BookLife Review: The Connellys of County Down, by Tracey Lange
Family secrets, siblings, ex-con, police detectives, romance, video gaming graphic design, Westchester County, Port Chester, embezzlement.
My primary issue with Tracey Lange’s novel, The Connellys of County Down is its title. It is not a novel set in Ireland, no one goes to Ireland, it is not any kind of a historical novel, and there is just a whisper of a reference to Irish legends. The three siblings who are the heart of the novel are of Irish descent, and their deceased mother told them Irish fairy tales and legends when they were young.
That said this is a good read, but for the predictability of the romance at its core. Buying in to the romance in the first place requires the reader to suspend reality and judgment. A single cop, responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of a woman charge with drug trafficking, falls hard for the suspect in the space of three interrogations, to the extent that he funds her prison commissary, happens to be at the prison to drive her home on her release and pines for her as he continues to attempt to nail the drug kingpin. She happens to be a feisty, strawberry blond beauty of Irish descent. Okay.
The romance rings a bit of a trite stretch perhaps because the rest of the characters and story around Tara, the protagonist, feels fresh and compelling. We don’t often have a young female protagonist who we meet on her release from prison, for drug trafficking. Add to that the fact that she has spend her significant down time in prison honing her artistic talent and has become a decent graphic artist with a comic strip style well suited to the burgeoning world of video gaming graphics. These details all feel current.
Similarly, Tara’s her home life is a story we do not often hear. A trio of siblings share a home, having been essentially orphaned as teens with the death of their mother and absconding of their car-thief father. Add to the mix an older sister who carried too much responsibility for her siblings at too early and age and hence develops hoarding issues, and a single father brother who suffered a traumatic brain injury and lives with the physical an d employment challenges that brings. This is an interesting ensemble.
The unfolding of family secrets is a rich tableau. In this case, the secrets are either guessable or not terribly surprising when they emerge. Despite that, the impact of the secrets on the other members of the family is what makes this novel tick. Lange writes the emotions and psyches of the siblings with heart and depth. The relationships they each have to 10-year old Conor, the brother’s son is heart-warming and allows for a bit of comic relief as he parlays riddles and jokes to lighten the mood.
Once I accepted the romance aspect of the novel, and the more or less happy ending it foreshadowed, I enjoyed this book, and will pick up Lange’s prior novel, We Are the Brennans, and give it a whirl.