A follow-up to her first novel, Roisin Maguire’s Snow Birds explores the joy in unexpected connection. Cambridge Edition writer Charlotte Griffiths shares her review.
Grace Kielty is annoyed. Her quiet, rural life in the village of Ballybrady has been disrupted by dryrobe-wearing out-of-towners, who have formed the Duckie Divers Swimming Club and crashed her secret beach for gleeful, shrieking cold dips and wild swimming sessions. The seabirds that Grace so adores – the roseate terns, named for their pink feathers in breeding season – are under threat from a developer who is planning to sell the birds’ section of shoreline off for shellfish harvesting. And the village shop has become a tearoom for all the visitors.
Grace does not enjoy change, yet, as we all know, change is inevitable: the only control you have is how you react to it. Will you accept it – or fight back where you can? Grace made her debut in Night Swimmers, Maguire’s first novel, which captivated so many readers and critics alike, and those who loved that book will be thrilled by the reappearance of the key players and another chance to spend time in this enchanting setting.
Night Swimmers dealt with the enforced proximity of lockdown, whereas Snow Birds finds the joy in unexpected connection and what can happen when Grace looks deeper than the Duckie Divers’ goose-pimpled skin to learn the stories that have brought the women together and into the icy waters of the Irish Sea. Perhaps by working together, they can save the terns’ beach – and maybe even themselves. Ideal reading with hot tea after a chilly winter dip in the lido.
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