a young woman experiencing trauma and substance abuse. Consider this passage describing Cora witnessing the attacks:
“When the South Tower collapsed I thought I must finally be hallucinating. The cloud of dust and debris was alive, breathing, colour streaming from what I could see of the North Tower like a rainbow, then all the colours turning red, the red spreading, filling up the sky, closing in on me.”
This ability to subtly shift register between characters without losing the novel’s overall cohesion is one of Airey’s greatest strengths.
Final Assessment
Confessions by Catherine Airey is an impressively accomplished debut that balances structural complexity with emotional authenticity. In exploring how family secrets reverberate through generations, Airey has created a narrative that is both intellectually engaging and emotionally affecting.
The novel is not without flaws—some narrative threads could have been more fully developed, and the complex structure occasionally sacrifices clarity. However, these minor issues are overshadowed by the novel’s ambition, depth, and heart.
Strengths:
- Intricate, innovative narrative structure
- Well-developed, psychologically complex female characters
- Evocative depiction of different historical periods
- Thoughtful exploration of themes like memory, identity, and choice
- Versatile prose style adapted to different characters and time periods
Weaknesses:
- Occasional sacrifice of clarity for complexity
- Some narrative threads feel underdeveloped
- Uneven pacing, particularly in the middle sections
- Secondary male characters less fully realized than female protagonists
For readers who appreciate novels that demand active engagement, Confessions by Catherine Airey offers rich rewards. Comparisons to Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow are apt, as Airey shares their ability to create immersive fictional worlds that comment on the transformative power of art. Fans of Anne Enright and Maggie O’Farrell will also find much to appreciate in Airey’s nuanced exploration of family dynamics and Irish history.
As Confessions is Catherine Airey’s debut novel, it will be fascinating to see how her distinctive voice evolves in future works. If this ambitious first effort is any indication, she is a significant new talent with the potential to create equally compelling narratives that blur the boundaries between literary and genre fiction while maintaining emotional authenticity at their core.
In an era where readers increasingly seek both intellectual stimulation and emotional resonance from fiction, Confessions by Catherine Airey delivers both in abundance. It’s a novel that lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned, inviting reflection on the stories we tell, the secrets we keep, and the choices that define not just our own lives but those of generations to come.