Second album syndrome is a well-known problem afflicting musicians, but the challenge of following up a huge literary success must be an equally daunting prospect.
Anne Griffin’s debut novel, When All Is Said, was the bestselling debut of 2019 in Ireland, and has since sold a total of 120,000 copies across 16 languages. It was a gift of a story, told through the perfect structural device of Maurice Hannigan, an 84-year-old farmer, making five toasts over the course of an evening to the five most important people in his life.
Griffin has returned with her follow-up, Listening Still, and has found the delicate middle ground between giving the reader a book that is different but the same. There are many notable similarities between Listening Still and her debut and we even get a cameo appearance from When All Is Said’s Maurice Hannigan for good measure.
The book opens with the news that Gráinne and David Masterson have decided to retire early from their family business, the local undertakers, and are passing it on to their 32-year-old daughter Jeanie and her husband Niall. Jeanie has a special gift, which runs in the family: she is able to hear the final thoughts of the dead, which has given her a deep sense of duty about working as an undertaker.
The overall effect in both books is one of twinkling, lovable Irishness but it stops short of becoming something hackneyed
Jeanie’s parents’ decision to retire forces a personal crisis in Jeanie. Should she stay in her small hometown of Kilcross and carry on the family business or should she start over? Should she, as her husband suggests, get a dog, buy a house by the sea and start a family of their own? Or should she escape the small-town constraints and obligations that have held her all her life and try something new in London, where her childhood sweetheart lives?
It’s the dilemma that we all must face at some point in our lives: “It was like there was this other, wonderful version of me out there that perhaps I was supposed to be living,” she says at one point in the book.
The fact that Jeanie can hear the dead becomes quickly irrelevant, operating as a kind of quirky light relief to the main story, which Griffin unfolds skilfully, drawing the reader in tightly. She is a complex character, who doesn’t always do what the reader might like her to do, which makes her gratifyingly real, torn between head and heart, passion and duty. In fact, she behaves the way most of us probably would do in real life. She is weak and passive and also deeply passionate, but too scared to give herself what she wants, and instead she puts everyone else’s happiness before her own.
Essential ingredient
In other words, she is a typical Irish woman and Irishness is an essential ingredient in Griffin’s stories, from the small towns to the large landscapes to the agricultural life to the sense of humour. The overall effect in both books is one of twinkling, lovable Irishness but it stops short of becoming something hackneyed, which I suspect plays a big part in Griffin’s international appeal.
Griffin’s writing is even more assured in this novel, and her confidence is particularly evident in her control of her large cast of family, friends and funeral parlour clients, which call to mind Marian Keyes’ vast arrays of lovable and entertaining characters.
There are deep thoughts sown beneath the light and charming surfaces of Griffin's novels
There are some skittish moments throughout the story, perhaps an indicator of those aforementioned second-novel nerves – the big family secret in the book yields a small payoff for the reader, while the French storyline stretches credulity and the reader’s goodwill. But these issues are minor and won’t bother Griffin’s fans. The story is ultimately absorbing and heartwarming and holds the reader’s attention until the end.
If someone was to ask what Anne Griffin’s books are about, the answer would be more complex than you might expect. Listening Still is about taking risks. It’s about how sometimes, when you think you’re being safe and protecting yourself from getting hurt, you’re often hurting yourself more than you would by just taking the risk in the first place. It’s about the truth and how brave we must be to tell the truth, not just to others, but particularly to ourselves. As Joan Didion wrote, we all have to “eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves”.
There are deep thoughts sown beneath the light and charming surfaces of Griffin’s novels. Her books are fable-like, deep musings on life, mortality, and what makes a life worth living, philosophy for everyday readers, cleverly disguised as a good old-fashioned story. And if that’s not a recipe for another bestseller, I don’t know what is.
