A lovely multi-generational story set in New York and Ireland in the aftermath of 9/11. The story follows three generations of the same family as we discover what happened to each of them and how they ended up in the current day.

Airey’s prose is both sharp and immersive, capturing the weight of unspoken histories and the quiet defiance of women who refuse to be erased. Confessions isn’t just a story about family secrets; it’s a testament to the power of reclaiming one’s past.

An exceptional debut with exquisite writing that portrays an intercontinental and multigenerational saga of women

Congratulations to Catherine Airey on this accomplishment!

Thanks NetGalley and Viking Books UK for the invite to read this ARC!

Confessions is very well poised to become the most talked about literary fiction this year!

We follow 3 POVs of women spread across the US and Ireland set in three different timelines -

Just after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Cora Brady is suddenly an orphan after losing her father and is now embarking on a transatlantic journey to Ireland to live with her aunt who she didn’t know existed.

In 1974, sisters Maire and Roisin sisters are navigating unique circumstances - with Roisin and the boy next door Michael’s intervention, Maire’s life is about to change forever.

Burtonport, 2019 - Lyca Brady is living with her mother Cora and aunt Ro in their infamous old house that has its share of secrets buried deep within it.

Review -

This is a deeply character driven novel, but one that also excels in storyline construction. Airey weaves a tale around these 3 women and brings them together in a way you can never imagine!

This is in no way an easy read. The novel encompasses so many difficult themes - mental health issues, the aftermath of 9/11 and abortion rights - while also exploring convoluted sister dynamics, decades old secrets and the complex emotions of a teenager who’s just orphaned.

It’s the writing that takes the spotlight of course and portrays women who belong to each other yet are distant, cold and almost estranged as oceans separate them - the twist of fate intertwining their lives in an impossible manner.

The style of narration and the presentation format are unique - although some might find the jumping timelines and POVs slightly confusing initially. But the gravity of the story is powerful enough to sweep us away into its immersive, captivating world.

Definitely worth a read if you are a fan of the genre!

This inter-generational, multilayered saga flits between the story of two sisters, Róisín and Máire, in 1970s Donegal and teenager Cora Brady who finds herself alone in New York City in the aftermath of 9/11. It’s an ambitious debut that I have a hunch is going to make quite a splash this year.

Given current affairs stateside, its publication date feels auspicious and timely. Airey explores the isolation and alienation experienced by Irish immigrants and the silencing of women’s voices - especially in relation to reproductive rights and sexual freedom.

In rural Ireland, some of the key scenes take place in an old school building which is taken on by a primal therapy group known as ‘The Screamers’. I didn’t realise until later, that Airey drew this concept from real life and based it on the Atlantis commune who owned a house in Burtonport in the seventies. It’s a seductive concept (I’m drawn to the idea of a Scream Shed at the bottom of the garden) as is the use of the choose your own adventure sub-plot/narrative (I loved these books as a kid).

The Scream School acts almost like a portal to another world - broadening the sisters’ horizons and offering them escape routes and glimpses of other ways to live. For me, this aspect of the story worked really well. I was less convinced by the choose your own adventure thread. To me it seemed stapled on to the story and took me away from the action at key points, as did the gaming narrative.

The plot of this tale is really propulsive and Airey weaves in repeated references to connect the different women’s stories. In this way she reminds us of inherited and residual trauma and its repercussions through the generations. I did feel at times that this story was overstuffed with themes and ideas. There was little room for characters to breathe and for the reader to reflect. There’s a lot to love yet I hope she pares it back a little in her next novel. I’ll most certainly be reading it. Confessions is published on 23 January in the UK and Ireland.

With thanks to @vikingbooksuk, @penguinukbooks and @netgalley for granting me an eARC for this review.

A story about the complications involving an extended family after the 9/11 attacks. I understand the impact as written in the book and the effect of the dreadful attack on the family but i found the timelines difficult to follow at times. The times and narrator changes regularly.
The first half of the book i found depressing, the focus is on endless misery.

This is a very unusual read.
On one hand, it's the story of three generations of women. It's also a history of the decades that it covers and the two are so closely entwined. From 9/11 to the Irish abortion referendum and Celtic Tiger, from New York to a small village in Donegal. While not an easy read it's definitely a worthwhile one and I'm stunned that is a debut, the author is certainly one to watch.

I thoroughly enjoyed this multi-generational story set in Ireland and New York and featuring an extraordinarily fertile family of women.

There are secrets, hidden identities, interactions with big historical events like 9-11 and explorations of family rivalry. I had heard that it was being compared to The Goldfinch, but I must say that I enjoyed this book much more than that one.

I'm definitely going to be looking out for this book on the 2025 prize longlists.

Cora lost her mother years ago, she began to spiral a bit in her life, and at the age of 16 she loses her father in the devastation of 9/11. Now orphaned she is trying to survive and not get found out. Then she gets a letter from an aunt, her mother's sister that she had no idea existed. She packs up for Ireland, and the only thing she leaves is missing posters of her father in all their favourite places.

We explore a multi-generational story of 3 woman through their stories, the choices they make, and the trumas they carry.

The writing in this book was exactly what I wanted. For this to be a debut is wild, the author took on such a challenge writing a coherent story in many timelines, and give every characters' story justice. The journey the reader takes through love, loss, grief, and family secrets keeps the reader engaged from the first page. My one gripe is that the story and the relationship between some characters tied up to well up into a bow, and connected in a very convenient way that felt unnecessary. Over all an absolute stunning, powerful, and emotional read I will think about for a while.

Such a great exploration of different generations and families. This book was incredibly well written, and the story had me so engaged – each of the characters were well rounded and real that I didn’t want each of the different written eras to end.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

Cora Brady’s is missing. It is September 2001 and its the day of the Twin Towers disaster. She puts up posters asking if anyone has seen him but nothing. She is now all alone as her mother died years before. A letter arrives from an aunt offering her a new start.
She accepts but starts to find out a lot about her family.

I was a bit unsure going into this book, mainly due to it not really being my genre and also as it is considerably longer than most books I read. But, and this is important, I trusted the person who recommended it to me and, I guess, I am now hoping that you trust me too...
We start in New York City in 2001 and we all know the big thing that happened there that year. One of the missing is 16 year old Cora Brady's father. Her only remaining parent as we learn that her mother died when she was a young child. Soon after this event which rocked her life, she receives a letter from an Aunt back in Ireland...
Then we switch to County Donegal in 1974 and follow sisters Moira and Roisin as they grow up next door to Michael. We watch as Moira blooms as an artist and how she eventually joins the Screamers...
Finally we switch to Burtonport in 2018 and follow Lyca Brady as she lives with mother Cora and great aunt Ro(isin)...
And that's more than enough for you to go in with. How the lives of these, obviously related, women affect each other, and intertwine, is for you to discover exactly as the author intends. Suffice to say, and I am not usually a fan of family sagas, it held me rapt all the way through and, by the end, I was actually rather sad to have to leave the people who I had got close to during my time with them. Who I had laughed with, and at! Who I cried with, shouted at. Who I actually got a bit over-involved with. Who I had started to call friends. But then that's what you need from a character driven book!
And boy did they put me through some emotions all the way through, spitting me out at the end exhausted, spent, but wholly satisfied.
And then, when I finished, I found out that this is a debut. No Blooming Way. Absolutely not. It reads as a completely established author. It's bold and confident and, well, brilliant. And I am so glad I had someone point me to it and, I hope, maybe I have pointed, even just one person, to it with this review.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

A really interesting and engaging debut, brimming with potential. There were so many interesting themes of family, intergenerational trauma and women's rights. The sisters were fascinating, complex characters that I would liked to stay with for even longer. However, I did feel that the plot of the book was prioritised over the characterisation. I wish there weren't so many different plotlines crammed in and we could have had more in-depth studies on a select few as it became hard to feel invested in the final outcome when the timelines and plot flitted around so much.

Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. Enjoyed the beginning and particularly like the letter section towards the end but the rest didn’t hold my attention. Didn’t really warm to any of the characters and not able to work out the significance of Sanjeet.

This book was definitely not what I expected and I am still gathering my thoughts on it, but I know one thing, it will stay with me for a very long time. This book is at times heart-breaking and devastating, but at the centre of it all is generations of women who become the victims of the patriarchy and are taken advantage of by it, with history repeating itself throughout the generations. I think this is an astonishing debut and think people are best going into this somewhat blind because I personally believe the power of this book comes from the not knowing and pushing to know what comes next. I would highly recommend this book but flag the content warnings first.

Absolutely adored this book! It was so easy to read but so rich in character detail, and the way that all the different plotlines were woven together was seamless. I really enjoyed the combination of New York and Ireland as the settings, and the way that each new piece of the puzzle gave you a new perspective on each character. An amazing family saga!

Ireland has always had wonderful writers and Catherine Airey is a new one to watch. Her writing is precise, emotive, incisive, imaginative and compelling. Heartbreaking events and secrets form the underlying story, with characters who bear the burden and pay the price. Moving from New York and the Twin Towers travesty to Ireland, three generations of women tell their stories. Wide-ranging, each story provides another clue, another secret unveiled. ‘Confessions’ will probably win many awards.

This book had me, from the very first pages right through to the end and I loved it. On the first page is a quote from Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories:

<blockquote>'She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.' </blockquote>

And this perfectly sets the scene for this story about three generations of women. Focusing on each as a teenager, and how they cope with the magnitude of the situations they face. Each decision creating ripple lines, carrying their secrets far into the future. Fragments of each to be slowly revealed, and like pieces of a puzzle joined back together to create a fuller picture of their combined past. While not a thriller, there is a breadth and suspense which makes it a hard book to put down.

Few books I have read, have such a dramatic start.

<blockquote>'Two days after she disappeared, most of my mother's body washed up in Flushing Creek.'</blockquote>

Cora is reflecting on her past and on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She is a teenager, skipping school and looking forward to spending the day with her boyfriend when she hears the news about the World Trade Centre and comes to the realisation that her father would have been in the tower at the time.

While there is an urgency and despair in these pages, there are also beautiful moments of such poignancy. This combination of writing continues throughout the book and creates such warmth.

<blockquote>'There was a bowl of dry oatmeal on the kitchen island. My father prepared it each morning to encourage me to eat breakfast, as if the effort of pouring out the oats from the packet was the thing stopping me from eating.'</blockquote>

There are four stories, the first is Cora's, then we go back to the childhood of Cora's mother and sister, Maire and Roisin in a small town in Ireland and then the book concludes with Cora's daughter Lyra's. Each story creates and unravels many of the family's secrets and history, but there are common issues in each, such as growing up with the loss of (or without) a father, pregnancy, religion, and mental health.

There are some interesting choices in this book, such as Maire's story which is told in second person, which I found a little strange. In addition, the sections of the book are also introduced with an excerpt of an old 'choose your own adventure' computer game, which I actually thought was very clever and was another interesting link between the generations. Finally, there are a couple of bits at the end which didn't fully sit with me such as Scarlet's story and the outcome with the mansion. But all in all, it is a strong novel of hope, love, loss and making peace with oneself and the past.

Airey is a masterful author, and I am sure that I will be looking out for whatever she does next. Highly recommend!

Confessions is a multi-faceted story of 4 Irish women - 2 sisters, a daughter and granddaughter. I enjoyed it but, mainly due to the disjointed way it is written across multiple time lines, I found it hard to remember who was who and where we were in the story. I’m not sure I really got to know any of the characters in depth as we meet them at different points and often through other characters eyes.
However, the narrative was compelling and it is exteremely accomplished for a debut novel.

Loved this debut novel, out in the UK 23rd January.

Cora is left alone in NYC in Sept 2001 when her father dies in the Twin Towers. She travels to Ireland to live with her Mother‘s sister, who had been estranged from the family for years. We travel back in time to learn about Cora‘s mother, Maire, and her aunt Roisin, and then forwards as Cora‘s own daughter starts to piece together the family history.

Ultimately this is a book about women‘s agency over their own bodies and how they are treated by men. Only two little niggles - there was an unnecessary computer game storyline and the ending was slightly pat. 1w

I absolutely loved the journey that I was brought on by this book. Although there were times when I was jolted from one reality to another, I enjoyed the twists and turns. Catherine Airey is a true storyteller of the best kind.