Book Review: Good Eggs

•  Author: Rebecca Hardiman

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I was looking for a quick and fun read; this was her debut novel, and it looked right

******

    Like her character Millie Gogarty, Hardiman tells a good yarn.

 

    But unlike the elderly Millie, who tends to embellish and stretch out her story telling, Hardiman is concise and keen. She writes a pithy and funny tale about the kerfuffle that three generations of a Irish family find themselves in during the rainy season of their discontent.

    Yet, despite their meanderings, mistakes, and muddled lives, we know, deep down, they are good eggs. Why, it says so right on the cover.

    The middle guy in this saga is Kevin, a son and a father who is trying to hold their lives together, but like many a hapless dad, finds that no one really listens to him. Still, he tries.

     He loves his wife (mostly); he adores his four kids (even when they act out), and he does his best for his mother as she enters the purple phase of her life.

    His mother is Millie, elderly and kinda, sorta losing it, but determined to continue as she always has. She wants to keep her seaside house in Dúg Laoghaire, outside of Dublin, but when she gets arrested for mindlessly shoplifting at her local store, gives in to Kevin's insistences she bring in a caretaker.

    Then there's Aideen, Kevin's 16-year-old daughter. She is, well, she's a moody teenager who hates her family, hates her school, and hates her life -- and she isn't shy about letting everyone know. She does not take kindly to her parents' plan to send her to a nearby boarding school.

    There are a few other characters -- Aideen's perfect but bitchy twin, Nuala (who Aideen calls Nemesis); Kevin's mate's mother, Maeve, who gives Kevin the what for: Miss Bleekland, the school's disciplinarian (and old maid); Sylvia, the American helpmate, and assorted friends, neighbors and relatives -- mostly well drawn, but just around for decoration. Except for one of them. Well, maybe two.

    So that's the setting, and the story takes off from there. It's a short book of 323 pages -- and 64 chapters! -- so it moves quickly. It may take a while to introduce everyone before the real action starts, but then things hurry along. 

    It's funny, gentle, and moving.