Finding Mr Flood

by Ciara Geraghty

[Leah]

Ciara Geraghty’s third novel Finding My Flood, following on from her wildly successful first two novels Saving Grace and Becoming Scarlett, is a bit of a depature from her already mentioned previous two novels. I must admit, I still can’t decide if the departure is a good thing or a bad thing, because if I’m honest I loved Saving Grace. Saving Grace was original, it was warm, it was funny, and it also dealt with some really serious issues. It looked like Ciara Geraghty was to become Marian Keyes’ natural successor (not that Marian’s going anywhere, thankfully) but it seems that with Finding Mr Flood, Ciara is going in a different direction, and for the most part, it worked for me although I missed the charm of her first novel.

Finding Mr Flood is about the Flood family. Mrs Flood, Mr Flood, Dara Flood and Angel Flood. Mr Flood left the Flood family 13 days before Dara Flood came into the world, and never came back. Years later, Angel Flood is in desperate need of a new kidney, after the only one she has has stopped functioning. After finding – and then losing – a kidney, Angel falls into a deep depression and Dara makes a big decision: She’s going to find Mr Flood. She’s going to find him and she’s going to ask him to give Angel a kidney. Enlisting the help of PI Stanley Flinter, Dara sets out to find the man who is her father… It’s an interesting plot, and one that initially intrigued me. After finishing the novel, I still feel it was an interesting plot, and was for the main part well executed.

I think my main issue with the book is that despite its plot, it’s very slow moving. There’s a lot of time focused on Dara’s life as it is; her worrying for Angel, her work at the pound, it takes a long time for Dara to decide to go and find Mr Flood and although I can understand her hesitance, I can understand why she doesn’t want to leave Angel as Angel awaits a new kidney, if one is ever to come, but with a 550 page novel, it really needs to get off with a bang, it needs to spark into life. I’d have just liked for it to get going a bit quicker than it did, however it was still a book I enjoyed reading. At times I just wanted Dara to get on with it, to get on with the search, but I did also like reading about Dara’s family life which is massively different to that of most 20-somethings. She (and her family, and Stanley even) are all much more serious than you generally expect to find in a Chick Lit novel.

It’s hard to tell that Finding Mr Flood is by the same author as Saving Grace. They are vastly different, and most of what I think of Finding Mr Flood is in correlation to just how much Saving Grace blew me away. Finding Mr Flood was enjoyable, yep, but it was lacking the spark Saving Grace had. I would be very interested in learning why Geraghty went in this direction for her third novel, why there’s seemingly such a drastic change in writing style and in the serious tone of the novel compared to her previous works, when really she had enough individuality with those novels, it’s not as if either were tired or boring. So although I did enjoy Finding Mr Flood, I did also find it a bit slow at some parts and I did sometimes just want Dara to break free and go wild. I don’t think it was in her nature, but sometimes the dank depressing tone of the novel did get a bit much and although I understand it had to be there, I do think you can insert a bit of humour and laughter and light without offending anyone. I look forward to seeing what direction Geraghty goes in for her fourth novel, it’ll be interesting to watch if this new direction is the route she’s taking from here on in!