Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O’Donoghue. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
Charlie Regan's life is complicated. Her career isn't going to plan leading to a side hustle selling intimate photos, her relationship with her best friend Laura is somewhat strained and everything is much harder to cope with because Charlie's father is terminally ill.
When It Takes a Village the short film — based on her father's childhood on Clipim an (fictional) island off the coast of county Kerry— Charlie wrote and directed with Laura is accepted into an Irish film festival, things start to look up.
There is just one problem, Charlie has never been to Ireland and she is terrified that everyone will hate the film and her portrayal of Irish people.
Following the film's debut in Cork, Charlie decides to travel to Clipim in order to finally get some answers about how and why her father was the only survivor of the fire in the schoolhouse. Realising that this is a community full of secrets, with an inability to talk about them, Charlie soon wonders whether her life is in danger.
There were occasions when I thought the story was beginning to get away from O'Donoghue — that there were simply too many different strands to pull together into a cohesive plot — yet she proved me wrong.
O'Donoghue writes great female characters, who happen to be queer, something that while we are seeing more of in fiction recently is still lacking in so many ways. Not every story with LGBTQ+ characters needs to be about coming out because gay, lesbian, bi+, trans, and non-binary people lead lives just as complicated as cishet people. Our sexuality is obviously important to us but in having it be one aspect of Charlie's life without being the only thing we learn about her, O'Donoghue provides the type of representation so many LGBTQ+ people — including me — crave.
Scenes of a Graphic Nature is a novel about connection, love, family, and identity which balances the emotional with the humorous leading to a complex tale full of interesting characters.
Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O’Donoghue is published by Virago and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format.