FictionSometimes a story grabs you by the throat and hauls you into the middle of someone's disintegrated life. Karen Gillece's My Glass Heart is such a story. This is Gillece's third novel and it demonstrates her growing maturity as a writer, with a style somewhat reminiscent of Joanna Trollope, as she deals with the comfortable lives of middle-class people unravelling due to external circumstances.
We first meet Helen Glass as the victim attending the trial of her attacker, Keith Donovan, a young man who, despite his disarming appearance, proves to be a manipulative and dangerously unstable personality. Reuben Ford, the narrator and Helen's friend as she faces the ordeal of reliving the terrible months of fear and betrayal leading up to the near-fatal attack, is a failing playwright. He is driven to find new success in his novelisation of Helen and her husband William's life, without their knowledge. It's not long before we realise that obsession and betrayal are not confined to the man in the dock. With the relish of a privileged confidante, Reuben lays out Helen and William's unexceptional relationship and the life they enjoyed until Donovan's arrival. So close is Reuben's relationship with Helen that we wonder if he, like Donovan, could be in love with her, until he reveals his own betrayal of another, which has led to his current shame and state of self-imposed isolation. Because the story is told at times in the past tense, at times in the present, there is a risk the reader will become removed from the emotional core, the unexpressed fears and desperation which drive all of the characters at some time or another.
A tendency to accentuate the cerebral rather than the raw emotional thrust of the tale detracts a little from the strong connection we could feel, especially with the career-driven William, and Reuben's voice dominates at times when we actually want to hear what Helen's glass heart is really saying. However, all told, this book sets Karen Gillece apart from much of the Irish popular fiction norm and confirms her as an emerging force to be reckoned with.
Claire Looby is a clerical administrator with The Irish Times
My Glass Heart By Karen Gillece Hodder Headline Ireland, 279pp. €16.99