Scenes of a Graphic Nature Review

I read Promising Young Women last year and I was so excited about this release and Caroline O’Donoghue delivered. This story sucked me in from the beginning and it was a wild ride to the end. The antagonistic and unraveling relationship between the main character, Charlie, and her best friend, Laura, is incredibly relatable. I have been both people in that failing relationship.

O’Donoghue’s imagery of Clipim is haunting and adds to the sense of foreboding of the story. The abandoned and remote schoolhouse has a haunted quality, as you might expect, but the same vibe is present in the smaller, innocuous details. The ferry captain who takes Charlie and Laura to Clipim has a small dog, who is described as “ a very small, very old terrier,” (i.e. adorable), but is named Satan. This sets the tone that pastoral and comforting things have poison under the surface. This includes the way that non-Irish people — especially English and Americans — see Ireland. There’s a long-standing theme of foreigners is a sense of ownership over Ireland, through some very tenuous links, which deserves interrogation.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature is, as O’Donoghue herself says, “a banger.”