Book Review – Eve of Kilcargin by Susan M. Gaffney
First published, 2023
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
1919 and Clara, an English war widow, is invited to go and stay with her wealthy aunt in Ireland. This is partly to help Clara through her grief, and partly to help her younger cousin, Eve, by giving her a stabilising adult influence beyond the parents who are bound to be too stuffy to understand a young woman’s difficulties. However, when Clara arrives in the Irish countryside, she finds that all is not as advertised. Her uncle is quite profoundly ill and is treated as a burden by near everyone in his household, her aunt still thinks herself fancy but the house is almost falling down, and her cousin is uninhibited, flighty and rather more attractive than Clara is really prepared to deal with.
What begins as an admiration laced with surprise, quickly becomes a questioning infatuation, but it can be hard to read the intentions of a free-spirited person. However, step by step, the cousins discover they have more in common that their family. Set at the beginning of the twentieth century─a tumultuous time in Ireland and, in fact, the world─the setting and the political history echoed the story in a very powerful way.
One fascinating fact about this book is that it was a lost novel, written by a young New Zealand woman and misplaced for some seventy years until the story was completed by her surviving great niece. A really important bit of New Zealand and queer literature. I’m so pleased I’ve read it.
Petrina Binney - Author 