Confessions: A Novel

Shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

"Confessions is a remarkable debut. A complex and compulsive read that unravels the intricate twists and revelations among three generations of women with elegance and urgency." —Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace

A “dazzling puzzle box of a novel” (Oprah Daily) following three generations of women as decades of secrets spill out of the attic of one family’s mysterious old home in rural Ireland—a propulsive, page-turning story about the power of choice. 

New York City, late September 2001. The walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady’s father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. When a letter arrives from an aunt she didn’t know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life, the name jogs a memory: an old videocassette game Cora used to play as a child where two sisters must save the students of a mysterious boarding school.

County Donegal, 1974. An eclectic group of artists known as the Screamers arrives in Burtonport and moves into the old schoolhouse down the road from where Róisín lives with her older sister Máire. Alternately kind and cruel, brilliant artist Máire is a mystery to Róisín, as is Máire’s relationship with the boy next door, Michael. When the Screamers look to hire an artist in residence, Róisín enlists Michael’s help to get Máire the job, setting in motion a chain of events that will put an ocean between the sisters and threaten to tear them apart forever.

Burtonport, 2018. Lyca Brady lives in a sprawling old house with her mother, Cora, and great aunt, Ro. Abortion has just been legalized in Ireland, and Lyca is struggling to find herself outside her mother’s activism. An unexpected message from a childhood friend sends Lyca searching her house’s mysterious attic, with its strange collection of old medical equipment, piles of paperwork, and dusty boxes of ancient video games. There, she unearths secrets hidden for decades—secrets perhaps better left unknown.

Catherine Airey’s haunting debut spins a mesmerizing story of family and fate, survival and revelation, examining the irresistible gravity of the past—how it endures through generations, pervasively present even when buried or forgotten.