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A Novel
by Charleen Hurtubise
Book Reviewed by:For readers of Colm Tóibín and Claire Keegan, Saoirse is a powerful novel set between the United States and Ireland about a woman who runs from her traumatic past and the secrets she carries to survive.
In Michigan, Sarah's childhood was defined by fear and silence. As a teenager, she saw a chance to escape and took it. Now, in 1999, she is an artist living on the rugged coast of Donegal, Ireland, where she is known as Saoirse (pronounced Sear-sha)―a name that sounds like the sea and means freedom in the language of her adopted country. And free is precisely how she is finally beginning to feel. Her partner and two beloved daughters are regular subjects of her paintings, and together they have made the safe home she always longed for. But Saoirse's secrets haunt her. No one must learn of the identity she has stolen in order to survive; they cannot know of the dangers that she crossed an ocean to escape.
When her artwork wins unexpected acclaim at a Dublin exhibition, the spotlight of fame threatens to unravel the careful lies that hold her world together. Journalists and admirers begin to ask questions about the mysterious artist from Donegal, and she fears the unwanted publicity will expose all that she has done.
Saoirse is an evocative, suspenseful exploration of the intimate relationship between art and life and the lies we tell ourselves in the name of reinvention.
The Prize
Early October 1999
The front door is open and the full length of Daithí fills the frame. He leans against the doorjamb, soaking in the unexpected heat from the autumn sunshine. The mid-morning brightness splits the surface of the bay into shards of light below the house, dazzling Saoirse for a moment as she pulls the car between the gate piers, past the slate sign Daithí has fastened to the wall. Here, in their remote corner of Donegal, houses have no numbers, only names. Teach Cuan na Míolta Móra.
Eloise is slumped in her car seat; she has fallen asleep somewhere along the winding coast road. Saoirse can't bear to think of her youngest daughter's face when the public health nurse cooed, tickled her thighs, and then surprised her with an injection in the arm. The child had jumped at the sting, her bottom lip quivering. Eyes, soft and dark as her father's, filling with tears, looking at Saoirse as though she was the source of the betrayal, her own mother the ...
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/22/2026)
I'm reading the ARC of a novel called 'Saoirse' by Charleen Hurtubise. It's the story of an American woman who reinvents herself in Ireland after a devastating family life of drugs and crime. She assumes a new (and false) identity, but faces new challenges and new love. But will her secrets be re...
-Evonne_Benedict
In Saoirse, our titular protagonist's past is shown to the reader in fragments. Born Sarah Roy to a drug-addicted mother and an unknown father, and rechristened Sarah Gagneux when her mother marries, she spends her childhood in Michigan forced to engage in criminal acts by her abusive stepfather. Now eighteen, when Sarah meets an Irish expat who shares her first name, and to whom she bears a resemblance, she sees a ticket to a new life in the form of this other Sarah's passport. Laced with trauma and tenderness, Saoirse is a remarkable feat of storytelling that spans decades and continents but never feels overwhelming or undercooked. It's a complex work, tackling themes of memory, reinvention, community, abuse, and love, but for all its twists and turns, its central thesis lies in its title: Saoirse, or freedom. As our protagonist boards her flight to her new life and eventually sheds her American identity and morphs from Sarah to Saoirse, the irony is baked in: she is free from her criminal past, but falls into a new set of entrapments as a woman living in conservative Irish society...continued
Full Review
(635 words)
(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).
Belinda McKeon, author of Tender and Solace
A novel as rich with narrative layers as the visual art of its protagonist, yet limned with trauma, with the consequences of secrecy and silence, and with the hope that can come from true connection and community, Saoirse is an audacious act of storytelling. Colin Walsh, author of Kala
Audacious and propulsive, a story that surges with emotional vitality―this is a dazzling novel.In Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise, the titular protagonist flees from the US to Ireland in the 1990s, escaping an abusive upbringing. When she becomes pregnant, she intends to do what Irish girls have done for decades—take a ferry to England to have an abortion. But when she realizes her stolen passport has expired, she is trapped with her unwanted pregnancy, as the procedure is not yet legal in Ireland, and won't be for years to come. The history of abortion in Ireland, and its legalization in 2018, is covered in another Beyond the Book article.
Lack of access to abortion is only one of the many obstacles faced by Saoirse, and millions of Irish women throughout history. While women living in Ireland today enjoy more freedoms and ...
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The landmark new novel from award-winning author Claire Keegan.
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