Julia O'Faolain navigates childhood in the shadow of her extraordinary parents during Ireland's Civil War. Her mother crafts Irish folk tales while her father makes bombs as the IRA's Director of Publicity. When his first story collection lands him before an IRA court martial, Julia watches her brilliant father transform into one of Ireland's most celebrated writers and fierce critics of Church and State. She witnesses his affairs with Elizabeth Bowen and other women, betrayals that wound her family deeply. Julia moves through Ireland as an outsider, then carries this sense of displacement to France and Italy in the 1950s, later to America's turbulent West Coast in the 1960s. She encounters literary giants like Frank O'Connor and Patrick Kavanagh, mingles with Florence's expatriate society including Harold Acton and Violet Trefusis, and observes the strange mix of communist idealists and aristocratic rebels. Always watching from the margins, Julia discovers that being a trespasser in other people's lives becomes both her burden and her gift as a writer.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, outsider-perspective
Setting: America, France, Ireland, Italy
Period: 1950s, 1960s, Civil War
Paperback · Faber & Faber