Orna Ross and Lovers’ Hollow
Lovers’ Hollow is historical fiction but told through a contemporary lens and it weaves backwards and forwards in time.
When the novel opens the narrator , Jo Devereux, is hungover, lonely and in mourning. Her mother has died and so Jo journeys back from San Francisco to Mucknamore, the seaside Irish village that she left twenty years before. There she is thrown straight back into the path of her old flame – Rory O’Donovan - and into the heart of ancient family tensions and secrets.
Her mother has left her a suitcase full of diaries, letters and newspaper cuttings, with a request in her will that Jo should write a family history, focusing on the Devereux’s contribution to Ireland’s independence war against Great Britain in the early 1920s.
Never one to do what her mother wanted, what Jo finds herself writing about instead is a chain of family secrets that lead her back to a mysterious murder. During the civil war that followed the independence struggle, Dan O’Donovan, Rory’s great-uncle was lured to his death on the sinking sands that are notorious in Mucknamore.
Jo cuts herself off from the world to pursue her investigations and spends the summer in a shed, watching the house she grew up in being demolished, avoiding her sister, Maeve, as she pores over the old papers and pieces together her family’s complicated history.
Rory, now unhappily married, is the only person she allows into her life during this long hot summer. What are her feelings for him, so many years after their relationship was suddenly sundered? Can what they lost be regained or at least redeemed? Answering these questions forces Jo to confront her past and present struggles for independence.
She also retraces the steps of her childhood – the events that caused her to leave so dramatically and never return and comes to understand how those long-ago events, and the secrecy around them, poisoned her young hopes of love and fulfillment.
Effortlessly interweaving past and present, and building towards a compelling and surprising conclusion, Lovers’ Hollow ranges across three generations and two continents to deliver a page-turning exploration of love, revenge and the true nature of freedom.
Lovers’ Hollow – Press Reviews Summary
• SUNDAY INDEPENDENT: ‘A magnificent family saga… highly ambitious, engaging and evocative.’
• IRISH INDEPENDENT: ‘an impressive canvas… a captivating read… an achievement.’
• SUNDAY TRIBUNE: ‘…epic sweep…ambitious scope…an intelligent book.’
• EVENING HERALD: ‘A Haunting Tale… a gripping story.’
• IRELAND ON SUNDAY: ‘engaging and well-thought-out… the characters and mysteries will make you want to keep reading.’
• IRISH EXAMINER: ’succeeds admirably…retains interest throughout its considerable span.’
• EMIGRANT ONLINE: ‘A riveting story…vividly brought to life.’ See full review at www.emigrant.ie
• WOMAN’S WAY BOOKCLUB: ‘Orna Ross has mastered the art of suspense with her darkly portentous prose… I couldn’t put it down.’
• BOOKBAG: ‘ I read all 688 pages over a period of about three days – and this is a big, big story. It’s Orna Ross’s first novel, but it’s crafted with the skill of a veteran and the suspense is masterly.” www.thebookbag.co.uk
• BIBLIOFEMME: ‘An incredible debut that will have the reader absolutely enthralled.’ www.bibliofemme.com
• AMAZON: ‘Lovers’ Hollow will be a classic… [like] Gone With The Wind. It’s as broad in its scope as that. One of the best novels I have read in a long, long time.” www.amazon.co.uk
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