Fallen by Lia Mills - a remarkable love story amidst the ruins of the First World War and the Easter. Rising Spring, 1915. Katie Crilly gets the news she dreaded: her beloved twin brother, Liam, has been killed on the Western Front. A year later, when her home city of Dublin is suddenly engulfed in violence, Katie finds herself torn by conflicting emotions. Taking refuge in the home of a friend, she meets Hubie Wilson, a friend of Liam's from the Front. There unfolds a remarkable encounter between two young people, both wounded and both trying to imagine a new life. Lia Mills has written a novel that can stand alongside the works of Sebastian Faulks, Pat Barker and Louisa Young. "Lia Mills writes superbly about the human heart. This is an historical story with an urgency that is completely modern: Fallen is shot through with the pleasure and the difficulty of being alive". (Anne Enright, winner of the Man Booker Prize). Lia Mills is the author of two previous novels and of a memoir, In Your Face. She lives in Dublin. "Tremendously passionate, vivid and humane...Mills has an exquisite eye for the telling image". (Irish Independent). "Absorbing...Mills is a fine storyteller".
(Sunday Times). "Vivid ...a careful study of how grief, oppression, violence and, above all, the imperative to follow orders can blight people's lives". (Irish Mail on Sunday). "Powerful...Katie is a brilliantly realised heroine ...humane and compelling". (Sunday Business Post).
Katie Crilly lost her twin brother to the first world war in 1915, living on Rutland Square (now Parnell Square) and trying to find a place for herself in the world. Her mother has forbidden further study but that's where she finds the most joy. She finds a research post with a woman who is doing research on the statues of Dublin; there she meets with an injured comrade of her brother's.
Then a year after she loses her brother to the war chaos breaks out in the 1916 rising. Living just beside Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) her family is thrown into chaos with the events.
Interesting read, the end left me wanting more.
In 2016 it's going to be the Two Cities One Book book for Dublin & Belfast .
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5 November, 2015:
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