All the Bad Apples

by Moira Fowley-Doyle

The stunning new novel about silenced female voices, family secrets and dangerous truths from the author of The Accident Season.

'Exquisite . . . This is a book to hold tightly to your chest' Irish Times

'Lyrical . . . Compelling' Guardian

'Beautiful, visceral . . . A primal scream' Louise O'Neill

'Uncompromising, raw, devastating' Publishers Weekly

'I am in absolute awe of it' Melinda Salisbury

On Deena's seventeenth birthday, the day she finally comes out to her family, her wild and mysterious sister Mandy is seen leaping from a cliff. The family is heartbroken, but not surprised. The women of the Rys family have always been troubled - 'bad apples', their father calls them - and Mandy is the baddest of them all.

But then Deena starts to receive the letters. Letters from Mandy, claiming that their family's blighted history is not just bad luck or bad decisions, but a curse, handed down to the Rys women through the generations.

Mandy has gone in search of the curse's roots, and now Deena must begin a desperate cross-country hunt for her sister, guided only by the letters that mysteriously appear in each new place. What Deena finds will heal their family's rotten past - or rip it apart forever.

• ISBN10: 0525552766
• ISBN13: 9780525552765
• Publish Date: 25 August 2020 (first published 1 August 2019)
• Publish Status: Cancelled
• Imprint: Penguin Group
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

Rating: 4.5 Stars

The Rhys women were cursed, and upon their 17th birthday, all the bad apples fell from the family tree.

“You’d know them a mile away. The ones who don’t look like the others, don’t act like the others. The ones who don’t conform, don’t follow the rules . . .The ones who dress differently, love differently, think differently.”

However, Mandy was determine to break the curse, and while tracing the family's history, she disappeared. They had a funeral, but Deena didn't believe her sister was dead, and when a letter, written in Mandy's hand arrived, Deena was determined to find her and bring her home.

This book was part mystery, part history, part family drama, and part coming of age. Fowley-Doyle had characters, who were struggling with their identities, while she also explored the dynamics at play in a very complicated family and the many factors that contributed to it. The star of this tale, though, was the Rhys family history, which included some of the most brutal injustices brought against women and children of Ireland.

Through fictional accounts, I learned about the oppression and abuse these women faced. The author approached all topics unflinchingly, from the murder of the lesbian lovers and the imprisonment of young unwed mothers in Magdalene Laundries to the abortion ban, which was only repealed last year. My heart ached for the Rhys women, but all of this was even more powerful and haunting, because I knew it was based on reality.

The delivery of the family history packed an even bigger punch, because Fowley-Doyle created an atmosphere with touches of magic, that just amplified the mood. She also did a great job of keeping me unbalanced, and I surprisingly enjoyed it. It all added to the tension that was building as Deena and her friends raced to "the end of the world" to find Mandy and get to the heart of this mystery.

It was a wild ride, which was horrifying at times, but ultimately gave way to some hope for the future by educating us about the past.

*ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

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[Jo]

Rep: Lesbian protagonist. Biracial (Black and white), bisexual secondary character. Lesbian secondary character. In the stories of ancestors, there's a bisexual character and a lesbian character, though no labels are used. Two f/f relationships, one just at the very beginning of a relationship.

Trigger and warnings under the spoiler, because they're long.

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features sex shaming, pregnancy, unwanted pregnancy, birth, abortion, pro-life manipulation - including a traumatic video of an abortion, animal cruelty, violent bullying, homophobia, homophobic murder, paeddophilia, forced inebriation by predator, rape/incest, rape culture, a Magdalene laundry - featuring abuse, illegal adoption, sold babies, neglect of children, and infant death, suicide, and an industrial school - featuring child abuse, both violent and sexual.

I am a massive fan of Moïra Fowley-Doyle and completely adore her previous novels, The Accident Season and Spellbook of the Lost and Found, so when I heard that she had written a third book earlier this year, I was ecstatic. All the Bad Apples is as enchanting and atmospheric as I was expecting, but what I wasn't expecting was for it to be such a hard hitting and powerful story. All the Bad Apples is absolutely incredible, and so, so important.

'"Do you think we carry them with us?" I asked. "All the stories of the past?"' (p224)

All the Bad Apples tells the story of Deena Rys, and the stories of her Ancestors. On the day of her 17th Birthday, her older sister, Mandy, tells her of the family curse. When they hit 17, the Rys women are struck by the family curse if they are rejected by their family. They know they've been struck by the curse when they hear a banshee scream, when they find a banshee's grey hair over the threshold to their house, and they wake up in the morning with scratch marks all over their body from the third banshee. Later that day, Mandy disappears. Her car is found abandoned at the top of a cliff, with her blood spotted on the rocks below. It's believed she has died by suicide, her body lost in the sea. Even though the family holds a funeral for her, Deena doesn't believe it, and is sure her sister will turn up in a couple of weeks. So she isn't surprised when she finds a letter to her from Mandy at her front gate. She's gone to break the curse now Deena is 17, and is telling Deena the story of her ancestors - the women who have been struck by the curse in the past - through letters that give directions to where Deena will find letters continuing the story, and to finding Mandy. Can Deena find Mandy, and help her break the curse before the final banshee makes herself known?

All the Bad Apples is magical realism like Fowley-Doyle's other novels. There is a curse, the banshees, a magical apple tree with healing powers. The writing is gorgeous, enchanting, and atmospheric, almost like a fairy tale. But while this is all present and deftly woven in throughout the story, there is a very different focus to All the Bad Apples: the oppression and abuse of women and children in Irish history. The wrongs that have been perpetuated over and over again, because of the import of religious doctrine, and how pervasive religious and social ideals were - and are. The idea of what is socially and morally acceptable behaviour for women. The idea of a woman's place, what constitutes a sin, and the shame and scandal brought on a family by the women, the children, who do not play by the rules, who do not conform, who deviate from social norms. But also the abuses and maltreatment at the hands of those in a place of authority within the Catholic church. It's the stories of the women and children who were silenced. The hidden, the concealed, the buried, for the sake of propriety. All the Bad Apples is a very hard hitting novel that looks at so many injustices committed throughout Irish history - some still happening today, or only ended in the recent past - and looks at each through the stories of Deena's ancestors.

My heart broke time and time again. While this story is fictional, the things that happen are not, and it's disgusting and deplorable. The focus is on unmarried mothers - of Fallen women - but there the story also discusses the treatment of queer people, and children, and my god, it's just horrific. What really struck me is that the stories in Mandy's letters are of ancestors, a family tree, we're seeing what came before time and time again, but we also see how fathers treat daughters because of their "sins", the same "sins" their own mothers "committed". You just would have thought being the result of a similar scandal, they'd have more sympathy and understanding, but no. And it's even harder to read and so much more heartbreaking when the pregnancy is the result of rape. The fairy tale feel and magical realism contrasts so well with the stories of Deena's ancestors, I feel it makes All the Bad Apples more effective than if it was a straight contemporary-historical mash-up.

I absolutely cannot stop thinking about this incredibly feminist novel. I have been talking to everyone I know about how amazing this book is, imploring them to read it. It's so powerful, and so important. It's an eye-opener to understand better what happened in Irish history, but it's also a slap in the face when you consider present day stories, and while things have changed, they've not changed anywhere near enough. Fowley-Doyle discusses in her Author's Note the various real life events that inspired this story, and her absolute rage, which you can feel throughout the novel. I just found it so hard hitting; my grandad was Irish, and it's very likely the events that happened in this book happened to people within my own family tree. And at the same time, I know that certain events in All the Bad Apples definitely happened in the other, English half of my family tree, not that many generations ago.

I was completely blown away by All the Bad Apples, and it's further cemented Fowley-Doyle as one of my very favourite authors. I'm not exaggerating when I say this book is my favourite read of the year so far. It's bloody incredible, and I just want everyone to read it. It's heartbreaking, and rage-inducing, but also empowering and hopeful, and it's going to stick with me for a very, very long time.

'"You tell your story and the story of your family. You speak your truth. You shatter the stigma. You hold your head up to the world and speak so that everyone else who was ever like you can recognize themselves. Can see that they aren't alone. Can see that the past will only keep repeating itself as long we're kept powerless by our silence."' (p329)