“Bad people were not like animals, because animals were pure, animals were where God resided, so people should never, ever be compared to them in a negative way, because people always fell short. People were like something else, the worst possible version of themselves perhaps. Disorderly, dirty, passive and therefore wicked.”
Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky, by Mary O’Donnell, is set in the Irish borderlands during the first Covid lockdown. It is narrated by Frankie, a successful writer of fiction who is now in her sixties. She has temporarily moved back to her childhood home, a large property surrounded by its own land, to look after her increasingly frail mother, Elma, who is in the early throes of dementia. Frankie’s husband, Christoph, has stayed at their house in Tipperary and is impatient for her return.
Kilnavarn House, the 170 year old family home, holds painful memories. Frankie’s childhood was not a happy one, although it had happy moments. Frankie was the favoured child but harbours guilt that she watched silently while her mother abused Tess, Frankie’s younger sister, adopted as a baby from the nuns who took in unwed mothers-to-be and then dealt with the offspring.
“I believe that even when the worst of people are aware of their own evil, they are not truly aware. Such people have somehow grown up devoid of a pain barometer and as such their awareness of their own evil is stunted.”
Tess now lives in New York having escaped her upbringing and made a decent life for herself abroad. She is on her way to visit but takes her time arriving. This infuriates Frankie who feels hard done by being left to cope with Elma alone.
The story takes the reader through Frankie’s days, made up as they are with caring for her incontinent mother – trying to keep her clean, dry and fed. When Elma is lucid she offers nuggets of memory that do not always match Frankie’s own. They provide insight into events from their past even when there is no acknowledgement of harms wrought.
What we have then is an exploration of shared lives viewed from very different perspectives. There is a great deal of introspection but it is measured and carefully considered.
“I am busy stealing memories and running with them, it doesn’t matter whether or not I myself have experienced them, they are the truckloads of fragmented collective knowledge passed on, then reconstructed, to be re-examined by each generation before it then attaches to consciousness where it is relived.”
When Tess eventually arrives further layers are explored – how Elma interacts with her younger daughter and how Tess feels towards her. Frankie and Tess have very different views on how they should deal with Elma’s needs. There is bad feeling between them even as they try to maintain the sisterly bond.
The writing flows beautifully with simmering resentments depicted through actions and harshly thrown words that each woman then tries to temper. Frankie’s feelings towards her mother are particularly thought provoking. She is old enough to have made her own life, to have moved on, yet is forever coloured by her childhood and the actions of her parents.
I wasn’t entirely convinced by the character created for Kilnavarn House but understand long held family homes can retain a grip on those who leave and return.
Generational differences in expectation and judgement are well presented, as is the duty felt by some offspring but not all. The cruelties of those whose minds fall victim to dementia, particularly in comments dropped on family members while a kindly decorum can be unearthed for strangers, is also impressively rendered.
A succinct and quite brilliant depiction of the complexities of family dynamics and the acts put on, even amongst familiars. A highly recommended read.
Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky is published by époque press.
