Courtney McGrail
Over Our Heads
by Andrew Fox
(Penguin, £12.99)
Anna Farmar
In his first collection of stories, Andrew Fox writes about disconnected lives, of mainly Irish young men trying to make sense of the world, in post-boom Ireland and in New York where the author now lives.
The book is aptly titled: the narrator in the final story, ‘Are You Still There?’ reflects: “we’d gotten in over our heads.” He is floundering, out of his depth, like most of the characters in these stories. They fall in love with women who do not respect them: “You really don’t have a f****** clue about the world, have you?” Laura berates her husband, the narrator, in ‘Vigil.’ “You really don’t know anything about how things work.”
On visits home to Ireland from America, they try to reconnect with parents, old friends, old dreams, as expertly caught in ‘How to go Home’. But where, really, is home? If you need instructions on how to go there is it really home anymore?
‘Are You Still There?’, set in New York, is about betrayal, manipulation – and love. “When she caught the flu I spent a three-day weekend bringing her soup and tea. And when a cab knocked me off my bike she ran through the snow to my hospital bedside…”
The couple move in together, decorate their apartment, buy pictures and rugs but the attempt to create a home fails.
“She stood in the hallway with a couple of bags at her feet and looked to me for a word – for punctuation, even. And then she was gone.”
In Ireland, an engaged couple play out their rising uncertainties. “She covered her face with her hands and mumbled, ‘Oh, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe this is all just a huge mistake. Maybe you’re not ready’.”
But they are in too deep. “I looked back towards the trees. Their leaves fitted together, shook apart, then rejoined. I thought about running. I didn’t run.”
This image of trees joining their branches together and then parting is also used in ‘Pennies’, the first story, about the friendship between two teenagers.
The ending is ambiguous but hints at the worst.
Though loneliness, disappointment and disillusion are recurring themes in this collection the final story, the already quoted ‘Are You Still There?’, is tentatively hopeful, admitting the possibility that love might last in spite of everything.
It brings this impressive debut to a satisfying close.
