Catherine Airey’s debut novel “Confessions” is a haunting, intricate tapestry that weaves together the lives of three generations of women across time and continents. This ambitious work creates a mesmerizing examination of family bonds, hidden truths, and the persistent pull of the past. Set against the backdrop of a mysterious house in rural Ireland and the bustling streets of post-9/11 New York, Airey constructs a narrative that is as complex as it is compelling.
The novel’s structure is brilliantly conceived, with multiple narrative threads that gradually intertwine to reveal a fuller picture of the characters’ shared history. Airey shifts between perspectives and time periods with remarkable confidence for a debut novelist, creating a reading experience that feels like piecing together an elaborate puzzle—one where each new revelation shifts our understanding of what came before.
The House That Haunts: Setting as Character
At the heart of “Confessions” by Catherine Airey is a striking Victorian house in Burtonport, County Donegal—a location that functions not just as setting but as a character in its own right. Known locally as the “Screamers’ house” after a commune of artists who once inhabited it, the building carries layers of history and secrets within its walls.
The house exists as a physical manifestation of the novel’s central themes:
- Haunting pasts that refuse to stay buried
- Patterns that repeat across generations
- Spaces where identities are both formed and fractured
- The thin boundaries between reality and imagination
Airey imbues the house with such vivid presence that readers will feel they’ve walked its corridors and peered into its attic. The building’s shifting purpose throughout decades—from Victorian school to artist commune to family home and beyond—parallels how stories and identities transform across generations while maintaining core truths.
Three Women, Three Timeframes, One Narrative
What makes “Confessions” particularly impressive is how Catherine Airey handles her three primary narrative threads:
- Róisín (1970s): The youngest Dooley sister’s perspective offers a window into rural Irish life and the complex dynamics between herself, her sister Máire, and their neighbor Michael. Through Róisín’s eyes, we experience the arrival of the Screamers and witness the pivotal decision to send Máire to them as artist-in-residence—a choice that will echo through decades.
- Máire/Cora’s mother (1979-1981): Perhaps the novel’s most emotionally devastating section follows Máire in New York, where her mental health deteriorates amid a series of traumatic experiences. This section, with its raw depiction of vulnerability and exploitation, forms the painful core of the family’s fractured history.
- Lyca (2018): Cora’s teenage daughter navigates her own coming-of-age while uncovering family secrets hidden in letters and diaries. Her discovery of a vintage video game called “Scream School,” featuring her family home on its cover, begins her quest to understand the house’s—and her family’s—complicated past.
The Power of Untold Stories
One of the novel’s greatest strengths is how Airey explores the power of storytelling itself. Throughout “Confessions,” characters craft narratives about themselves and others as means of survival, connection, or control. The book is preoccupied with how stories can both reveal and conceal truth—and how the stories we tell about ourselves shape who we become.
This meta-textual element is highlighted through Róisín’s various forms of storytelling:
- Her childhood ghost stories about the Victorian schoolhouse
- The text-based adventure games she creates with Scarlett
- Her obsessive diary entries, rewriting the same stories over and over
- The letters exchanged between her and Michael
It’s through these fragmented narratives that Lyca (and by extension, the reader) must sift to discover what truly happened to her grandmother and great-aunt. The novel’s title—”Confessions”—points to this central concern: the power of revealing truths, however painful they might be.
A Critical Assessment: Strengths and Limitations
Airey’s debut demonstrates remarkable ambition and skill, though it is not without its challenges.
What Truly Shines
- Character Development: Each woman’s voice feels authentically distinct, with Airey capturing their interior lives with unusual depth and nuance. Máire’s sections are particularly harrowing and vivid.
- Structural Innovation: The novel’s fractured chronology and multiple perspectives might have become unwieldy in less capable hands, but Airey manages them with impressive control, creating suspense while avoiding confusion.
- Thematic Richness: Airey tackles weighty themes—mental illness, sexual trauma, abortion, identity, family loyalty—with sensitivity and without simplistic moral judgments.
- Setting: Both rural Ireland and post-9/11 New York are rendered with atmospheric detail that grounds the narrative in specific time and place.
Where It Occasionally Falters
- Pacing: The middle sections in 1970s/80s occasionally suffer from uneven pacing, with some segments feeling rushed while others linger perhaps longer than necessary.
- Resolution: While the novel’s ambiguous ending respects the complexity of its themes, some readers may find certain storylines left too open-ended, particularly regarding Lyca’s ultimate decision about the letters.
- Shifting Perspectives: The transitions between first and third person narration, while generally well-handled, occasionally create emotional distance at moments when deeper connection might benefit the reader.
- Secondary Characters: While the three central women are fully realized, some secondary characters (particularly Michael) occasionally feel more like plot devices than fully developed individuals.
A Novel Steeped in Literary Tradition
“Confessions” by Catherine Airey draws from rich literary traditions while establishing its own distinct voice. Readers might detect echoes of:
- Anne Enright’s unflinching exploration of Irish family dynamics
- Donna Tartt’s masterful plotting and atmosphere building
- Ali Smith’s experimental approaches to time and perspective
- Louise Kennedy’s evocation of Northern Irish communities
Yet Airey doesn’t merely imitate these influences—she synthesizes them into something uniquely her own. The novel’s exploration of how trauma reverberates across generations, its careful excavation of secrets, and its interest in how stories shape reality mark Airey as a distinctive new voice in literary fiction.
Final Verdict: A Remarkable Debut
“Confessions” announces Catherine Airey as a significant literary talent whose future work will be eagerly anticipated. Despite minor shortcomings typical of ambitious debuts, the novel succeeds brilliantly in its core aims:
- Creating three dimensional, flawed, and deeply human characters
- Constructing a narrative that rewards close reading and reflection
- Exploring complex ethical questions without offering simplistic answers
- Depicting how the past continues to shape the present, even when forgotten or deliberately buried
For readers who appreciate literary fiction that challenges as much as it satisfies, “Confessions” by Catherine Airey offers a reading experience that lingers long after the final page. Airey has crafted a novel that feels both contemporary in its concerns and timeless in its exploration of family, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.
This is not a quick or easy read, but it is an immensely rewarding one that establishes Airey as a novelist of remarkable promise. “Confessions” earns its place alongside recent acclaimed literary releases like Gabrielle Zevin’s “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” and Yael van der Wouden’s “The Safekeep,” offering a reading experience as thought-provoking as it is emotionally affecting.
Reading Experience: Navigating the Maze
Reading “Confessions” by Catherine Airey feels appropriately like moving through a labyrinth—one constructed with purpose and precision. The novel’s structure mirrors its thematic concerns with hidden passageways, dead ends, and unexpected revelations. It rewards attention and patience, gradually yielding its secrets as the reader progresses deeper into its narrative architecture.
While not a conventional page-turner, Airey creates a different kind of compelling reading experience—one where the drive to understand these women and their interconnected histories becomes increasingly urgent. By the novel’s conclusion, when Lyca must decide what to do with the knowledge she has gained, readers will feel the weight of history and choice that defines the characters’ lives.
In crafting such an accomplished first novel, Catherine Airey demonstrates not just technical skill but emotional intelligence and thematic ambition rarely seen in debut works. “Confessions” lingers in the mind long after reading, its characters and their dilemmas continuing to haunt—much like the house at the center of their shared story.
