By Melanie Maure
- Pub Date: 2024
- Genre: Irish fiction
- Where I bought this book: The Bookmatters Bookstore, Milford, Ohio
- Why I bought this book: It has Belfast in the title
- Bookmark used: The Bookshelf bookstore
The blurbs for this novel seriously underestimate the emotional impact it pommels. It's portrayed as a novel of two women, with the special bonds of twinness and sisterhood, whose lives diverge for years before uniting through fate and faith.
Well, if it were only that simple.
Instead, it has Aelish, the "good" twin, a devout Catholic who joins the Sisters of Bethlehem and starts down the road to a life of prayer and service, and Isabel, the "bad" twin, rambunctious and rebellious. Both are taken to a Catholic orphanage after their parents are killed in the bombing of Belfast by the Nazis in World War II.
Isabel, known as Izzy, is soon sent to another nearby home, run by a order of French nuns known as the Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Secours. She eventually rejects the church and runs away, moving to Newfoundland, Canada, with her boyfriend, Declan, who becomes her husband.
But after a few years, the sisters reunite and live in the orphanage-convent they grew up in, where Aelish now serves as Sister Clare. Izzy is grateful for the housing, but uncomfortable with the church.
The tale goes back and forth from the sisters' early days as young girls, until their becoming older woman with stories and secrets. Sister Clare is devout, but wonders if she made the right choices in life. Isabel is angry about the choices made for her, and lashes out at those who caused her pain.
Soon, the sisters together, in their separate ways, begin to question the work of the Mother and Baby Home near their own convent. It's in the early 1950s, and the homes are still seen as benevolent Christian organizations helping the young girls and women they take in and ostensibly care for. But their sisters' explorations runs into the reality of what church and state have both wrought.
This is a compelling tale, laced with melancholy, and Irish to the core in its setting, language, and poignancy.
