This is my final post for Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. I’ve really enjoyed my reading for the event with so many strong, memorable voices, and this choice was no exception.

I heard about The Amendments by Niamh Mulvey (2024) through Susan’s review.  It was so appealing I decided it would be my indie bookshop purchase of the month (I need to stop saying I have a resolution to buy one book a month from an indie bookshop or publisher, because it’s never just one 😀 ) and it was a great choice.

There are three main timelines throughout the novel. In London, 2018 Nell’s partner Adrienne is pregnant with their first child and Nell is spiralling with anxiety and ambivalence.

“Adrienne, unfortunately, was not just an object, not just a saviour, not just a happy ending. Adrienne, it turned out, was a person with her own dreams and needs and desires. And those were: more life, more love, which was to say, which is to say – a baby.”

In Ireland, 1982 Nell’s mother Dolores has left home and moved to Dublin, where she becomes involved in a feminist group campaigning for pro-choice reproduction rights (one of the amendments of the title, the other taking place in 2018).

“‘The biggest problem in this country is that people are so scared of asking questions. I don’t know why we’re all so afraid of each other.’

Mary laughed suddenly as if she had only just realised this. She looked at Dolores, as if they were both sharing in this joke, this realisation, together, and Dolores laughed too, though she was uncertain, she felt there was so much she did not yet see.”

In Ireland 2001, studious Nell is struggling with her sexuality and has joined an all-female religious organisation hoping for answers:

“She returned to school that September feeling as if the things she used to count on were all changing in ways she did not at all approve of and this disapproval extended to include her own feelings.”

It is the escalation of events at this time which drive the novel. Nell is so confused, so full of feelings she doesn’t know what to do with, and this builds to a tragedy truly awful and very believable.

Loving Adrienne and recognising that her unresolved feelings from this time threaten her present, Nell agrees to couples therapy. But in order to be entirely honest with both herself and Adrienne, Nell needs to return home to Dolores.

Dolores has deep regrets from her past too, as well as her contemporary worries about Nell. What Mulvey demonstrates so clearly is how much can go unsaid even in relationships grounded in a deep love, and how damaging this can be.

“Dolores wakes up every day of her life with a feeling of worry around Nell, the pain is like a muscle that aches with overuse.”

In exploring the characters’ past and moving them towards a more hopeful future, Mulvey juggles the timelines and the themes with great subtlety. Multiple timelines are always tricky but these were finely balanced throughout and each enhanced the understanding of the other.

The healing that occurs felt hopeful without being sentimental. Nell achieves self-acceptance, if not quite self-forgiveness; resolution if not redemption.

I thought The Amendments was hugely accomplished and very readable. The various female characters were all well-realised and the plotting tight. Mulvey treats her characters with such humane compassion and I was rooting for them to be able to do the same.

“She looks at herself in the mirror and she reflects that all living things want to survive. And it is such a relief to include herself in that humble category of all living things.”

To end, an interesting interview with the author expanding on the societal context of The Amendments: