This is a random dust-gathering selection from my TBR pile that was published some twelve years ago. I was a fan of Santa Montefiore’s earliest novels but for some forgotten reason – perhaps one of her later novels was a disappointment - I moved my attention elsewhere. Being set in that beautiful part of Ireland that is Connemara is why I probably picked it up in the first place.
 
Ellen is thirty-three, lives and works in London, but is still very much under the control of her mother Lady Anthony Trawton (Maddie), who is planning Ellen’s upcoming society wedding to toff, William.

​Maddie is delighted that the last of her three daughters is finally going to tie the knot and make a successful marriage, but Ellen rebels. She doesn’t really want to marry William and has never felt as if she fitted into the manicured, controlling life of her parents and has little in common with her sisters. Without telling anyone where she is going, she runs away to her aunt Peg in rural Connemara. There, she discovers her large Irish family of whom her mother never spoke. Although welcomed with open arms, she has a major mystery to solve. Why did Maddie reject her family?
 
And then there’s the burned-out lighthouse that Ellen can see from her bedroom window. Another mystery that is bound up with a man her relatives want her to stay well away from: the dark, brooding Heathcliff-like figure of Conor whose wife died at the lighthouse in tragic circumstances. But, of course, Ellen meets and falls head over heels in love with him.
 
What makes this tale different from similar romantic plots, is that one of the narrators is Connor’s deceased wife, Caitlin, who is wandering in limbo, plotting and determined to keep Conor to herself even though she’s a spirit.
 
It would be easy to dismiss this novel as romantic slush and give it one star. There is Ellen’s naivety in working out the pretty obvious reason why Maddie left that most readers will spot early on. For someone in her thirties, she displays immaturity in dealing with her autocratic mother and there are dubious aspects in her instant I’ll-love-you-forever relationship with the unknown Connor. Plus, lots of other cliches in the narrative - every Irish man is “handsome” and naturally the local pub is called Pot of Gold.  The ghostly Caitlin can be unsettling, even creepy, with this unseen entity spying on you on the beach, in the garden or kitchen, and even following the participants into the bedroom.
 
On the other hand, there are charming aspects to the novel that must lift it above a petty single star. The Irish atmosphere and countryside are well represented. The characters are likeable. Ellen’s newly discovered family display generosity and warmth. Peg’s kind heart and eclectic collection of animals make her especially appealing. And there’s her canny neighbour Oswald’s perceptiveness in matters of the heart. Also, the sad musician Dylan who pines for his lost Maddie and the priest who makes sloe gin and knows everyone’s secrets. Surprisingly, even Caitlin’s quandary can offer glimpses of might await on the other side for those who are undecided about such things.

Three stars


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Some years ago, I read “Scrublands”, the author’s break-out novel that was also made into a TV mini-series (much of it filmed in my next street and other locations in the town where I live) so I am already familiar with the first adventure of the journalist, Martin Scarsden, and his love interest, Mandalay (Mandy) Blonde. This novel is their second outing.
 
Martin and Mandy are hoping to make a new life for themselves in the coastal town of Port Silver, but things go terribly wrong from the day Martin arrives to join Mandy. He literally stumbles over a dead body in the entrance to Mandy’s rented townhouse and finds her sitting in shock with blood on her hands.
 
From then on, it is almost non-stop action with multiple threads apart from the initial murder. Martin must fight to prove that neither he nor Mandy had anything to do with the death. In the process, he discovers there is considerable rivalry and competition over plans to develop the town; suspicious goings-on in the hippie-style Hummingbird Beach resort run by a former surfing champion and an Indian guru; there are a raft of poorer individuals who live in the run-down part of town and have axes to grind against the wealthier types who live on Nobb Hill overlooking the ocean. All this is further complicated by the fact Port Silver is where Martin grew up and he has difficulty facing numerous demons from the past. Even the supposed good guys are up to something dodgy on the side.
 
Although at times an exhilarating thriller, the pulse of the narrative is slowed by excessive description and flashbacks. The complications and coincidental relationships are overcooked and, at close to 600 pages, the novel could have been tightened up considerably.
 
Still, it is a reasonable way to spend a chilly weekend indoors or summer reading at the beach, although I felt a bit exhausted by the end and the resolution of the initial murder seemed abrupt and an anti-climax compared to the secondary disastrous tragedy of what happens on Hummingbird Beach.
 
This author notably uses unusual names for many of his male characters – Tyson St Clair, Amory Ashton, Doug Thunkelton and others, but I’m also in two minds about his general portrayal of women that feels dated and reminds me why I stopped reading Wilbur Smith’s macho books years ago. Mandalay Blonde and Topaz Throssell both sound like a pastiche that belongs in the early chauvinistic James Bond novels.
 
Three Stars.
 

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Rosaleen Moore was born in County Clare and “touched by the Graces”, an ability to draw on second sight, gifted with the ability to see the future and heal the sick. Shortly after the celebrated anniversary of her death in 1915, her first-person story is related mainly in the form of her last confession to the monk, Brother Thomas.
 
Sent to Dublin to live with an aunt after causing scandal following a vision, Rose is drawn into a circle of mesmerists and becomes a sought-after seer and healer. Her success turns her head and a tragedy unfolds when medical treatment of a child is spurned in favour of hands-on healing. The group closes ranks and further tragedy ensues. There is an indication early on that the Abbot of a local monastery has confessed to an horrendous crime that must be connected to Rose in some way, but it is not until the end of the novel that this is clarified.
 
Also intertwined within this intense human drama, is history and Ireland’s fight for freedom with cameos by its famous individuals of the time such as W.B. Yeats, Countess Markievicz, Padraig Pearse and others.
 
With its format in the form of Rose’s confession, plus some third-person narrative featuring others including a degree of melodrama around the two romantic connections in her life, the novel can seem a little erratic, although that doesn’t unduly detract from its overall excellence. The writing is stylish and there is much here to contemplate that is always relevant when sects or blinkered individuals are convinced that only their way is right and everyone else is wrong:
 
“… I had been so swollen with pride, I believed sickness not a thing that comes unbidden, part of that very nature I so revered, but almost as if something chosen, over which we had command. I realised now that it was not [the doctor] who had been arrogant by trying to intervene in nature, outwit it with science, but me by believing myself master of it. By refusing to accept the fragility within nature – our own human nature. Strength we had, yes. But vulnerability too. I had thought us – myself – all powerful.”
 
Four stars.
 
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