Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Discuss | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:
Kim Kovacs
Buy This Book
Francesca McDonnell Capossela's wonderful debut, Trouble the Living, opens in Northern Ireland during the late 1990s—the waning days of "the Troubles." Eighteen-year-old Brid has a complex family life; her mother is an IRA supporter, while her father is a violent drunk. Each of them feels trapped in their marriage, and Brid and her siblings constantly navigate the hazards of their parents' volatile relationship. It's clear that Brid's mother sees her daughter as a younger version of herself, attempting to groom her into a future IRA partisan—a role Brid at first relishes but later comes to regret.
Fast-forward eighteen years, and Brid is now a mother herself, living in California with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Bernie. As the plotline shifts to Bernie's story, readers will identify parallels between the complicated dynamics in both timelines; Bernie...
BookBrowse's reviews and "beyond the book" articles are part of the many benefits of membership and, thus, are generally only available to subscribers, including individual members and patrons of libraries that subscribe.
Join Today
If you liked Trouble the Living, try these:
by Michelle Gallen
Published 2022
A funny, fierce, and unforgettable read about a young woman working a summer job in a shirt factory in Northern Ireland, while tensions rise both inside and outside the factory walls.
by Anna Burns
Published 2018
Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize, Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.
The Witches at the End of the World
by Chelsea Iversen
Two sisters find themselves at odds in this historical fantasy set during a dark Norwegian winter.
This Is Salvaged
by Vauhini Vara
Stories of uncanny originality from Vauhini Vara, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
