"...I was struck by the sense of how wonderful life is, and how sad, and how strange that it can even be both of these things at the same time."
Nothing But Beautiful Sky is a slow-moving read. It read like a fictional memoir of news correspondent David Dowling, after the death of his wife, Mary Rose in a plane crash.
As well written as this book was, I found David to be unlikeable and Mary Rose to be very one-dimensional and almost angelic. I really, really did not like the way in which they observed, assigned names to and judged people without every approaching them.

Hmmm… I haven’t pushed much grief-lit lately… So let me to introduce you to Kathleen MacMahon’s superb novel, Nothing But Blue Sky.

David is taking his first solo holiday since his wife, Mary Rose, died in tragic circumstances. Against advice of his friends, David decides to return to Aiguaclara, a small Spanish coastal town where he and Mary Rose holidayed for twenty years.

It was the place where we mended ourselves, marinating gently in a brew of salt water and sunshine. In Aiguaclara, we paused to take stock of our lives, coming to terms with the passing of another year and making plans for the one to come.

In Aiguaclara, David is faced with his loss at every turn – restaurants, views, beaches, all remind him of Mary Rose. Immersed in his grief, he reflects on his relationship with Mary Rose; his childhood; and his career as a television journalist.

David’s childhood – brought up in a unloving family, with an unyielding, volatile father and a cowering mother – gives the first hint as to why he is emotionally stunted. Mary Rose’s family was the opposite – warm and supportive. Through Mary Rose, David learns kindness, although this is not fully realised by him until after her death.

However, MacMahon avoids turning Mary Rose into a saint, and equally, she gives David enough flaws to make him real – after all, the ‘big’ feelings (guilt, anger, grief) aren’t exactly pretty. The result is an authentic and deep depiction of a grief experience.

I don’t know if I even want the pain to go away. Sometimes it feels like it’s the only thing I still have of Mary Rose.

I enjoyed MacMahon’s flourish on both the careers of David and Mary Rose. David, a journalist covering world events, had been witness to terror, and had developed an almost blasé attitude to death. Mary Rose was on the front-line in a different way, as a neo-natal nurse, and her experience of death, when it happened, was deeply personal. And so, when David is unmoored by something that he has reported on countless times, the layers in MacMahon’s story-telling are revealed.

On others comforting him in his bereavement, David says –

I remember bitterly resenting the suggestion that there was any commonality in our experiences. I objected to the implication that what I was going through was at any level normal. I felt like roaring with rage at the suggestion that any other person had ever suffered like I was suffering. My grief was totalitarian; it was self-absorbed in the extreme, and monstrously exclusive.

I allowed MacMahon to stretch belief toward the end because she had done so very, very well in describing the pervasiveness and many facets of grief, without it becoming repetitive. One of the challenges for anyone bereaved is making room for feeling happy again, minus the guilt (in the bereavement world, it’s called ‘getting better guilt’). Nothing But Blue Sky does not have a ‘happy’ ending per se, but it does show David adjusting to life without Mary Rose, and discovering that our capacity for love and happiness is not limited.

At one point David’s friend, Deborah, observes, ‘…we live life forwards, we learn it backwards’, which prompts the reader to draw from this cautionary tale – life can be short, don’t take what you have for granted.

4.5/5 Wonderful.

I received my copy of Nothing But Blue Sky from the publisher, Penguin Books UK, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Nothing But Blue Sky is the story of someone coming to terms with their own grief after the sudden loss of their beloved wife. David and MaryRose have been married for 20 years when MaryRose loses her life in a tragic accident. David must come to terms with life on his own and also finding out that maybe MaryRose wasn't as happy with their life together as he was. David is hard to warm to, despite his heartbreak & grief. It seems that his main focus is himself and always has been and this becomes apparent as he looks back at his life with MaryRose.

A well written story, but not memorable.

I was given a copy of Nothing But Blue Sky by NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

I live for these moments. For a book so wonderful to cross your path and leave you absolutely breathless with astonishment. I knew nothing about this book or the author going in and I certainly wasn't expecting to be blown away like I was.

This is not an action packed book. The whole story is basically David coming to terms with the loss of his wife, and reflecting on their life spent together. Were they really as happy as he had thought they were? Was he the husband he should have been to her? In the midst of his grief, he sees their marriage with a new clarity as parts of their marriage are brought into a sharp focus he never allowed it before. It's one of those books where I was furiously highlighting beautiful passages that effortlessly seemed to capture a thought or emotion, hence this review being quote heavy!

"It was exhausting to me, and touching at the same time, how my friends took such care to gather up every morsel of her life. They collated these shards of her history with all the white-glove care of archaeologists gathering up the fragments of some precious artefact."

I know, I know - it sounds depressing and maudlin. But it's not. It's beautiful, thought provoking and exquisite. It's sad in a reflective way, but I don't think it'll have you weeping under the covers. It manages to be both incredibly poignant and uplifting at the same time. I have never come across an author who describes the process of grieving for a loved one so perfectly and eloquently. How the pain doesn't go away, but the times between you noticing the sharpness of it it lengthen.

"That's what I feel like now,' I told him. 'I feel like there's a low hanging wooden beam, right in front of me, and I keep walking slap bang into it. A hundred times a day I walk into that beam, and the pain hits me, right here, between the eyes.'

In time I could have told him that I never did learn to duck to avoid the pain of losing her. What happened was that I found myself stumbling into it less and less often. Imperceptibly at first: whereas at the start it happened to me a hundred times a day, by the time a month had gone by I was struck by the blow of it perhaps only ninety-five times a day. Another month and it hit me only ninety times in a twenty-four-hour period, and by the time a year had passed, there was sometimes a whole hour when I did not collide with the pain of it. It wasn't that it was any less painful when I did, just that the intervals in between got longer and longer. That's how I came to understand that I was healing."

This book took my heart in its hands and repeatedly squeezed it. It manages to be both beautiful and heart wrenching in such an understated way. It's not written in a fussy manner - especially David's internal monologue as he adjusts to living his life without his wife. We understand the depth of his feeling, without the point being laboured. His raw emotion is tempered with astute observations and his ability to face up to the difficult truths.

" I understood for the first time how correct it was to say that she was 'survived by her husband'. I had seen that expression used in obituaries without ever giving it a thought, but it turned out to be a term of great precision. I had survived Mary Rose only barely. I was struggling to survive her."

Ultimately, this book is more uplifting than anything else. It spells out the hope that still persists, even after a loss bigger than you thought was bearable. Whilst a tender exploration of love and bereavement, it reinforces that happiness can still be found amongst tragedy, once you start to put the pieces of your life back together. David's story demonstrates that you just have to be prepared to put the pieces back together to make an entirely different whole to the one that existed before.

“I know what you're saying, and of course there will be a moment of sadness, always, that Mary Rose isn't there. But the happy occasions will still be happy occasions, because that's how life works. Happiness trumps sadness, every time. If it didn't, we couldn't survive.”

Happiness trumps sadness, every time.

Thanks to the Publisher and Netgalley for this preview copy in return for an honest review.


Nothing but blue sky was published on 30th July 2020 by Penguin Books, Ireland

An exceptional book about grief and introspection through the character of David, who loses his wife in a tragic accident. If you are looking for a book that is very plot/action heavy then this is not the book for you. But the charactarisation and description of place is phenomenal - especially the setting of Aiguaclara, the holiday destination of Mary Rose and David, whence he returns after her death. A great book for a holiday read or staycation as it conveys the atmosphere of a small Spanish/Balearic town so effectively. It is a testament to MacMahon's skill that I was so deeply invested in David's story as he was not a particularly sympathetic or likeable character, however his progression throughout the book meant I was desperate to find out how it ended for him. Overall, a beautifully written, slowly unravelling book that far exceeded my expectations

The best book I have read in a while. A beautifully written book about grief, bereavement and reflection. However the story was exquisite and page turning.

"We live life forwards, we learn it backwards" is the quote I am taking away from this book, it is both sad and true.

I feel very melancholy after finishing this. Given I'm getting married in a month, it has got to me.

David loses his wife Mary Rose in a plane crash. This story is about how he deals with his grief, interspersed with flashbacks to their marriage.

It is evident that David and Mary Rose were very different. They had different outlooks on life, different upbringing, different types of life experience. The areas that hit me were the regrets from David on the things he didn't appreciate at the time, such as saying he loved her more frequently. Their attempts to have children is heartbreaking and understandably tough on any marriage.

In happier times, the repetitive nature of their traditional holidays was comforting. The traditions you build up as a couple, not matter how small, must be incredibly hard to deal with when you lose your partner.

Worth a read and I will definitely read more by this author.

Thank you to @netgalley and @penguinbooksireland for the opportunity to review.

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David has recently lost his wife and revisits their usual holiday spot where he looks back over their married life.

I couldn‘t figure out if I liked this book or not. It made me uncomfortable because it was such a realistic portrayal of grief and David isn‘t a particularly sympathetic character.

Having thought about it overnight I did like it. It‘s a challenging read but all credit to the author for making it so. I think the inclusion of real-life events makes it feel all the more real, and like it could actually happen to you, hence the 'unease' whilst reading it.

Nothing But Blue Sky is a very touching read. Despite its tragic subject, the tone is as light-hearted and playful at times as it is melancholy and sorrowful at others. It is both a quintessentially Irish novel - particularly when it comes to the theme of family - and a very European one. Indeed, Kathleen MacMahon makes good use of her journalistic background by skilfully integrated events like the Bataclan and Nice terrorist attacks, as well as the political unrest of the last few years in Spain and the UK, to this intimate story of a man grieving for his wife. The writing is delicate, and conveys so much compassion for the characters that it"s hard not to like them: not only lovely Mary Rose and all the other admirable women who appear as secondary characters in the novel, but also imperfect, often clueless David, who is, nevertheless, far from being a lost cause.

David finds himself on his own when his wife Mary-Rose dies in a plane crash. Returning to the place in Spain where they holidayed regularly, he reflects on their life together as he attempts to deal with his overwhelming grief. In many ways an apparently perfect marriage between two very different people who complemented each other well, David reflects on his own failings and the ways in which he now feels he may have let his wife down.

A wonderfully written book, gentle and yet for me truly absorbing, David initially seems to be an unsympathetic character, but as the story progresses it is hard not to become invested in him as he begins to find a way through his crushing sadness and uncertainty. A beautiful portrayal of life, love, grief and ultimately hopefulness, I loved this book from beginning to end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Books for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is such a beautiful book. I cannot believe it is so well written, just depicting the daily lives of two people happily married and enjoying their ordinary life together. The story, a memoir of sorts just flows off the page and although ordinary in its events is compelling and inveigles itself to the reader. It was a story with layers of interest, history, love and life which just revealed more and more as the onion layers were unpeeled.
An amazingly well written book.
Thanks to #NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ahead of publication in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Books UK for this advanced reader's copy. A lovely book that allows us to wander through the wonderings of David who has been recently widowed. No great drama happens in the book but it's a beautifully told story.

Oh this book. It broke me, then it put me back together again. It’s gorgeous. Properly gorgeous. An examination of love, marriage and family it is one of those elegant books which just sears a path straight to your heart.

David, a widower in his early 50s is taking his first solo holiday since his wife, Mary Rose, died. He is returning to the small town in Spain which they have visited for the past twenty years. This is the place they came to as newlyweds when their whole lives lay ahead of them, the place where they drank coffee together and watched the locals go about their daily lives and now, it is the place where he must go to to face the ghosts of his past.

Brought up in a cold and unloving family where his mercurial father ruled the roost and his mother cowed under his forbidding presence, he is emotionally stunted. He readily confesses to being unable to discuss his feelings, to treating people badly and admits that if it wasn’t for his best friend, Deborah he feared “what might have become of me.”

But it is Mary Rose who changes his life completely. It is she who he falls deeply in love with, she who understands him, she who balances his dark and acerbic side, she who, when taking him home to meet her parents, shows him that family can be full of love, support and joy.

Without her he is unmoored. A journalist on both TV and in print, he has been at the forefront of some of the biggest stories of our times. He has witnessed things that many of us never will, has a journalist’s blasé attitude to death and destruction but the loss of Mary Rose is something he is unable to process and understand.

His visit to Aiguaclara is at turns beautiful and painful. He is faced with her loss at every turn; here is the restaurant they’d eat at and the owner who treats them like family, there is the beach where they’d sit and watch the local children somersault from the diving board into the sea beneath and here comes the French family who they’ve never spoken to yet have created a full backstory for the various members with names and occupations.

It is these moments which I found most difficult to read. The small moments of marriage; in jokes and a shorthand of communication. A whole conversation taking place without saying a word to one another, an opinion expressed by the quirk of an eyebrow. It’s brutal, but perfectly encapsulates the loss which he must feel.

We only meet Mary Rose in David’s recollections. She is vividly drawn; a neonatal nurse who cares for her patients as if they were her own children, a woman of principles and a woman who loves David fiercely. Their marriage isn’t all unicorns and rainbows, there are times of unhappiness and sadness but these aren’t things which David realises at the time. This holiday is grief filled but it is also a trip where he allows himself to fully explore their marriage and relationship and face some uncomfortable truths.

This is a beautiful, bittersweet read which, although it sounds depressing, is ultimately uplifting. It’s a tough read, in that it is emotional but my gosh is it rewarding. A haunting, melancholy, lyrical book about love and loss this is a very special book indeed. Read it.

This is an absorbing novel of reflection and observation. David and his wife Mary Rose took their annual summer holiday in Aiguaclara on the Costa Brava for twenty years. David has now returned alone following the death of Mary Rose, and he looks back at their marriage, seeing things in a different light with the hindsight of grief. David has clarity of thought and a willingness to explore past events from his childhood, career and marriage from an alternative perspective, which is touching and insightful.
There are other regular visitors to Aiguaclara that he and Mary Rose enjoyed watching on their return year after year, making up names and lifestories for them. David continues to observe the other visitors in the way we all enjoy people watching on holiday, and this novel really evokes the holiday atmosphere that we’ve all missed this year. Kathleen MacMahon has written an exploration of love, loss and regret, but also of hope.

Nothing But Blue Sky is a brilliant, engaging novel exploring the idea of how much you actually know your partner.

Ostensibly a story of David returning to the town he and his wife, Mary Rose, visited every summer for twenty years, for the first time since her death, it is also an exploration of his life and the many ways in which it was intertwined and affected hers. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about his childhood, their marriage, and his life since her death, and follow him as his self-perception, and what he thought he knew of his wife, shifts and changes.

Thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Nothing But Blue Sky tells the story of David and Mary-Rose. David has returned to their favourite holiday spot, Aiguaclara where he is surrounded by familiar places and people, but everything is changed. He is broken and consumed with grief, following the sudden and tragic death of Mary-Rose in a plane crash.

As he tries to navigate his way through the fog of grief, he recalls their relationship, their precious memories, and the difficult truths. David and Mary-Rose were very different, and he wishes he had been a better husband, less cynical and more supportive. He realises that Mary-Rose had been in a dark place and that he had let her down. Regret only compounds his grief and he feels incredibly alone. When he meets Claire, also mourning a tragic loss, they find comfort in one another. They don't have to pretend, they can say anything and they know the other will get it. This friendship allows a glimmer of light back into David's world. And when a letter reaches him from a past lover, his whole world is changed. Whilst incredibly sad, this wonderful book leaves us with food for thought - 'I was struck by the sense of how wonderful life is, and how sad, and how strange that it can even be both of those things at the very same time'.

This novel actually reads like a memoir as it is such an intimate portrayal of love, and grief, and life itself. I really become invested in the story of David and Mary-Rose, and the writing was sublime and engaging.

Enjoyable book with plenty of descriptions and emotions following the life of a man remembering his wife who died in a tragic accident. The book is bittersweet and set in a beautiful Spanish resort....some plot twists and new-found friendships emerge from the disaster.

Nothing But Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon

David's wife, Mary Rose, died in tragic circumstances and a couple of years later he returns to Aiguaclara where they holidayed together every year. There follows his reflection on their life together, from first meeting to her untimely death, interspersed with current day events.

This book is a beautifully written account of a marriage and an absolutely exquisite depiction of grief. It is testament to the author's skill that I was so invested in David's story, even though he isn't a particularly sympathetic character, and that I was delighted with how things turn out for him.. In fact I could not put this book down! It is a fabulous story of friendships, families, relationships, love, bereavement, grief and ultimately hope. Heartbreaking, funny, and everything in between., Very highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Ireland for the ARC of this book.

Set in Dublin, the novel focuses on David Dowling who has recently lost his wife, Mary Rose in a tragic plane crash. The couple appear to have had the perfect marriage but as David analyses his marriage in the midst of his grief, he realises that their relationship had shifted in recent years. The novel flips over and back and gives us glimpses into the childhood of both characters. David is portrayed as intransigent and arrogant, the polar opposite of Mary Rose who is cheerful, optimistic and kind. They are both very much products of their upbringing and their family backgrounds; David’s being distant, cold and dysfunctional, Mary Rose’s being warm and loving. David says that “Mary Rose was never infected by my bottomless capacity for negativity. Nor did her cheerful positivity ever rub off on me”.

Nonetheless, this disparity in their personalities not only survived, but flourished during their marriage. They are unable to have children and it’s only after Mary Roses death, that David realises how insensitively he dealt with this issue and how out of touch he had become with Mary Rose’s view of their relationship.

A lot of the novel is set in Aiguclara, Catalonia, where the couple spent happy summers and it’s here that David realises that there may yet be happiness for him in life. I found the descriptions of grief and bereavement very insightful. David describes it as being “neither dead nor alive but doomed to wander a desolate space between the two”. Overall a very penetrating and intuitive analysis of how our upbringing shapes our future relationships and the redemptive power of love and family.

Many thanks to @netgalley for this ebook in return for my honest review.

I made a promise to myself that I wasn't going to request any more books on NetGalley that weren't by authors I really like or books I particularly wanted to read. But then I started reading Nothing But Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon, an author and a book I'd never heard of before it popped up as a recommendation on NetGalley, and I immediately had to rescind all of my promises to myself.

Nothing But Blue Sky focuses on David Dowling, an Irish newscaster and a widower, whose wife Mary Rose recently died in a plane crash. This is a novel very much centred on flashbacks and memory and the development of a person over time, and I really liked it. The writing is lovely and David, although on the surface quite unlikeable, is really sympathetic once you get to delve into his brain. The characters all feel very real, and the pacing was perfect - slowly peeling away David's life and past, section by section. It also did something in a novel that I'm not sure if I've ever seen before: the evocation of a beloved long-time holiday destination, that has become as familiar and important to you as where you're from. Me and my family have been going to the same town in Spain since 2001, and Kathleen MacMahon completely captured this in a way that felt extremely real to me! In general, actually, her descriptions of holidays and landscape were perfect and beautifully visual - I could completely imagine each scene in my head. A v strong four stars 🌟