Shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize " Confessions is a remarkable debut. A
complex and compulsive read that unravels the intricate twists and revelations among three
generations of women with elegance and urgency." —Miranda Cowley Heller author of The Paper
Palace A “dazzling puzzle box of a novel” (Oprah Daily) following three generations of women as
decades of secrets spill out of the attic of one family’s mysterious old home in rural
Ireland—a propulsive page-turning story about the power of choice. New York City late
September 2001. The walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady’s
father is there the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. When a letter arrives from
an aunt she didn’t know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life the name jogs a
memory: an old videocassette game Cora used to play as a child where two sisters must save the
students of a mysterious boarding school. County Donegal 1974. An eclectic group of artists
known as the Screamers arrives in Burtonport and moves into the old schoolhouse down the road
from where Róisín lives with her older sister Máire. Alternately kind and cruel brilliant
artist Máire is a mystery to Róisín as is Máire’s relationship with the boy next door
Michael. When the Screamers look to hire an artist in residence Róisín enlists Michael’s help
to get Máire the job setting in motion a chain of events that will put an ocean between the
sisters and threaten to tear them apart forever. Burtonport 2018. Lyca Brady lives in a
sprawling old house with her mother Cora and great aunt Ro. Abortion has just been legalized
in Ireland and Lyca is struggling to find herself outside her mother’s activism. An unexpected
message from a childhood friend sends Lyca searching her house’s mysterious attic with its
strange collection of old medical equipment piles of paperwork and dusty boxes of ancient
video games. There she unearths secrets hidden for decades—secrets perhaps better left
unknown. Catherine Airey’s haunting debut spins a mesmerizing story of family and fate
survival and revelation examining the irresistible gravity of the past—how it endures through
generations pervasively present even when buried or forgotten.
