Montpelier Parade by Karl Geary

A cold, wet spring in Dublin. Sonny sees Vera for the first time while he’s working in her garden with his da. She walks down the path towards him and he’s transfixed. Soon he’s in love, filled with curiosity and desire for this woman from a different world.

It’s a coming of age story without gloss. Geary puts you right in the action with the raw closeness of the second person narrator. So you’re right there with Sonny as he keeps fucking up without meaning to. You think and feel as he does, you remember the adolescent awkwardness that once conspired against you. You see again how unfair it is that childish actions have such adult consequences. 

The novel draws its intensity from the gap between emotions and words. No one can express how they feel: we witness Sonny’s mum in a state of hopeless frustration; then Sharon, lost and hurting beneath the teenage bravado; and Vera, all but sinking into the black depths of her mind. Try as he might, Sonny can’t save any of them.

This is Geary’s first novel, but you can tell he’s no first-timer. The precision in his prose belies his training as a scriptwriter; the plot unfolds with self-assured ease, and the dialogue lives on the page. There’s no rush, no over-explanation, no showing off. He trusts his reader, and the novel has compulsive power because of it. An astonishing debut.