“In her clenched hand, the ashes felt like the remains of something destroyed.”
Heather Aimee O’Neill’s debut novel, The Irish Goodbye ( Henry Holt 2025) immediately called to mind Joyce Carol Oates’s We were the Mulvaneys (which I read in the ‘90s). Both are set in NY, both deal with family tragedy and family secrets, and both center around four siblings and how the tragedy impacted their childhoods and subsequently who they became as adults. Both also have themes of atonement, forgiveness and healing. I enjoyed both quite a bit.
In 1990, there is a fatal accident on Topher’s boat. This accident nearly destroys the family, and ultimately Topher takes his own life several years later. (That’s not really a spoiler, I promise.) Now adults, his sisters, Cait, Alice and Maggie, return to the family home for Thanksgiving in 2015. There, ghosts will be faced, secrets exposed, and lives forever changed again.
Cait, a divorced lawyer with twin children, has flown in from London. She intends to meet up with a high school crush, the brother of the boy who died on Topher’s boat. She’s flailing, struggling with her guilt over what happened that day and her last conversation with Topher. She is not happy.
Alice is overwhelmed. She has become the caregiver for her parents, who are aging. She also has to care for her own family. Her husband does the bare minimum. She is so angry at Cait for running away to London after Topher died. She is struggling to carve out time and space for herself, to reclaim her own identity, when she finds herself in a difficult position. She is not happy.
Maggie is the youngest. She was the last person to see Topher, the only note left was for her to not open the door. She still has so much anger and guilt, but she is clinging to happiness. Happiness being her relationship with Isabel, the woman she is bringing home for Thanksgiving to meet her very Catholic mother who doesn’t agree with her lifestyle.
Things are going to come to a head at Thanksgiving. Where will the Ryan family stand when the dust settles?
This is a really palatable book. I think book clubs will love it, and I can see why it’s a Reads with Jenna selection. It is a fantastic debut, with the story unraveling slowly and the alternating POVS working so well in carrying the plot. There’s no confusion over whose section you are in because the characters are so different. Each sister has their own independent issues that don’t take a backseat, which I love. It’s messy. It’s family.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 