THIRST TRAP
by Gráinne O'Hare
Three housemates in Belfast deal with their grief after the death of a fourth friend, relying on alcohol, cocaine, sex, and even a few therapy sessions.
The three young women at the center of O’Hare’s debut—Róise, Maggie, and Harley—are closing out their 20s with a bang. Though “Róise assumed they would evolve naturally from twenty-something buck eejits into secure and self-actualized young women who had skincare regimes and remembered to pay the council tax on time,” this is definitely not on the agenda during the time period covered by the novel, which sees more than one 30th-birthday celebration. Since they moved in together as a foursome years back, both the rundown house itself and their friend group have suffered great depredations, with the biggest blow being the death of their fourth friend, Lydia, in a car crash. This loss was complicated by the fact that it happened very shortly after a drunken betrayal involving Róise’s boyfriend had everyone on the outs. Though Maggie sees a rather unhelpful therapist, the women’s approach to grief relies largely on self-medication and casual sex; there is so much drinking and partying in this book that readers may themselves begin to feel a bit hungover. Maggie sleeps with women, Róise sleeps with her sort-of boss, Harley sleeps with their landlord, who is also their coke dealer; all are grimly aware that nothing is as fun as it used to be, though the effect is somewhat lightened by O’Hare’s insightful and humorous depiction of their weltschmerz: “The music has been turned down low in the living room to accommodate a game of Never Have I Ever, which, when everyone is in their thirties, becomes less of a light-hearted drinking game and more of an informal support group.” It’s a little harder than it should be to keep the characters and their supporting cast straight, and the witty writing works better than the more serious aspects of the story, but these are forgivable flaws in a promising debut.
The New Sobriety will have to wait—the party novel is not dead. At least in Ireland.