As You Were
As You Were by Elaine Feeney is one of our fiction recommendations for April. As You Were is Elaine Feeney’s fiction debut and is published by Harvill Secker, a part of the Penguin Random House group. Feeney has published three poetry collections, Where’s Katie? The Radio was Gospel, and Rise. Her work has appeared in Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, the Irish Times, Copper Nickel, Stonecutter Journal, and others.
I like to start all of our reviews in the same way by including the blurb. I think it is important to know how the author and publisher describe a book. The things I focus on in my review might not capture the book as a whole. Usually, a publisher will have spent time to make the blurb appealing while giving the important information people want when deciding to purchase a book or check it out from their local library. We are told of As You Were:
Sinéad Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret.
No one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie.
But she can’t go on like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future. Across the ward, Margaret Rose is running her chaotic family from her rose-gold Nokia. In the neighboring bed, Jane, rarely but piercingly lucid, is searching for a decent bra and for someone to listen. Sinéad needs them both.
Bold, tender, and irrepressible, As You Were is about intimate histories, institutional failures, the kindness of strangers, and the darkly present past of modern Ireland. It is about women’s stories and women’s struggles. It is about seizing the moment to be free.
As You Were shines in so many ways, but what I loved the most were the characters. When Sinead Hynes gets the news that she has terminal cancer, she makes the choice to not tell her partner or family. She is eventually hospitalized and continues to hide and deny her illness even to the other people on the ward with her. I liked that Sinead was an imperfect character. As we learn more about her through flashbacks to childhood and life before her illness we see that she was raised by a bullying father, has lost a child, and has been cruel and unfaithful to her partner. Sinead doesn’t fit the usual narrative of positioning an ill person as perfect and virtuous, finding inner peace and enlightenment within their struggle. I appreciated that Feeney wrote the characters with flaws but still provided enough of an arc that we feel invested.
The writing is descriptive, and it shows that Feeny is a poet, and I loved the vivid images. For example, Sinead describes driving with her dad near the docks in Galway like this: “He’d chase off mercilessly at high speed, in tight situations, around the water’s edge, now with their new sprays of graffiti colors, bright bold colors, silver signage, fancy dentists, purples and royal blues with yellow egg-yolk splashes.” There are poetic elements throughout the book, and I really enjoyed the moments when Feeney would break into a more abstract way of writing. There is a moment when she writes, “in/out/in/out/in/out/in/out/in/out/in/out/in” in a paragraph describing the long and boring days in the ward.
Something that I found really interesting in As You Were is that the majority of the action happens in one room. The ward has five patients in close quarters, but we rarely leave the room in the parts of the book set in the present time. The characters are built through their dialogue with each other, memory, or longer monologues. It gives me the feeling of watching a play with one set. The ward is an equalizer. Whatever the socio-economic background of the characters they are all stuck in the same place with the same standards of care.
At times the physical space of the ward feels like an additional character. The windows shutter and bang in the wind, there is a draft, the water doesn’t drain well in the shower. All of these elements remind the reader that these characters are confined to this space that they have very little control over. It speaks to the strength of the writing that this one setting works well.
While the topic of illness and pain is present, there is also a lot of humor, especially within the dialogue and interactions with the patients and staff on the hospital ward. The story also discusses the impact of funding cuts on healthcare services and shows us the negative impacts of austerity measures in a day-to-day setting. Feeney also includes moments that highlight Ireland’s history of oppression against women who became pregnant outside of marriage and the lasting impact of the mother and baby homes, and the modern-day challenges and barriers to accessing abortion care.
This book is incredible because it includes such a full narrative and snapshot of Irish life while being set in one room. The characters are refreshing and the story is compelling. I think if you enjoy some dark comedy you would really enjoy As You Were. If you have read this book, I would love to know what you think!
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