Popular fiction takes familiar, reality-based characters and puts them in the way of unexpected events or crises. Readers empathise with their predicaments, assessing fictional performances against their own knowledge of how the world works and how they themselves would react in similar circumstances.
Rachael English’s second novel takes a wealthy Dublin family and throws a grenade into their privileged existence. It is a fairly middle-class explosion: used to highly subsidised lives, the adult Shine children must learn to fend for themselves when the family business is hit by recession.
Their father, Gus Shine, has allowed the debts of clients to endanger his accountancy practice. The family home on Palmerston Park is put on the market; monthly allowances stop; mortgage repayments are no longer covered by Daddy.
One of the reasons popular fiction has such a large following is that it tries to provide something for everyone. The best of the genre elevates stereotypes to characters that are recognisable but ultimately real.
For the most part English manages to achieve this in her new book, with four very different siblings whose features and flaws will appeal to a wide audience.
The youngest of the bunch is the protagonist, 29-year-old Tara, a sensible and kind journalist who prizes the welfare of others above her own. Tara may live at home – with her sponger boyfriend, Craig – but she is the most independent of the siblings, and by far the most sympathetic character.
Next in line is Niall, a business graduate with no interest in business, wandering the world at his parents’ expense. Veronica, who is a year older than Niall, is equally lazy and immature. Eldest brother Damien is a lefty councillor, vocal in his criticisms of others yet unable to meet his own exacting standards behind closed doors. At the helm are Joan and Gus, a salt-of-the earth Limerick couple who came from little and made their fortune through hard work.
A subplot set in an underprivileged part of Dublin contrasts nicely with the struggles of the siblings. When Tara is sent to cover the fatal shooting of a teenage boy at St Monica’s Mansions she meets eight-year-old Ben, mitching school and offering his help for €100.
Bargained down to an ice cream, Ben introduces Tara to his grandmother, Carmel, a woman in her 40s who looks after Ben and his sister because their mother “lives in Australia”.
Persuaded to write a story about the mansions, Tara becomes friends with Carmel and discovers what “Australia”, and true hardship, really mean.
The characters who come to life are those with many sides. Pedantic Damian repels with his sermonising but is redeemed by his love of children. Gus’s lamenting about the good old days is balanced with humour.
Carmel mistrusts Tara initially but matches the young woman’s generosity and spirit with her own. Veronica’s husband, Ferdia, is a barrister struggling to earn a living – “maximum attitude, minimum wage”.
Tara’s doormat status at times stretches credibility, as does her willingness to support her layabout boyfriend. Later in the narrative she acts as benefactor to her brother Niall. Her complete lack of superficiality – including a byline photograph likened to Worzel Gummidge – and lack of interest in material possessions are commendable but unlikely attributes in 21st-century urban Ireland.
At the other end of the scale is Veronica, moonlighting as an events manager while spending her time drinking champagne and shopping. Her ingenious ways of avoiding reality, and parking fines, are funny, but there is a despair underlying her actions that needs further examination to interest.
Although her self-centredness and shallowness are publicly punished, the instant-gratification mentality is not explored. It is easy to dismiss her as a stereotype.
Lots of readers will know English from her day job as one of the presenters of Morning Ireland, on RTÉ Radio 1. Her background in journalism is evident throughout the book. Tara is a news reporter from the lower end of the food chain. Her paper and its editor are convincingly portrayed, as are the pack of journalists that gather around various tragedies, eager for a soundbite.
The unglamorous reality of journalism is shown through Tara’s job, which sees her shunted around Dublin to a host of nonevents while her senior colleagues take the limelight.
The author criticises a media culture predicated on dizzying highs and terrifying lows. Sensationalism and firebrand opinions take precedence over pressing local matters. English skilfully weaves these insights into the story through her characters, helping to jolly along a predictable but readable plot.
