The January Flower
By Orla Broderick
Published by
Council House Publishing
ISBN 9780957462809
Category Literary
Summer 2013
Synopsis
Single mother Mary finds herself isolated from friends and family She seduces a strange man for affection. He moves her to a caravan on a beach. She explores spirituality with his mother. She falls for his sister. She aims to realise truth - and save herself and her small daughter.
Author's Biography
Orla Broderick is a single Mother living with her daughter on the Isle of Skye. She is originally Irish and was first published in The Irish Times. Her talent has been developed by Peter Urpeth and Roger Hutchinson. Her tutors include Angus Dunn and Kevin MacNeil. Her writing is poetic prose.
Reviews
Orla has her own voice and her style is unique and beautiful. She has mastered the art of painting a picture with words. - l. Byrne - Amazon.co.uk
It is a novel about colourful and credible characters, embedded perfectly in the landscape of Skye; highly recommended. -J. Wilkin - Amazon.co.uk
Orla Broderick uses words to paint a three dimensional picture. Her writing is empathic and textural. It allows the reader to feel, smell and taste Mary's experiences while simultaneously giving depth to the characters. - Christine Fernand - BooksfromScotland
I love the creativity that has gone into this novel, the unusual but very readable writing. It is a love story on several different levels. - Carolyn - Amazon.co.uk
I read it straight through - it's one of those books that pull you on in order to see what happens. - Mavis Gulliver - Goodreads
An evocative and deeply moving story of a mother's quest for self. Leaves the reader with a strong sense of Scottish landscapes. - Angela Webb - Goodreads
It is a highly original title by an emerging storyteller who writes with honesty , intensity and with a fine ear of a good yarn. One to watch in 2013. - Peter Urpeth (HI-Arts) - West Highland Free Press
A new and authentic voice in Scottish writing,
this is its first exhilarating expression.€ - Roger Hutchinson - Front cover of the book
The story's gripping, the characters are solid living people and
the writing is beautiful. Utterly confident and accomplished - Angus Dunn - Backside of the cover
Reader Comments
A lovely lyrical book which I just had to finish at one sitting. I especially liked the interactions between mother and daughter.
Loved this book and could hardly put it down. Great writing style.
Where to begin to review The January Flower by Orla Broderick? Broderick has written a hymn to the life of her “little snowdrop,†her daughter, and a hymn to a sort of traveller life on the Isle of Skye.
It is full of the most lyrical and beautiful prose – Irish prose – not Scottish. The Hi-Arts Council embraces her and she did study at Moniack Mhór, but I claim her for the Irish. One friend has compared her to Dylan Thomas. I said to that friend after hearing Broderick’s recording of “The Lost Chapter†that a tick will never again be just a tick.
The protagonist, Mary, desires with a fierce single-mindedness to escape her dreary council house (subsidized housing for her U.S. readers), and neighborhood, populated by snarling tenants and drug abusers. She wants a better life for her snow drop, her Angel. To that end, she seduces a kilt-wearing Dutch man (the antagonist) one afternoon and the long journey back to her own mother and her roots begins. Along the way, she got far more (or less) than she bargained for: lost her daughter, lost herself. She meets Gertrude (mother of Walter and Winne) and Elsie who “had husbands and children but discarded them, left all that life for the sake of a dream. Kith and kin were forsaken for boggy tracts of land and sweet solitude. Their devotion to Mother Earth is their vocation. They know the old ways and yet they see far into the future.†Mary lives in a caravan and sips dew from spider webs and dances in the moonlight. You will hear Woof, their dog. You will smell the kelp. You will see the sea birds soar high and far. You will sense the fairies and learn of the giants that once peopled the Isles. You will meet the fairies who live in the rocks.
The Ancestors are ever-present. Broderick has done something unusual in modern literature. She has created the duality of the deities and humans, akin to those in the Odyssey in a strange way. She has written of the same xenia, a Greek concept encompassing the generosity and courtesy shown to those