I was sent an advance proof copy of Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O'Donoghue to read and review by NetGalley. I absolutely loved this book! Written in the first person, which I love, it tells the tale of Charlie who has travelled to her father’s birthplace, a small island off the coast of Kerry in Ireland, searching for the truth surrounding a tragedy that he survived when he was a boy. The writing is wonderful and the characters alive and totally believable. I love Irish writing and this novel is along there with the best, with a fantastic sense of place, tradition and history. The story is complex and compelling, definitely one that I will be recommending to anyone and everyone!

Not the book I thought it was going to be from the information. Not better or worse than I expected, but different. The book is written from the point of view of Charlie, a 29 year old who is currently living at her parents house because of her father's health problems. Little by little, a tragic story of her father's youth on a small Irish island is revealed, firstly the story she has grown up with and later her experience in Ireland. Charlie has a chequered relationship with others, her mother and best friend and has some difficulties in her work and love lives.
On the whole, I liked the characters, though Charlie can be described as hot headed and as a reader you find yourself cringing at some of the decisions she makes and some of the stuff she says. You feel the claustrophobic atmosphere building up on the island. I liked the descriptions of countryside and people and felt that the last chapter of the book was a good ending. I found myself asking what the book was about in the first couple of chapters, though that diminished as the book progressed. All in all a thought provoking read.
Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

A masterpiece. Read this in one transfixing gulp. Will be giving this to lots of friends for their birthdays for SURE.

This wasn’t what I expected but in a way that was a good thing. The mystery in this was really well written I just struggled to connect with Charlie the MC

I absolutely adored this book. It’s funny,it’s poignant and takes a long hard look at some very difficult topics in Ireland’s history. It explores the relationships between friends, families and lovers. Character led you will laugh with them and cry for them

Scenes of A Graphic Nature by Caroline O'Donoghue is a contemporary tale that follows a young woman and her friend as she travels to a small island off the coast of Co. Kerry in an attempt to understand the tragic story that has haunted her father all his life. As a small boy in 1963 he was the sole survivor of a devastating accident that resulted in the deaths of his teacher and classmates. The tragedy has haunted the island ever since, and was a big factor in his decision to move to London, where Charlie , our narrator was born and raised. When a feature film she made with her best friend Laura is nominated for a prize at a Cork film festival, the girls decide to make the most of the trip and revisit the island. At first it is a wonderful chance to see where her family came from, but once she begins asking questions Charlie soon begins to suspect that the truth about what happened on that fateful day is more sinister than she could ever have imagined.
This is a character driven book, and thankfully I soon warmed to Charlie as a character, which kept me engaged in the book as it unfolded. I liked that she clearly did not have everything figured out when it came to her career or her personal life, it felt very realistic. Her relationships with her father and her best friend Lauren were interesting and complex. I appreciated the author's inclusion of social issues which have come to light in recent years , with repercussions that are still on going. Where the book fell down slightly for me was in the final reveal of what happened, and how Charlie learned the truth. The passive way it ened felt flat and it was wrapped up very quickly.
I read a review copy courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Ohh I loved this one! Caroline O’Donoghue’s contemporary novel has a strong plot and characters with many layers that I thought tied together very well. Protagonist Charlie is messy and lost, but I loved reading about a character in her late 20s who is trying to work out what she’s doing in life.
The relationship dynamics were also very interesting, especially Charlie’s contrasting bonds with her parents and her intense, often competitive, friendship with Laura. I found her relationship with her dad very moving and related to her need to escape from his illness.
The book combines history and fiction really well and I was intrigued throughout by the school tragedy. Identity is a key theme throughout the book which is explored in a number of ways, including the Irish culture. The depiction of the small island community may be stereotypical at times, but as it’s written by an Irish author I believed it to be authentic.
The writing was very atmospheric and the descriptions of the island created a strong sense of isolation and deep rooted secrecy.
I found the book insightful and incredibly readable, it’s definitely a page-turner. It’s also darkly funny in places, features an intriguing mystery and there is LGBTQ representation. I really loved the writing style and am excited to read more of her work!

A great funny read focusing on stories of Irish culture and history. Fast paced an easy read. The characterisation is fantastic and truly comes to life.

Charlie is a filmmaker who has made a film about the legendary events of her fathers childhood which saw him the sole survivor of an accident which killed all the pupils at his remote Irish island school. During a preview at a film event she gets suspicions that her fathers story isn’t the full picture and decides to visit the small offshore island for herself. On Clipim island she discovers a close knit community, a wild and beautiful island, a sense of homecoming and also a darker undertone.

From the start I was entranced by the writing style and pulled into a richly descriptive character driven book, but as the book develops the plot strengthens and I found the plot line was actually pulling me through the pages more and more.

The main character, Charlie, is diverse and complex and so incredibly written, one of the best character developments I’ve read for a while. Her relationships with her parents and friends showed depth and nuance and she was a character I become quickly invested in.

I appreciated the combination of characters in this book though at times it was hard to relate to them or achieve that depth of feeling as it moves from a quest for answers to something more overwhelming that at times I couldn't quite connect with. However maybe I need to reread it all again with this perspective in mind to appreciate the plot building more.

On paper this book is the amalgamation of everything I love in fiction. A little bit of a character study, a little bit of a small town-island location/ a little bit of a mystery/ a fun tone but meaty subject matter. O’Donoghue pulls it all off because she clearly knows how to write compelling characters. So while it’s not a perfect blend it’s an enjoyable contemporary story that I had a great time reading. Seasoned mystery readers will probably be frustrated that the central mystery isn’t made more of. Without wanting to spoil it I was a bit conflicted on the “resolution”. But there was enough enjoyable action in the second half of the book to distract me.

I adored this book! The style, the language, the setting, the plot - all wonderful!

A rollercoaster of emotions and a few moments of truly feeling a lump in my throat.

Our protagonist Charlie is loveable and relatable and aware of her own short comings. O’Donoghue has a real skill of creating trolley believable and likeable female characters that are fully developed and realised.

The book explores friendships, relationships, a sense of identity and belonging with the backdrop of a suspense filled plot as we play detective with Charlie to find out what happened on the fictional Irish island of Clip in the 1960s.

This book has it all! Irish charm, dark humour, LGBTQ+ romance, even a historical-thriller element! It’s fast paced and engaging, a great book to totally devour!

If you are looking for a book to add to your tbr, this is it!

Charlie is struggling at life - an ill father, no real job prospects. An aspiring film maker, she follows her roots and tries to solve the mystery of her father's childhood on a small island west of Ireland. The trip starts off with friendly locals and pubs...but when she starts to ask questions, things change quickly and the locals might not be as well disposed to her as she first thought. The character of Charlie is relatable, the story touches many themes: love, family, friendship with an eye to Irish history and traditions.

The cover looks sooo good. The quoted reviews by the likes of Dolly Alderton just made me so intrigued by this book!

Firstly, this was a surprisingly easy read. Especially given the heavy topics within this book like family trauma. The way in which they write about the Irish perceptive and around her Irish identity given that she's never been there before, is really interesting and recently come to find myself wanting to read more about this.

I'm totally here for contemporary fiction, especially when it cleverly integrates such big topics like pornography, which encourages further discussion around these. Definitely thought provoking.

Genre: Literary Fiction | Adult Fiction

Release Date: Expected 1st July 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group UK / Virago



CW: Death, Illness, Swearing, Sexual Content, Mentions of IRA/Terrorist Acts.



Aspiring filmmaker Charlie finally found a story worth writing - the history of her own dying father and his former life in Ireland. With her best friend and partner Laura, they finally created something they were proud of ... until it was over. Laura has gone on to do amazing things, their former bohemian lifestyle forgotten while Charlie is stuck in one place and dabbling in amateur porn to make things meet while her Mother berates her for not doing something with her life.

But when she and Laura are invited to a film festival in her familial home of Clipim, she gets to leave things behind for just a moment and learn more about the place of her families history - but soon enough she's learning more than she ever wanted to know and it's too late to back out.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature was a beautifully charming, viscerally real and uniquely absorbing. It definitely took me a while to get into as the first few chapters felt a little stiff for me but a little while in I managed to find a rhythm with the writing style and was locked in. The characters came to life on the pages and I felt a warm kinship with Charlie and felt every single part of her journey as a lost twenty-something woman who has no idea who or what she wants to be.

"It's a strange thing, being attracted to women while simultaneously being conditioned to compare your own body to every other female in the world."

With amazing insights into friendship, obsession, and longing - this is a story about desperately trying to find out where you belong and it felt like home. It was so much more than I expected - the mystery of uncovering the real secrets of the school fire that started the story Charlie gave everything to tell, the obsession in her friendships, the search for love and the journey of absolute self-discovery and self-love.

"That's what it comes down to, I suppose. I was obsessed with what I was, because I had no idea who I was."

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Caroline O'Donoghue, Little Brown Book Group UK and Netgalley for this ARC in return for an honest review.

(2.5)

This book was definitely not what I was expecting.

I am a huge fan of Irish authors and have for sure discovered some new favorites in the last months. Caroline O'Donoghue certainly can write and I appreciated this book in this aspect.

At first it seemed to be about a girl trying to find her own identity and struggling with the eminent grief due to her father's illness. The love between father and daughter was palpable and one of the main strengths of the novel.

Having that said, the entitled and immature nature of the main character made it hard for me to relate to her. Her platonic relationship with her friend Laura took too much of a lead in the plot in my opinion and their relationship often felt a bit shallow, and seemed to only exist on the one hand because of the feelings that Charlie fostered and on the other, because Laura liked having her ego inflated by them. There was too much childish pettiness that got in the way of more complex topics.

I did not care much for the mystery side of it, maybe because it started getting too plotty, there were too many undeveloped characters and plotlines that did not need to be there. In the end it all got a bit sloppy and messy, and it was clear that nothing would really get solved.

I would still be interested in reading her other work, but this one might just not have been the right book for me.

Well written, enjoyable book. It did take me a while to get into it. The characters were mostly good, some I liked and some I couldn't connect with. Easy to read with an enjoyable storyline

This was a really enjoyable read, The writing is really strong and the descriptions of the relationships were amazing. I would definitely recommend this book.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature is a dark mystery with a nuanced exploration of friendship, family, and Ireland at same time.
The protagonist, Charlie, is a relatable character and Caroline O'Donoghue perfectly articulated how it can feel to be adrift and unsure in your twenties as well as how friendships can change from what they once were.
The story is well paced although I found it to be a little disjointed at times. The scenes set in England felt like a different book than those set in Clipim, Ireland. The mystery/thriller aspect of the novel just appeared and took a darker turn.

Review: Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O'Donaghue  ☘️

Scenes of a Graphic Nature is about Charlie, a young and struggling film graduate who has had most of her twenties taken up with caring for her father, who has cancer. While Charlie's mother is English and Charlie was born and raised in Essex, her father is from a rural island off the coast of Kerry in Ireland. While by his bedside, Charlie takes it upon herself to become her father's biographer, and writes the script for a feature film based on the mysterious incident which led to her father's exile from the island. The novel begins when Charlie is summoned to the Cork Film Festival to screen her film, where she has the epiphany that she is not actually that talented, her film is bad, and she knows absolutely nothing about the community she is representing in her film. Simultaneously, she learns that a great deal of what her father has told her about the incident and his upbringing in Ireland hasn't been entirely truthful...

I really surprised myself with how much I enjoyed this book. If you like 'coming of age' stories where the protagonist is late twenties/early thirties I think this is definitely for you. I also love the fact that the protagonist is a lesbian but that the story isn't just about her coming out as gay. Her relationship with her straight but bi-curious best friend Laura is unlike any friendship I have encountered while reading 'main-stream' fiction and I think many readers will resonate with it. I related painfully to Charlie, who feels her 20s are dwindling away while she works in a café to barely afford rent, trying to be happy for her more successful best friend and wondering why she can never catch a break. I loved how Charlie's cultural identity was explored in this novel, how she has always claimed to be Irish but when in Ireland realises she knows hardly anything about Irish history or culture, and is in fact as ignorant as Laura. I will admit, I wanted to slam the book down at times at the snootiness of Laura towards the Irish characters, and at how many of the Irish characters were depicted - I'm thinking of Dónal, Enda & Mary and Benjamin in particular. But I guess clichés are not untrue, but incomplete and the sadness of rural life and intergenerational trauma is a real thing. This is summed up very clearly by the ending of the story.
Overall, I do think the author handled this story with great sensitivity and I appreciated her acknowledgment of the Magdalen Laundries and Direct Provision within the landscape of the novel. I highly recommend this one 💯📚 and will definitely read whatever Caroline O'Donaghue brings out in the future.
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