"Asta wished someone would explain how her life had panned out this way, how she'd reached the grand old age of 33, acquired a flat, career, daughter, and debilitating Haribo habit without acquiring a significant other."
Asta Looney is a 33-year-old single mother living in Chelsea. She is an Irish ex-pat and the reasons for her moving away are not really nice. Her 16-year-old daughter Kitty is the reason she left home, sneaked out in the night and never looked back. A teen pregnancy was too much for the small, religious Irish village too take and Asta saw no other way than to start a new life in a new place.
Having struggled for years, she has made a life for herself. Her gorgeous daughter is well-mannered and a good kid, though her recent wish to gain independence is not sitting well with her mother. She is also asking about her father more and more - questions Asta simply cannot answer. Etienne was a teen crush - not quite love - a French student who passed through and with whom Asta simply wanted to experience sex with. She just never planned on him leaving a little souvenir behind.
"Stamping her numb feet in the porch, her face bathed in pink and blue and yellow by the giant Christmas-tree lights, Asta peered through the glass doors. St. Catherine's smelt of polish and people, so unlike the unloved, dusty churches of London weddings, buildings that were only woke up to serve as atmospheric 'lifestyle' backdrops."
She has a job as a PA now, working for Conan, an elegant, womanizing and disorganized journalist. Although Asta can see herself by his side, he isn't really showing any signs of being interested. He is also content having her as a human life-organized and doesn't do much to get her career in journalism started. That is, until a story appears that would be just perfect for her. Under a perfect storm of circumstances - her cousin Oona cannot come to see her and mentions some family problems, along with Conan giving her an opportunity to write a story about a miracle in her hometown, Asta swallows a bitter pill and goes back home with her daughter - the shameful secret that made her run away - back to Tobercree. And this trip would prove to be the hand that unravels the thread of family history.
The quaint town she left behind is still the same, only with more tourists coming round to see the miraculous weeping statue of St. Catherine. Ready to unravel the scam she is sure hides behind the miracle, Asta's plan is slowly unraveled by Father Rory - a young, handsome man that has no job being a priest, and by Jake - an Englishman who has bought and refurbished the village's Big House. He's handsome and charming, with a hint of danger that both keeps Asta away and keeps pulling her in. There are also her typical stern Irish mother, her austere sister Gerry and her husband, the local celebrity, radio-show host Martin Mayberry. Asta has never liked Martin, and at fist, you get the feeling that it's just because of his bland personality and huge ego. But past cannot stay in the past and soon the secrets and past pains are revealed, and Martin's true colors are revealed for all to see.
"The village had been given a facelift. Everything was new and white and sparkling clean. The postbox was a mysterious monolith; the streetlamps wore crisp white crowns."
When it comes to her personal life, Asta's hang-ups from her first foray into love carried on far into her adulthood, preventing her from having a meaningful relationship with a man, even though she craves partnership and closeness. She often mentions she is is messed up in her conversation with Angie, a friend and fellow single mom, but it is not clear what she means until the end of the book, when past hurts are revealed and suddenly, everything makes sense.
"Ireland was mythical, supernatural, a whitewashed world where strange things - like love and lust and crying statues - were everyday; London was normality and sanity."
I picked this book up because I wanted an easy Christmassy read. Alas, this turned out to be much deeper than that and I am glad, in a way. This isn't a festive book by any means. There is romance and it does happen around Christmastime, but there is so much pain and trauma that it took me a while to get through it. That's why this post is coming a bit later than I anticipated. Still, I have enjoyed the novel, and even though there are certain chick-lit cliches here, the characters are a bit more fleshed out, more real than one would anticipate in a book of this genre. That is why I can recommend it, but beware -- it's not all gingerbread cookies and mistletoe kisses.
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