An audio book.
Debby lives on a dairy farm an hour from Dublin. She's just about to start doing English at Trinity College. Uncle Billy runs the place, living in a caravan. He knows about stars and Greek myths. He tells her about the secret six-sidedness of snowflakes. She never knew her father. Her mother has mental problems. She's working on a dream journal. She sleeps with James, a farmhand, who's only 6 years older than Debbie.
Debby has trouble making friends at University - it doesn't help that she lives at home. Xanthe, a beautiful girl who approached her on the first day, slowly becomes her best friend. Debby's invited by her to a party. When she overnights at Xanthe she usually brings boys home. She's always been good at kissing but doesn't go further - at least she doesn't recall doing so - she drinks. Xanthe says she's seen her have penetrative sex on the settee.
In her dreams she sometimes sees disasters that are happening nearby - e.g. when James dies in a farming accident. She goes to a therapist at university. Her mother goes into a mental hospital in Dublin. She's diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. When she's discharged, Billy thinks she's no better.
Xanthe is a virgin, ashamed of her non-standard labia. Her boyfriend is a local boy Debbie's always fancied from afar. When Xanthe visits Debbie the three meet in a pub. Debbie realises that the boy's boring. Xanthe admits that she's having therapy for depression. Debbie, drunk, calls her a snowflake, paying a therapist to tell her she's complex.
Xanthe and Billy fancy each other.
Billy hangs herself. He's saved only because Debbie's mother saw it in a dream.
Debbie goes for therapy with a neighbour Audrey who she used to have piano lessons with. Audrey was a class-mate of Billy and helps Billy via Debbie. When Debbie talks to Billy he sobs, saying he killed his mother (but it was an accident). He's only in his mid-30s - he's been looking after Debbie and her mother at the expense of himself. He begins to see Audrey (whose mother died young, whose father died of Alzheimers). When she gave up drinking and emptied her drinks cabinet it looked like a coffin. She went to "ship in a bottle" lessons, putting little things that matter into bottles to add to her Curiosity Cabinet.
After more arguing, Debbie and Xanthe make up. Debbie moves in with her. She meet Xanthe's perfectionist mother who was raised on a diary farm and at 3 wanted to be a doctor. Xanthe's given up her boyfriend.
There are vegan campaigners at university who tell her that calves are taken away from their mothers. Debbie tries Oat milk though she still milks the cows. Her mother thinks she might have mad cow disease and wants to give up meat.
At the end Billy, Debbie, Debbie's mother, Audrey and Xanthe go off to the family's holiday cottage on an island. On the second night Billy and Debbie go out and look at the stars. Billy asks her to tell him a story, like his mother used to.
Some details are withheld, as is common in storytelling. In this case it feels less contrived, because the details about characters are those that the characters would want to conceal. I expected an encounter-group kind of ending once all the main characters are cooped up on an island.
The language is unostantatious - "We sit in each other's silence for a while" is about as flashy as it gets.
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