Review: The Anniversary

The Anniversary by Roisin Meaney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lily's mother Kitty has died after a battle with dementia and Lily has decided to sell Land's End, the family home by the sea. On the verge of finalising her divorce from Charlie after 26 years of marriage and with a wedding to her new fiance Joe in the offing she decides to invite the whole family to Land's End one last time for the May Day bank holiday. Her daughter Poll and her boyfriend Aidan, her son Thomas, Joe, Charlie and Charlie's girlfriend Chloe. The weekend was never going to be easy, not when Chloe is only one year older than Poll, but the tensions are ratcheted up by a series of random acts of violence and shocking revelations.

How to rate this? First off, I have to confess I clearly didn't read the blurb properly and/or wasn't paying full attention to the start of the book because I was convinced this was set in the USA, clearly it is set in Ireland. Second, these intense multi-generational family novels aren't really my cup of tea.

Having said all of that, I enjoyed this. Watching family dynamics, the way that 30 year old adults revert to being children when surrounded by their parents and siblings. The way that a 59 year old man and his 27 year old girlfriend interact and who pulls the strings in the relationship. The way in which different people deal with grief. Unpicking the memories of childhood and the associations with a special place, good and bad.

However, I thought the epilogue was a bit rushed, 12 months later and everything has changed - maybe the long weekend was a catalyst for seismic changes for all concerned, but it felt like each of the characters underwent a significant change in their lives between the end of the book and the epilogue and I kind of felt that I had been cheated out of their emotional journey from the end of the holiday to the epilogue.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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