Scenes of a Graphic Nature
Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O’Donoghue is one of our fiction recommendations for November and is available for purchase on the Seaside Books online shop. Caroline O'Donoghue is a journalist and author. She has published two adult novels, Promising Young Women and Scenes of a Graphic Nature, and is currently working on a collection of personal essays exploring her experiences of feminism and witchcraft. She has a regular column in The Irish Examiner, and has written for The Irish Independent, Glamour, Buzzfeed, and Vice, among others. Caroline also hosts Sentimental Garbage, a podcast in which she reviews commercial women's fiction titles with other authors. She was born in Cork but currently lives in London with her partner and a terrier with chronic eye problems..
As I always say, when writing about a book I think it is helpful to include the blurb as this is what folks might first read if they were picking this book up online or at one of our pop-ups. We are told:
Charlie Regan’s life isn’t going forward, so she’s decided to go back.
After a tough few years floundering around the British film industry, experimenting with amateur pornography and watching her father's health rapidly decline, Charlie and her best friend Laura journey to her ancestral home of Clipim, an island off the west coast of Ireland.
She knows this could be the last chance to connect with her dad's history before she loses him. But when the girls arrive, Charlie begins to question both her difficult relationship with Laura and her father's childhood stories. Before long, she's embroiled in a devastating conspiracy that's been sixty years in the making .
. . and it's up to her to reveal the truth.
Charli is an amateur filmmaker struggling to find her footing in life and in her career. Her father has cancer and Charli’s relationship with her mother is strained as they both struggle to adjust to her father’s illness. Charli’s biggest achievement was making a film based on her father’s life. He was the sole survivor of a terrible tragedy in childhood on his home island of Clipim off the east coast of Ireland. Charlie travels to Ireland with her best friend Laura to attend a film festival where she is informed by an attendee that her film might not be entirely factual. Charlie and Laura travel to Clipim to investigate and find out that grief and secrets run deep.
I love the humor in this book and Charlie’s inner monologues. She catastrophizes in a really relatable way and is always imagining the worst possible scenario for any given situation. Charlie is not always likable. We see her blaming other people for her problems and being impulsive. She is rude at times and insecure and selfish but also compassionate and brave. I could relate to her messiness so much, and it makes the story more engaging to know we have a complex narrator viewing the situations through a skewed lens.
As Charlie gets closer to finding the truth of what happened in Clipim, we start to see the cracks in her friendship with Laura. Laura has gone on to have a successful career and Charli feels left behind. This feeling that everyone is reaching their goals before you is one that I can really relate to. I became a single parent at a young age and watched my peers finish school and start their careers while I was still trying to figure out how to juggle life with a baby. It was rough, but I learned to accept that everyone’s journey has a different pace. Charli is processing this throughout the book in a way that I felt was relatable.
My mom is Irish and I am an Irish citizen but growing up between here and the US made defining my Irishness less straightforward. Charlie struggled to identify with a place she has never been but feels a deep connection to through her father. I spent a lot of time here as a child but I always had an American accent and didn’t understand basic things about life here which made me feel like I didn’t belong. As I’ve gotten older I understand this in a more nuanced way. I really enjoyed the discussion of identity and heritage in this book.
The book is also an interesting commentary on Irish tourism, especially for people who have Irish ancestry. Charlie wonders after an evening spent in the pub, “Was it all an illusion? Is this simply what Ireland does? Casts a spell of familiarity over you, distracts you with smiles and fiddle music, while simultaneously choke-slamming its skeletons back into the closet?” Later we learn that the traditional music and storytelling around the pub fire are mostly put on for the tourists and the locals couldn’t be bothered. It reminded me of this really interesting article I read a while back that discussed the way that immigrants and refugees are treated in Ireland and the existing system of direct provision. There are even inequities in how Irish emigrants returning to the country are able to access social programs and support. It was refreshing to see the Oz-behind-the-curtain nature of Irish tourism discussed in this book.
Since I’ve been traveling so much recently, I listened to part of this book on audiobook. As a word of caution, the narration is pretty bad. All of the accents used for the characters were so silly and off that it really took me out of the story and was distracting.
Overall I really enjoyed this book. It was funny and relatable and had elements of a thriller. The characters are complex and the dialogue is fast-paced. The story is unique and if you read it, I would love to know what you think.
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