I hate that I didn't like this book. I absolutely adored O'Donoghue's first novel 'Promising Young Woman' (I've even got a hardcover copy of it that I bought full price), but this one I just could not get on board with. It's a slow starter and - this is entirely personal - but it felt like a horrific version of my own life, which made it even harder to read. Sadly, this is not one I'm going to be continuing on with. The book just felt messy and lacking the sharpness and sparkle that came from her first novel. Perhaps a little sophomore slump here?

Scenes of a Graphic Nature is Irish author and journalist Caroline O'Donoghue's second novel. It's a sharp, funny story of a woman's journey to discover more about her Irish roots and uncover a decades old mystery while she's at it. It was the combination of these two plot elements that really sold this book to me. There's nothing I love more than a strong female character having some life-changing realisations and small-town secrets being revealed.

Charlotte Regan (known as Charlie) is a budding film director / writer and is half Irish through her father. She is confused, feels lost in life, makes impulsive decisions that she regrets and is trying to find her sense of purpose in the world. I found her relatable on those fronts and I too have Irish parents but (mainly) grew up in England, so felt that connection to her character immediately. Being Irish but not being there does trigger an unusual sense of longing (for exactly what, I'm not sure) and it was really interesting to read a book with this theme.

Back to the plot: Charlie was born and raised in England and has managed to reach the age of 29 without ever actually stepping foot on the Emerald Isle. Despite this, she feels an affinity to her Irishness and (along with her friend Laura) makes a film depicting an unusual event that happened to her father in his childhood on the small, remote (fictional) island off the west of Ireland, Clipim.

When Charlie's film, It Takes a Village, is accepted into the Cork Film Festival, she makes her first trip to Ireland and it's there that she starts to make discoveries. About herself, her father's past and the small island her dad grew up on.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature asks the question: just because you uncover a secret, does that mean it's yours to tell? The truth about what happened in her father's school in 1963 has remained confined for all this time. Is it really Charlie's place to expose it?

I really liked how Caroline O'Donoghue explored the complex nature of being Irish. Celebrating what everyone loves about the country, while also shining a light on issues - modern and historical. Interestingly, this is the second time an author has brought up Ireland's controversial refugee laws in my recent reads. Marian Keyes also tackles the Direct Provision issue in my current audiobook listen, Grown Ups.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature is a tantalising blend of mystery story, lesson in Ireland and its nuances and contemporary protagonist novel. I found it to be multi-layered, often funny ('My mum is the kind of person who is still very impressed by Sensations crisps, believing they can elevate any kind of situation to the status of informal dinner party among close friends') and very engrossing to read.

I loved Promising Young Women for its smart take on a conventional storyline and hoped for more of the same here: but this one seems to flounder a bit and seems much more straightforward: the interactions between Charlie and her family (her mum nagging her to wear a bra to hospital) are straight out of a million other stories. There's more mileage in the complicated best friend scenario but that gets overtaken again by uncovering dark secrets in small town Ireland. I think there was too much going on which all distracts from each plot strand. Interesting ideas of mythologising the past/personal and national identities but really I wanted more clarity in the writing and less stereotypical characterizations.

This book is about so many things - friendships, family, secrets, and the lasting impact of trauma and loss. Though it was darker than I expected, I enjoyed O'Donoghue's writing very much. I would have loved some kind of resolution in the storyline about Charlie's friendship with Laura, and more about her father, but the novel did not feel unfinished without it, just me being curious.
It has definitely made me want to seek out more of O’Donoghue’s writing.

As far back as Charlie can remember, her Irish heritage has been a complicated one. She was raised to call herself Irish, but she grew up in England and never once visited her father's home country. Her father never returned after growing up there, and his whole childhood spent on an island off the coast of Kerry was overshadowed by a traumatic incident, and one that he is not able to stop talking about and thinking about, even as a middle aged man in a hospital bed battling cancer. Charlie's film about the incident is a labour of love, to prove herself as a writer and filmmaker and to record her sick father's story. However, when she and her best friend and co createor Laura get a chance to travel to Cork to show the film at a festival, it is not the homecoming or the celebration Charlie dreamt of.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature deals with the idea of self mythologising, on many levels: what individuals do, families do and whole countries do in order to create a story around themselves that they can project to others and convince themselves with. We see this in so many guises - Charlie reminiscing on her friendship with Laura when it felt like them against the world, her cruelly promiscuous persona called 'The Biter' around the women she dates, her conviction in her film as being groundbreaking and authentic, her father's conflicting narratives around being the miraculous boy who lived and the man who could never return, to the way that Ireland presents itself as a cosmopolitan country and a charming backwater, and a welcoming and friendly nation while hiding a violent history and past dominated by the systematic abuse of women and children by the Catholic Church.

This is a book about art and belonging and family is striking and moving, and its central mystery that brings us into the terrible secrets in Ireland's past makes for thought provoking and necessary reading. It is compelling, funny and thrilling and would be absolutely perfect for book clubs as you would never run out of plot points and themes to discuss. I really enjoyed O'Donoghue's first novel, Promising Young Women, which was an ambitious plot driven debut, but in Scenes of a Graphic Nature O'Donoghue skillfully combines her gift for mystery and fast paced narrative with more complicated characters and difficult themes. It makes me so excited to see what she comes up with next.

I wanted to love it, as I really enjoyed Promising Young Woman. On this occasion it didn't wow me but it didn't deter me from wanting to read more of Caroline O'Donoghue's novel. I think she has such a powerful voice.

I received an ARC from Virago & NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Description
Charlie Regan's life isn't going forward, so she's decided to go back.

After a tough few years floundering around the British film industry, experimenting with amateur pornography and watching her father's health rapidly decline, she and her best friend Laura journey to her ancestral home of Clipim, an island off the west coast of Ireland. Knowing this could be the last chance to connect with her dad's history before she loses him, Charlie clings to the idea of her Irish roots offering some kind of solace. But she'll find out her heritage is about more than clichés and clover-foamed Guinness.

When the girls arrive at Clipim, Charlie begins to question both her difficult relationship with Laura and her father's childhood stories. Before long, she's embroiled in a devastating conspiracy that's been sixty years in the making . . . and it's up to her to reveal the truth of it.

My thoughts
Scenes of a Graphic Nature is a book about family, friendship and finding out who you are. In it, we have Charlie Regan: a woman who creative but also lost. I identified with her a little bit, as making it in the creative industries is a difficult process (that's for sure). She has to cope with failing in the film industry, her sick father and her strained relationships with her best friend Laura and her mother. She was an extremely complex and emotional character, I found her narrative interesting.

Through Charlie's narrative, we are transported to Ireland and I loved getting lost in the details of the landscape and the people. It was incredibly captivating and I felt as if I'd been transported elsewhere (instead of being sat in my living room).

I liked the way O'Donoghue blended Charlie's Dad's past with Charlie's present, with a tone that was witty at times but incredibly bleak at others.

The only thing I wasn't too keen on was the fact that the book was an incredibly slow burner. Though it was entertaining throughout, I felt like it took a while for something BIG to happen.

Regardless, it was an insightful read full of heart, humour and relationships.
Scenes of a Graphic Nature will be published on 18 June 2020

Review: Scenes of a graphic nature by Caroline O’Donoghe

# Summary

Charlie, 29, is a lost and frustrated creative woman. She has been lonely and depressed for most of her 20s. To overcome bleak job prospects in the British film industry she has turned to amateur pornography (thus, the title). On top of that, she has to cope with a sick father, an anxious mother and a strained relationship with her best friend Laura, who is living the life she expected she would be living at 30.

Over the last years, she allied her professional aspirations as a scriptwriter to her dad’s story, to create a documentary inspired by his childhood in the Irish island of Clipim. During its promotion, Charlie and Laura get a chance to visit the almost mythical ancestral Irish home. Whilst she expected this trip would be a final chance to bond with her father, the experience turns out to be very different. Charlie’s investigation into her Irish roots leads her to troubling revelations as she and Laura unbury the demons of a seemingly charming and unremarkable island.

# My take on this book

This is an addictive and immersive story, although much darker than I expected. Narrated from Charlie’s perspective, we learn that in Clipim nothing is as it seems, as its dark history unfolds.

All along, there is an underlying tone of tragedy and urgency, which resulted in a sense of unease and anxiety for me. In fact, the book felt like a thriller most of the time! This was exacerbated by the Irish landscape and the shifting attitudes of a wide cast of islanders. Charlie’s self-doubt and her difficult relationship with Laura and her father’s version of the facts deepen the dark aspects of this story.

On the other hand, the dark humor surrounding this eerily atmosphere certainly worked for me, and O’Donoghe’s sharp eye and witty language is probably my favourite aspect of an otherwise unsettling novel.

Another of my favourite aspects of this novel was the setting. O’Donoghe’s masterfully captured the essence of the Irish countryside, from its shades of greens to the violence of the ocean hitting the rocks. Rather than stopping there, she uses it to shape the characters, to power conflict between them, and through Charlie’s eyes manages to make the reader fascinated with Clipim.

O’Donoghe draws on multiple themes such as family relationships and friendship, early adulthood, love, loneliness, social class and second-generation immigrants trying to belong.
I particularly liked the treatment of the theme of identity, both self-identity and national identity. Whilst Charlie is also in a quest to find herself, the book was also an exploration of Irish identity and the conflict with a multitude of clichés and traumas affecting the islanders.

There is a depth to the story and to Charlie, the main character, which makes this novel worth reading.
The array of emotions and experiences she goes through, including a re-acquaintance with love and physical pleasure, are touching. Beautiful writing made the intimacy of romantic scenes exciting, powerful and meaningful, a real delight to read. All of Charlie’s humanity unfolds in those scenes, sprinkled with lust, loss, envy, vulnerability and longing.

Whilst *Scenes of Graphic Nature* is a thought provoking and immersive novel, it is not a perfect piece of work.

The most disappointing aspect of this book is its rushed ending. After describing with minute details a few days of Charlie’s stay in the Irish island of Clipim with a minutiae of details, the truth is finally hurried which results in some loose ends. I would have stayed a little longer with the hostile yet warm and humorous islanders. However, the epilogue is satisfying enough and partly compensates for it.

# My verdict

The cover of this book is fantastic, combining clever design, vibrant colors and sharp contrast. To me, it condenses what I really enjoyed in this book: O’Donoghe’s natural, original voice and the crafty way she weaved the intriguing, mystery thread of a buried tragedy into Charlie’s collapsing world.
I totally recommend this novel, and can’t wait to read what O’Donoghe writes next.

This is the first Caroline O’Donoghue I’ve read, so I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect, but the premise and the writers who had blurbed the book peaked my interest enough to pick it up.

Ultimately, I’m still not really sure how I felt about this book. Charlotte was unlikable, raw, a complete mess, jealous and totally relatable. I loved her, even all the messy parts. Her love for her father was evident, and her longing to find a home when hers was falling apart was something I thought was beautifully done. I really felt for Charlie, I wanted her to catch a break.

Her relationship with Laura was the heart of this story, I don’t think it was meant to be, but for me it was. Charlie’s battle with her complicated feelings for Laura ring so true for so many friendships. Seeing someone you love thrive and grow while you seem to only stumble and flounder through life is equal parts painful and joyous. Their love for each other, even when things were terrible between them, carried me through this story. I could have read a whole book just about them and their friendship. The commentary of a gay woman with a straight best friend, the agony of the love that might have been had it been different, of Laura just getting it so wrong and hurting Charlie where it would be most painful, was unflinchingly real.

The mystery at the centre of the story, what happened to those children, kept me guessing but I think that was more out of confusion than anything else. O’Donoghue painted Ireland and Clip vividly, the small town characters who know everything and yet nothing at all were vibrant. But the whole time I felt like the story kept building to something that never quite paid off. The unravelling of the story felt unsatisfying, rushed at the end when it became clear that no great unveiling would actually happen. Though in a way, this mirrored Charlie’s story too. She went to Ireland and to Clip searching for answers, for family, built up this image of what the place her father had told her stories about would be like, and in the end it wasn’t what she imagined at all - better or worse, it didn’t matter. Charlie didn’t find herself or anything beyond the long buried secrets of a small community.

What I did like was the last chapter that left us with the promise of that unveiling of the truth, that Charlie and now Maria, were waiting until the right moment to pursue justice. It was frustrating to not be part of that story in the end, but the knowledge that Charlie intended to finish it was enough.

Overall, Scenes of a Graphic Nature was enjoyable, Caroline O’Donoghue’s writing was strong, though the sprinkling of pop culture references did make me cringe, her ability to write relationships really is the strength. Charlie’s relationships with Laura, her father and her mother were, for me, undoubtedly the best parts of this book.

Caroline O'Donoghue has developed her own very distinct writing style and I am enjoying every moment of it.

This begins as a story of someone exploring her family heritage and what the places our ancestors come from mean for us in terms of ‘heritage’ and our cultural identity. This story as with O'Donoghue's last book becomes something far darker and more sinister. It’s an excellent read, the characters are deep and developed and the storyline is thought provoking and exciting.

I’m not 100% sure on the cover, but the content more than makes up for it!

This was a very well written novel which started out quite light, but gradually deepened into a substantial, and thought provoking read. The characters were fairly likeable, in that they weren’t perfect but showed strength and fortitude once the storyline stepped into the murkier waters it followed.
Overall, enjoyable read.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O’Donoghue is about a young woman’s investigation into a troubling family history.

★★★✰✰ 3.5 stars

Scenes of a Graphic Nature is a thought-provoking and engrossing novel that is far darker than its brightly coloured cover suggests. Having read and was captivated by Caroline O'Donoghue's debut novel, Promising Young Women, I had really high hopes for Scenes of a Graphic Nature. The first person narration is engrossing and adds a sense of urgency to the story which follows Charlie Regan. Charlie, who is twenty-nine, is deeply unhappy: there is her father's cancer, her strained relationship with her mother and her more successful best friend, her non-existent 'career' in the ever competitive film industry. In an attempt to make some extra cash Charlie has even begun selling photos, of a 'graphic' nature, of herself online. Given her not-so-great circumstances, Charlie feels understandably lost.
She finds some comfort in her father, whom she idolise, and his stories, one of which an account of his having survived a terrible tragedy. Inspired by this Charlie, alongside Laura, worked on x a film that was based on her father's story. When the film gains the attention of an Irish film festival, Charlie and Laura are invited to the event. With her father's encouragement, Charlie set off to Ireland, hoping to find some guidance in the country she regards as her ancestral home. It happens that Charlie and Laura end up in Clipim, an island off the west coast of Ireland, and the place in which her father grew up. The people of Clipim however are not very forthcoming about the past, especially towards outsiders. Charlie however is convinced that someone is hiding the truth about the tragedy that irrevocably shaped her father's life.

Similarly to Promising Young Women, there is a sense of unease permeating the narrative. From Charlie's awkward interactions with her mother and best friend, to her sense of disillusionment towards her work and love life. Clipim magnifies the story's ambivalent atmosphere and O'Donoghue does not shy away from portraying the ramifications of the British occupation of Ireland. Over the course of the novel Charlie, who is quick to emphasise that she is indeed 'half Irish', realises that she has mythologised Ireland and her own connection to this country. While I was very much interested in Charlie's journey, and in the story's engagement with colonialism, national and self identity, and in her shrewd yet nuanced portrayal of Irish–British relations, the plot tangles itself in unnecessary knots. The latter half of the novel veers into clichéd territories: we have the 'Town with a Dark Secret', almost a la The Wicker Man, which is almost entirely populated by physically and verbally 'hostile' individuals. Charlie herself makes many stupid choices, and seems unable to read a room. Towards the end the story becomes increasingly disconcerting, which in some ways I was expecting given how hallucinatory Promising Young Women ended up being. Charlie hits rock bottom, some bad shit goes on, and then we get a hurried explanation and ending. The violence of certain characters seems totally brushed aside, which was rather unsatisfying. Also, Charlie's 'investigation' seemed less an investigation that her getting drunk and making wild accusations.
Even as the story become increasingly confusing, and frustrating, I was still absorbed by O'Donoghue. I liked the way she writes and the themes/ideas she explores. Her main character is an imperfect human being who is selfish and reckless. Her loneliness and her disillusionment are rendered in an emphatic light. Certain relationships, such as the one between Charlie and her bf, were believably messy.
Yet, as much as I appreciated certain aspects of the story, part of me wishes that O'Donoghue's portrayal of Clipim's residents hadn't be so exaggerated.

O’Donoghue writing is so readable and contemporary, with deep storylines handled well, while managing to still be light and fun. I read her first novel, Promising Young Women, a while ago and loved it, whilst finding how literary and yet exciting it was quite surprising. Her new book is no different. I particularly loved that, as with her first novel, there was a slight thriller/mystery element to keep you reading, but these books would never be put into the thriller genre. They’re really classy contemporary women’s fiction. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Contemporary, relatable, intriguing, compelling; O'Donoghue's novel deals mainly with the sensitive themes of self-identity, of national identity, of friendship, and is absolutely hard to put down.

I was really looking forward to this novel and it didn't disappoint. In her late 20's Charlie's career isn't quite where she thought it would be. Her dad is unwell and she has put her own plans on hold and has to watch her friend and co-filmmaker achieve great success. The pair made a film together about Charlie's family history despite having never been to Kerry, Ireland, where the film is set. When they are invited to a film screening in Cork, Charlie realises how little she knows about her Irish identity. I raced through this book and found it to be such an absolute gem. It's relatable, well written and gripping throughout. I particularly enjoyed the exploration of Irish identity and female friendship and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it!