Fiction: With a cover quote from Cathy Kelly comparing her to Anita Shreve, Joanna Trollope and Zoë Heller, the bar has been set high for Kate Holmquist's novel, The Glass Room.
Described as a story of intimacy, betrayal and learning to let go, it opens on the day of Louisa Maguire's 37th birthday, the day she decides to tell her husband, Ben, that she wants a divorce. Readers will want to know why an apparently intelligent woman like Louisa, an American who came to Ireland and who has her own successful photography business, married a man like Ben, who is a feckless womaniser and seems not to care about either his wife or two children.
In order to find out, Louisa has to undertake an inevitable journey of self-discovery, which begins when she hears of the death of an aunt, her mother's sister. In learning of Alice's death, Louisa is forced to recall the summer when she was 17 and went to stay with the eccentric artist in her house in the Hamptons.
This is where the novel comes most vividly alive, with evocative descriptions of this iconic part of the States and the very particular type of people who go there. Louisa's 17-year-old self is a spectator, the outsider who knows that she will never be a part of what is going on, no matter how hard she tries. Naturally, by not trying, she is seen as both intriguing and someone to be conquered by the monied teenagers who populate the area.
Louisa continues to maintain her distance from them, both because of her feelings of inadequacy and a certain disdain for their lifestyles, but she is eventually both surprised and flattered when one of them, Foster, takes an interest in her.
Inevitably, she falls in love with him and it is he who she brings to the glass room at the top of her aunt's house, her secret hideaway and a room built years earlier as a photographer's studio. All through the hot summer she has been waiting to make love to Foster but, as events move beyond her control, she ultimately leaves without saying goodbye to him and doesn't return to the Hamptons again.
The final section of the novel moves back to the present and Louisa's discovery of the fact that her aunt has left her her entire estate. It is at this time that Foster again crosses Louisa's path and she is given the opportunity perhaps, after all, to live the life that she once thought she was going to have.
It is clear throughout the book that events during her adolescent summer in the Hamptons have had a profound effect on Louisa - from the people she met there, to her relationship with her bohemian aunt, to the death of her mother - which became part of the reason why she left. It is also clear that there are many issues which Louisa needs to face up to before she can move on with her life, break out of the glass room and lay the ghosts of the past to rest.
Kate Holmquist deals with all of this in a carefully crafted book written in a spare yet polished style. Her nuanced descriptions of summer in the Hamptons and of falling in love for the first time are perfectly paced, and in Louisa she has created a woman who is desperately trying not to make the same mistakes the second time around but who needs to understand herself in order to avoid them.
It is a story of putting the past into context and of looking back with the insights of experience in order to understand the actions of friends and acquaintances. This is a sharply observational novel and if you are a fan of Joanna Trollope, Anita Shreve or Zoë Heller, you will certainly find room on your bookshelf for Kate Holmquist.
Sheila O'Flanagan's latest book, Yours Faithfully, is published by Headline this month
The Glass Room By Kate Holmquist Penguin Ireland, 339pp. £10.99