Review: "Trouble the Living" by Francesca McDonnell Capossela

Trouble the Living by Francesca McDonnell Capossela
Published September 2023 via Lake Union Publishing
★★★★

1997, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland: For Bríd, home and country are everything—but hers is a country divided. She is her mother's daughter, both determined to have a free and united Ireland at any cost. But she is not the apple of her mother's eye, and as the clock ticks forward they both say, and do, things that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

2016, Los Angeles County, California, United States: Life with her mother is all Bernie has ever known—her mother, who asks repeatedly for promises that Bernie will come home, and who wants Bernie to need no one else, and who sometimes stays in bed for days. Bernie knows nothing about her mother's life before her, and between Bríd's secrets and Bernie's occasional recklessness—and as the two timelines converge—things come to a head.

Passive myself, I'd been shaped by others until I became potent, frightening, with the potential for disaster. (loc. 675)

Unusually for a dual-timeline story, I was fully invested in both plots and storylines. I'm reluctant to give too many details about the plot, as I think it's better to let the story unfold without knowing all of the themes straight away, but I will say that there are heavy themes of family, mother-daughter relationships, history (sort of) repeating itself (but also not really), and independence/choice. Every time I read about the Troubles, too, I'm reminded of how little I really know about that time and place, and I appreciate the way the Troubles are woven into the fabric of Bríd's life in Ireland, neither the intense focus of the story nor pushed to the background.

I will say that this isn't going to be a book to everyone's tastes: there are some hot-button topics in here, and even with that aside, both Bríd and Bernie make decisions that are...influenced by the rashness of youth, let's say. But I'm less interested in what decisions characters make (although: also, on board with certain decisions Bernie makes later in the book) and more interested in how they make those decisions, and what happens in terms of character development as a result. I love that romance is only barely a blip in the book and that not everything can be tied up with a bow by the end.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.