Colours Other Than Blue A Novel

Maeve Maguire, single mother of a teenage daughter, works as the Senior Nurse in a Dublin Home for the Elderly. Grieving over her father’s recent death, she begins to keep a notebook at the prompting of her sagacious counsellor Sister Úna, who suggests she write down memories of her Boston childhood, along with whatever else. Reluctantly Maeve begins to bring the past to life, recording memories of growing up in an apartment building on the Boston Common where her Mayo father James worked as Superintendent. Gradually from her notebook entries there emerges another, more subterranean, sorrow-that of the death of her emotionally complex mother Rose, thirteen years before. What’s more, Maeve also confronts a handful of other home truths therein: regarding love, single motherhood, and the demanding, if at times comic, challenges of her nursing day-job. A canny, captivating, humorous portrayal of a Boston-Irish woman’s struggle to find her feet, love, and a quotient of tranquillity in 1980s dirty ol’ Dublin.