When Reading Matters listed the finalists in the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award, this book went on my list to read and it moved to the top of the list when it won the award. It tells the story of three hard-living housemates in Belfast just as they are turning thirty. It manages to be both funny and sad, as the women choose drug and alcohol-filled nights and messy love affairs over responsible behavior. Maggie, Harley, and Róise still have their post-college entry level jobs. By the end of the book we realize their behavior had spiraled further down over the past year after the sudden death of their fourth roommate, Lydia. Mourning her death in a car accident was more complicated because there had been a falling out just before the accident.
The house where they lived had always been ramshackle, but without Lydia there to keep after the landlord to fix problems, it became critically bad. When it crumbled around them, they must leave and find temporary housing independently. The state of the house mirrored the state of their own lives and its severe problem signaled the necessity for each of them to reassess their behavior.
I laughed at Harley’s solutions for her sleeping problems:
She struggles to fall asleep in silence and finds the television too distracting and music not distracting enough. After trying numerous audiobooks and radio channels and and guided meditation, she is now ninety episodes into the back catalog of a video game podcast hosted by three Australian comedians, which she finds oddly soothing in spite of, or perhaps because of not having any interest in video games, comedy, or Australians.
Funny as it is, that rang true for me. In the distant past TV worked for me, except when I was awakened by loud ads, Jane Austen books used to be ideal, then there was Paul Auster reading books of his, and now it’s Jeremy Irons reading Brideshead Revisited, but I take care never to hear the deathbed conversion scene near the end.
Several examples of words I rarely see even in Irish novels caught my eye:
There was a reference to a “céili,” a social gathering with Irish music and dance; patting a baby on its back so it will burp is “winding” it, and that Northern Irish term “peelers” referring to police was used. Then the name of the book is a term that is new to me, though apparently it’s in wide usage. It refers to seeking sexual attention in particular in a social media post.
Though there were times I found it difficult to keep all the characters straight, especially the men passing through, I found much I appreciated about this book.
Gráine O’Hare, Thirst Trap, Crown, 2025, 288 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Not available in the public library.