SNOWFLAKE BY LOUISE NEALON: A BOOK REVIEW.
FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE UK IN 2021.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
Well, well. This is the book that large swathes of Dubliners will be reading this April, as it’s been chosen as the ‘book’ part of ONE DUBLIN ONE BOOK, formerly known as ONE CITY ONE BOOK, for 2024. Previous books have included DRACULA by Bram Stoker (2009) and THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde (2010).
I read SNOWFLAKE, by Kildare writer Louise Nealon, over the course of the Saint Patrick’s Day weekend just gone and, after a rocky start in which I was convinced that the book would turn out to be too wishy-washy and ‘precious’ for me, I settled into it and ended up really enjoying it, so it was a worthwhile venture after all.
So, what’s it all about, anyway? Debbie White is the heroine, a scared mouse of a young one who has to put away childish things when she gets a place studying English in Trinity College Dublin.
She commutes to and from her family’s dairy farm every day, so, while she might be a big posh Trinners-head for part of her week, she’s still very much tied to her family for the other part.
‘My uncle Billy lives in a caravan in a field at the back of my house.’
This, the first sentence of the book, is probably what led me to believe that the story would be too quirky and floaty for me, but Billy, an alcoholic with mental health problems, is quite an interesting character. He runs the dairy farm by himself, with a little help from his sister’s toy-boy lover, James.
Billy and his caravan have been a fixture in Debbie’s life for as long as she can remember. He’s always up for a bit of binge-drinking, story-telling or star-gazing from the rooftop of his caravan when Debbie is feeling in need of bucking up. The main things she worries about are her train-wreck of a mother, Maeve, and not fitting in at university.
Maeve is a disastrous and tragic figure. She collects shells from the beach and is obsessed with her night-time dreams, which she believes are prophecies.
Debbie has a bit of this dream-prophecy thing going on too, and she desperately does not want to end up like her haunted mother, for whom skinny-dipping in the ocean and sex with much younger men serve as Band-aids or panaceas.
When Maeve’s latest boy-toy meets an horrific end in the book, Maeve loses her shit completely. She engages in some episodes of self-harm that are really difficult to read about, one of which will put you in mind of a particularly grim episode of mob drama THE SOPRANOS, and Debbie and Billy both have to sacrifice their own time to care for her at home.
There were times while reading the book that I was begging and praying for the White family to put this troubled woman somewhere where she couldn’t hurt herself any more.
The mental health services for adults in Ireland don’t exactly cover themselves in glory in the book, and nor should they; they fall far below what the standard should be for such vital and crucial services. Maeve has a serious mental illness; she’s not just wildly eccentric. Are her family doing the right thing by her…?
Debbie’s college career in the venerable old university seems to consist mostly of excessive boozing (a characteristic no doubt inherited from Uncle Billy) and engaging in risky sexual behaviours (a gift from mum Maeve).
Luckily, she has one good friend, Xanthe- pronounced Zanthy, or Santy- a rich, stylishly-dressed vegan who, despite coming from a different world to Debbie’s, is happy to help her to navigate the ups and downs of college. The benefit of a good friendship is that both parties help each other through the rigours of life, and that’s definitely the case here.
There is an adorable and loyal bow-wow in the book called Jacob. Speaking of animals, I hated the scene in which Billy, the dairy farmer, is verbally abusing and physically whipping a cow with a length of Wavin (used for plumbing, made of plastic) pipe because she doesn’t get into position at the milking station quick enough for his liking.
It’s sad when Debbie is looking at all the cows being machine-milked and she’s wondering philosophically if they know ‘what’s being taken from them.’ I don’t think she’s solely referring to their milk. There’s a reference to a recent bus billboard in the book, a billboard that reads, DAIRY FARMING TAKES MOTHERS AWAY FROM THEIR BABIES: GO VEGAN.
Also, Debbie, the so-called heroine of this coming of age book, really upsets me in another chapter when she refuses to help free a little hedgehog who’s gotten himself stuck somewhere awkward.
Luckily, Uncle Billy, the detestable cow-whipper (Booooooo…!!!), saves the little prickly fella and looks after him, but I must say that I really didn’t like Debbie at that moment in time. Who wouldn’t want to help a hedgehog in distress?
Anyway, the ONE DUBLIN ONE BOOK edition of SNOWFLAKE was published in 2024 by Manilla Press, an imprint of Zaffre Publishing Group, a Bonnier Books UK company. The book will be featured at events all over Dublin during the month of April, so do try to catch some of them if you can. Over and out.
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