The Living

by Lean Cullinan

Recently graduated and nursing a wounded heart, Cate Houlihan is quickly learning about the realities of adult life - shaky career paths, broken relationships and overbearing parents. Determined not to repeat past mistakes, Cate throws herself into choir practice and her new job as an editorial assistant in a small and eccentric Dublin publishing house. When romance blossoms with the choir's newest member, Matthew Taylor, it seems as if things might be starting to go Cate's way. Newly arrived from England, Matthew is charming, handsome and a talented tenor. Cate is smitten.

So when her work brings her into contact with the recent Republican past, Cate dismisses as paranoia her sense that she is being followed - until she comes home one evening to find someone has been in her flat. And that they haven't stolen a thing. As her relations with Matthew begin to blow hot and cold, and her family try and fail to put on a united front when something is obviously wrong, Cate senses that she is once again misreading situations. As the tension escalates Cate realises that maybe she's not as far off the mark as she might have hoped: the past is not as distant as she'd believed, with danger much closer to home than she could ever imagine.

• ISBN10: 1782391665
• ISBN13: 9781782391661
• Publish Date: 5 June 2014
• Publish Status: Cancelled
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Atlantic Books
• Edition: Main
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

Probably more 3.5 stars than 3 but not quite a 4 star read.

The story is fairly predictable, not badly done and the pacing is a little off for me it occasionally felt a little rushed and then afterwards felt a little too slow. I didn't feel I really got to know the characters in any concrete way but on the other hand I flew through the read, so it did keep my attention as I was reading through.

Cate Houlihan has recently graduated from Trinity and has drifted into a job in publishing. Not what she planned for her life, but she really doesn't have an anchor or plan and this was an opportunity that offered her a chance to strike out for a life of her own. Home life is comforting but a shackle, something that she could slip into but she wants to try for something else in her life. She's in a choir, she has a job, she has a home, because of her uncle. When Matthew Taylor comes into her life she finds herself interested, having to get over the fact that he's English and her family have republican ties makes the relationship a bit fraught. When he shows interest in a book being edited by her live, love and all sorts of messes become entwined and Cate finds out that some secrets will come out no matter how much the holders try to bury them.

Interesting, quite readable and I found it satisfying.

In the interests of full disclosure, I know the author, this didn't colour my review. The petty review by John Boyne in the Irish Times pushed this one up my shelf and didn't reflect my experience of the book.