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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Milton Public Library | NEA | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Putnam Main Public Library | NEA | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"An endearingly off-kilter coming-of-age story. . . . Debbie will win your heart." --People, "The Best New Books"
Selected as the One Dublin One Book choice for 2024
An exquisitely talented young Irish writer makes her literary debut with this powerful and haunting novel--a tale of love and family, depression and joy, and coming of age in the twenty-first century.
Eighteen-year-old Debbie was raised on her family's rural dairy farm, forty minutes and a world away from Dublin. She lives with her mother, Maeve, a skittish woman who takes to her bed for days on end, claims not to know who Debbie's father is, and believes her dreams are prophecies. Rounding out their small family is Maeve's brother Billy, who lives in a caravan behind their house, drinks too much, and likes to impersonate famous dead writers online. Though they may have their quirks, the Whites' fierce love for one another is never in doubt.
But Debbie's life is changing. Earning a place at Trinity College Dublin, she commutes to her classes a few days a week. Outside the sheltered bubble of her childhood for the first time, Debbie finds herself both overwhelmed and disappointed by her fellow students and the pace and anonymity of city life. While the familiarity of the farm offers comfort, Debbie still finds herself pulling away from it. Yet just as she begins to ponder the possibilities the future holds, a resurgence of strange dreams raises her fears that she may share Maeve's fate. Then a tragic accident upends the family's equilibrium, and Debbie discovers her next steps may no longer be hers to choose.
Gorgeous and beautifully wrought, Snowflake is an affecting coming-of-age story about a young woman learning to navigate a world that constantly challenges her sense of self.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this fresh and often humorous debut, Nealon follows a wry young Irish woman as she negotiates family burdens. After insecure narrator Deborah leaves her family's dairy farm in rural Kildare County for Trinity College, she doesn't exactly blossom--"The only thing I'm learning in college is how to hide"--but she does befriend Xanthe, a rich, glamorous student with whom she shares a fascination with and jealousy of the other's lifestyle (Xanthe finds it "amazing" that Deborah comes from the "proper countryside"; Deborah thinks five euros for a cup of tea is "daylight robbery"). While Deborah struggles to adjust to college life, her family begins to crack under long-simmering tensions. Her single mother, Maeve, who claims not to know the identity of Deborah's father, is dating a farmworker not much older than her daughter and has a penchant for "inhaling fresh whiffs of reality and exhaling her own mystery." Billy, her gruff yet caring uncle, lives in a caravan on the farm and strives to protect Deborah from her mother's mood swings. The Dublin scenes don't particularly stand out from myriad other campus novels, but the narrative acquires a burnishing glow once outside the confines of academe. When on the farm, this tale of two worlds vibrates on an otherworldly frequency. Agent: Marianne Gunn Connor, Marianne Gunn O'Connor Literary. (Sept.)
Booklist Review
A new student at Dublin's Trinity College by day and a dairy farmer also by day, Debbie is immediately overwhelmed by the harsh contrasts between her village life and the bustling place she commutes to every day. "I'm used to knowing a person's name, their dog and what their da is like drunk before I risk speaking to them." Her uncle, Billy, who runs the farm, insists she stick it out; he'll find whatever money she needs and look after his sister, Debbie's Mam, whose eccentricities, like dream-journaling and frolicking naked in nettle patches, often supersede her ability to care for herself. Quickly, Debbie makes a new friend, Xanthe, and even begins to thrive in her double life. Nealon's well-crafted debut loses no charm or sweetness for all the difficult things it juggles, including mental health issues, death, grief, and even suicide. Packed with emotion, terrific dialogue, raw and real characters, and spiritual elements, like Debbie's and Mam's dreams that seem to predict the future, it also never feels overfull. A genuine, wise, and promising debut.
