The Coast Road, set in Ireland in the mid-nineties when divorce was still illegal in Ireland, is a story about three women and their families. The women live in one of those small towns where everyone knows the business of everyone else in town and lives to talk about it, so when Colette convinces Dolores and her husband to rent her their empty cottage, a cottage in sight of the family home, secrets are not destined to be kept for very long. And that's going to be a big problem for all three of them.
First we meet, Izzy and her husband James. Izzy is not particularly happy with James, a local politician, these days. James probably feels the same way, but he doesn't seem to focus a whole lot on anything much other than staying popular with the voting public, so he's happy enough, really, with things as they are. Next up, are Dolores and Donal, parents of three small children, who are working hard just to make ends meet. Now, Colette, who has abandoned her own three sons to live with a man in Dublin, offers them the chance to earn a little rental income on a property otherwise never used so, of course, they jump at the chance.
The three women obviously have cracks in their marriages, but in 1995 Ireland there is little a woman can do to end an unhappy marriage or to escape an abusive husband. She is forever tied to her husband in the eyes of the law as well as, according to the Church, in the eyes of God. And this combination of Izzy, who gets roped into helping Colette see her son behind her husband's back; Dolores, whose husband recognizes just how vulnerable Colette is as soon as he sees her; and Colette, who in her despair turns to drink, is not one that is going to help anybody's marriage.
It's hard to imagine that divorce was still illegal in Ireland only 30 years ago, but I remember what a big deal it was when the referendum on legalizing divorce passed by a one percent margin in 1995. Alan Murrin has done a remarkable job capturing that period and the quiet despair that so many thousands of Irish women experienced then. Izzy, Colette, and Dolores are three women right on the cusp of being at least offered choices they have never had before. Whether or not it will be too late for them is the rest of the story Murrin tells in The Coast Road.
And it's a good one.
Alan Murrin publisher photo |
(The Coast Road will be published on June 4, 2024. Look for it then.)