With its Irish women, two funerals, a wedding and numerous fallings-out, Louise Nealon’s Everything That Is Beautiful promises to be the kind of stalwartly sentimental novel that breaks your heart and warms up its pieces. What sets it apart is the character of Liam “Farmer” Fallon – who was, as the president tells Liam’s widow at his funeral, “the finest hurling player that he had ever seen”.
Liam was so sacred, his other nickname is Father Fallon; he coached the local teams, carved hurleys and went on the Late, Late Show to promote female representation in Irish sport. Nevertheless, he managed to significantly stunt the three women he held most dear. Nealon, who plays camogie, has written a multi-handkerchief weepie about the GAA.
Liam’s anorexic daughter Kate is in love with a bisexual musician who sleeps around. Niamh, whom Liam once mentored and is a former camogie star, has a speech impediment and lives at home. For years, Liam’s widow Helen turned a blind eye to her husband’s indiscretions, “wash(ing) other women out of his clothes”, including Helen’s best friend Mary, with whom he slept while on their honeymoon. Now Helen shops online and binges TV soaps.
Nealon, whose first novel Snowflake was an on-topic exploration of mental health in a coming-of-age university context, brings a contemporary edge to familiar material. Still, the number of social issues in her novel seems a touch everything but the kitchen sink, including eating disorders, fake tan, IBS, rescue dogs and non-Irish priests. Helen and Liam’s son Peter emigrates to Australia; their daughter Bráithín has Down syndrome.
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Thankfully, Nealon is a dexterous writer. Her broad humour (such as the Happy 60th Birthday paper plates for Liam’s memorial Mass) and snappy dialogue provide a counterpoint to the melodrama and social messaging. At times, the novel is delightedly self-aware of its own ridiculousness, for example Kate’s partner Ellius, who specialises in “psychedelic traditional music infused with a queer sensibility”; and Kate, who ”collects labels the way she used to collect Pokémon cards”. “What’s the one you’re applying for now?” one brother teases her, “ADHD or autism? What’s trending on TikTok these days?”
Nealon also acknowledges her corniness with soap-opera references, such as Helen’s appetite for “Home and Away, Neighbours, Emmerdale, EastEnders and Fair City”. At times, soaps act as an obvious lens through which her characters filter their own experiences, such as when Kate observes, “It was like Fair City had burst out of the telly and the action was unfolding live in front of her.” There’s a magic about the genre, how it manages to uplift no matter how much trauma soap-opera characters endure. Nealon endeavours to convey its wonder, but without its “bad script and worse acting”.
Snowflake was uneven but powerful, with characters who could surprise you. Everything That Is Beautiful is more reassuring and its revelations better-timed, and despite the sometimes shocking nature of its material, there’s little unsettling about it. The exception is when the book reflects on sex that is uncomfortable – or unwanted.
The novel provides instruction for those – myself included – who, rather than shivering on a damp pitch, would prefer to learn about pucking and picking in the comfort of our armchairs
“It was his tongue that hurt the most,” Nealon writes, “the wet meat of it.” Elsewhere, she describes Helen’s wedding night, almost wry in her diffidence: “When it finally happened she heard the chime of a bell. She lay back on the pillow and imagined a man in a robe pulling a rope in celebration that there was nothing wrong.“ It’s a thread that runs through the story, and together with the sometimes unspeakable consequences of when a man in power misunderstands the dynamics between him and those that he loves, it’s a topic delicately handled.
[ Louise Nealon: ‘I’m exploring an energy of misogyny that we all participate in’Opens in new window ]
Plus, it’s a torrid hurling tale, which, let’s face it, is an extraordinary thing. Everything That Is Beautiful taps into a passion that has set generations of not only men but also women alight; it’s a breathless romance about a sport that binds communities and creates heroes. (The novel also provides instruction for those – myself included – who, rather than shivering on a damp pitch, would prefer to learn about pucking and picking in the comfort of our armchairs.)
As Eimear Ryan wrote in The Grass Ceiling, her memoir about women and Gaelic sport, there’s a feminine side to hurling, “soft as well as hard, graceful as well as furious”. For those readers whose hearts hammer at the magic of a first touch (“the relationship between yourself, your hurley and the sliotar… where the power lies”), but also yearn for a cathartic, comforting cry, worry not. Everything That Is Beautiful has you heard.
[ Louise Nealon: ‘There is an overwhelming silence and shame in Irish culture’Opens in new window ]
Mei Chin is a writer from New York City living in Dublin
