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Ghost Moth
GHOST MOTH will transport you to two hot summers, 20 years apart.
Northern Ireland, 1949. Katherine must choose between George Bedford - solid, reliable, devoted George - and Tom McKinley, who makes her feel alive.
The reverberations of that summer - of the passions that were spilled, the lies that were told and the bargains that were made - still clamour to be heard in 1969. Northern Ireland has become a tinderbox but tragedy also lurks closer to home. As Katherine and George struggle to save their marriage and silence the ghosts of the past, their family and city stand on the brink of collapse...
Northern Ireland, 1949. Katherine must choose between George Bedford - solid, reliable, devoted George - and Tom McKinley, who makes her feel alive.
The reverberations of that summer - of the passions that were spilled, the lies that were told and the bargains that were made - still clamour to be heard in 1969. Northern Ireland has become a tinderbox but tragedy also lurks closer to home. As Katherine and George struggle to save their marriage and silence the ghosts of the past, their family and city stand on the brink of collapse...
235 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
22 people are currently reading
939 people want to read
About the author
Michèle Forbes
7 books17 followersBorn in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Michèle Forbes is an award-winning theatre, television and film actress. She studied literature at Trinity College, Dublin and has worked as a literary reviewer for the IRISH TIMES. Her short stories have received both the BRYAN MACMAHON and the MICHAEL MCLAVERTY AWARDs. She lives near Dalkey, Dublin with her husband and two children. GHOST MOTH is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
July 25, 2015
From BleachHouseLibrary.Blogspot.ie, my book review blog
This is the story of Katherine Bedford. She is a wife and mother of four and the book starts with a look at her present life in Northern Ireland, 1969.
In her earlier years she was an opera singer with a local musical society in 1940's Belfast. While being fitted for her costume for a production of Carmen she meets a handsome tailor for whom she feels an immediate attraction. The only problem is, she has a long term boyfriend who she has agreed to marry. The novel is a combination of the early life of Catherine and brings the reader right up to date.
The intense desire that Katherine feels for Tom, her tailor, is so wonderfully described that the author makes you feel like you are actually in the room with them. Katherine is torn between loving this man or continuing down the path that she has already taken with her Fiancee, George. The expectation is that she will marry the kind, reliable and steady George but her heart is consumed by Tom.
The outcome of her decision is known from the beginning of the book and we get a glimpse of the struggle to keep her marriage alive while bearing witness to the angst of growing up as a Catholic child in 1960's Belfast, through the tales of Katherine's offspring. George is a reserve fireman and during The Troubles is called to many horrific scenes. But he also has his own cross to bear, a secret he has kept from Katherine for their whole married life. Katherine dreams of what could have been and this eats her up from the inside, out.
This is Michele Forbes debut novel and I can honestly say I am seriously jealous of her writing ability. Full of beautiful, heartfelt storytelling with a constant flow of gentle but acute prose, it is simply perfection. It is a work of art and although the story is slow and unravels at a leisurely pace , it is reminiscent of literary giants Anne Enright and Sebastian Barry. You would never know this was a debut novel , as the standard is so high. It is almost like a very long and very moving poem. The characters linger on with you well after you have finished the book and you may even be tempted to keep it close by, purely to pick up and read some of the wonderful prose again and again.
Highly recommended.
This is the story of Katherine Bedford. She is a wife and mother of four and the book starts with a look at her present life in Northern Ireland, 1969.
In her earlier years she was an opera singer with a local musical society in 1940's Belfast. While being fitted for her costume for a production of Carmen she meets a handsome tailor for whom she feels an immediate attraction. The only problem is, she has a long term boyfriend who she has agreed to marry. The novel is a combination of the early life of Catherine and brings the reader right up to date.
The intense desire that Katherine feels for Tom, her tailor, is so wonderfully described that the author makes you feel like you are actually in the room with them. Katherine is torn between loving this man or continuing down the path that she has already taken with her Fiancee, George. The expectation is that she will marry the kind, reliable and steady George but her heart is consumed by Tom.
The outcome of her decision is known from the beginning of the book and we get a glimpse of the struggle to keep her marriage alive while bearing witness to the angst of growing up as a Catholic child in 1960's Belfast, through the tales of Katherine's offspring. George is a reserve fireman and during The Troubles is called to many horrific scenes. But he also has his own cross to bear, a secret he has kept from Katherine for their whole married life. Katherine dreams of what could have been and this eats her up from the inside, out.
This is Michele Forbes debut novel and I can honestly say I am seriously jealous of her writing ability. Full of beautiful, heartfelt storytelling with a constant flow of gentle but acute prose, it is simply perfection. It is a work of art and although the story is slow and unravels at a leisurely pace , it is reminiscent of literary giants Anne Enright and Sebastian Barry. You would never know this was a debut novel , as the standard is so high. It is almost like a very long and very moving poem. The characters linger on with you well after you have finished the book and you may even be tempted to keep it close by, purely to pick up and read some of the wonderful prose again and again.
Highly recommended.
August 19, 2013
My rating 4.5 out of 5 stars.*
What a beautifully written book! The writing is just phenomenal. Michele Forbes has a gift for the written word.
Ghost Moth's setting is in Ireland. It tells the story of Katherine, alternating between two time periods, the late 40's and the late 60's. The story begins in the 60's, when Katherine is wife to George, and a mother to four young children. The book then returns to the 40's: Katherine is a stage actress, has a dedicated boyfriend of a couple of years, but falls in love with another man. Ghost Moth sways back and forth between the two periods in Katherine's history, and what a tragic tale it is.
I loved the beautiful, haunting, eloquent language and the way the plot unfolds. Ms. Forbes has written an exquisite story, one I won't soon forget. Yes, she doesn't develop some of the characters as much as I would have hoped. However, it works for the story that is told, and for the length of the novel (237 pages). I predict this is will be a future selection for many book clubs. It's a book that begs to be discussed.
A dazzling debut by Ms. Forbes, and I look forward to reading her future work.
*I received an advanced reading copy courtesy of Penguin Books Canada in exchange for an honest review.
What a beautifully written book! The writing is just phenomenal. Michele Forbes has a gift for the written word.
Ghost Moth's setting is in Ireland. It tells the story of Katherine, alternating between two time periods, the late 40's and the late 60's. The story begins in the 60's, when Katherine is wife to George, and a mother to four young children. The book then returns to the 40's: Katherine is a stage actress, has a dedicated boyfriend of a couple of years, but falls in love with another man. Ghost Moth sways back and forth between the two periods in Katherine's history, and what a tragic tale it is.
I loved the beautiful, haunting, eloquent language and the way the plot unfolds. Ms. Forbes has written an exquisite story, one I won't soon forget. Yes, she doesn't develop some of the characters as much as I would have hoped. However, it works for the story that is told, and for the length of the novel (237 pages). I predict this is will be a future selection for many book clubs. It's a book that begs to be discussed.
A dazzling debut by Ms. Forbes, and I look forward to reading her future work.
*I received an advanced reading copy courtesy of Penguin Books Canada in exchange for an honest review.
November 26, 2013
I received a copy of "Ghost Moth" by Michele Forbes courtesy of Penguin Books Canada in exchange for an honest review. As this is her first novel this shows the talent of this literary author, a real storyteller who has written an exquisite novel. The novel is set in Ireland at the time when Northern Ireland moves to the brink of civil war.
Ghost Moth tells the story of Katherine, alternating between two time periods, the late 40's and the late 60's. The story begins in the 60's, when Katherine is wife to George, and a mother to four young children. The book then returns to the 40's, where Katherine is a stage actress, is engaged to be married to George, but falls in love with another man, Tom a costume fitter. Ghost Moth sways back and forth between the two periods in Katherine's history, and what a tragic tale it is.
When George, a civil engineer and a retained firefighter , had gone off to work, and all the children were asleep except Elsa, Katherine told her about a time when she was young and went outside and lay on the grass at night, and a swarm of moths came and covered her from head to toe. Her father called them "Ghost Moths", because, "some people believed they were the souls of the dead waiting to be caught."
In the opening scene, Katherine is recovering from a near drowning, after venturing out too deep in the sea, during a day trip with the family to the beach. For the rest of the day, Katherine is distant and preoccupied. This scare brought back distant memories of the past...
This novel touches on many aspects of life; dreams and truths, acceptance and guilt and a choice to a relationship of passion or predictability. But the greatest strength of this novel is the family bonds and ties of two parent's love of their children, while struggling to keep buried secrets from destroying their marriage. The language is eloquent and the story is heart-breaking.
Thank you Penguin Canada for allowing me to read this beautiful story.
Ghost Moth tells the story of Katherine, alternating between two time periods, the late 40's and the late 60's. The story begins in the 60's, when Katherine is wife to George, and a mother to four young children. The book then returns to the 40's, where Katherine is a stage actress, is engaged to be married to George, but falls in love with another man, Tom a costume fitter. Ghost Moth sways back and forth between the two periods in Katherine's history, and what a tragic tale it is.
When George, a civil engineer and a retained firefighter , had gone off to work, and all the children were asleep except Elsa, Katherine told her about a time when she was young and went outside and lay on the grass at night, and a swarm of moths came and covered her from head to toe. Her father called them "Ghost Moths", because, "some people believed they were the souls of the dead waiting to be caught."
In the opening scene, Katherine is recovering from a near drowning, after venturing out too deep in the sea, during a day trip with the family to the beach. For the rest of the day, Katherine is distant and preoccupied. This scare brought back distant memories of the past...
This novel touches on many aspects of life; dreams and truths, acceptance and guilt and a choice to a relationship of passion or predictability. But the greatest strength of this novel is the family bonds and ties of two parent's love of their children, while struggling to keep buried secrets from destroying their marriage. The language is eloquent and the story is heart-breaking.
Thank you Penguin Canada for allowing me to read this beautiful story.
July 21, 2013
I know a book is really good when it leaves me grieving for hours after finishing it. I knew a few pages into chapter 2 that this book was going to be a tearjerker. And I was right! However, there were so many depressing and unpredictable layers, I ended up crying for completely unexpected reasons! I actually really like tearjerkers, so I did not mind the tears. It's a really raw and honest read--I can't believe it is Forbes's first novel. I hope she will be writing more.
August 11, 2014
Michele Forbes’ debut novel has garnered fulsome praise from writers such as Roddy Doyle, John Banville and Anne Enright, in addition to a whole mass of laudatory reviews from reviewers. But for me this book was more of an extended cliché than an enjoyable and accomplished piece of fiction. The author seems incapable of writing about anything without adding adverbs and adjectives to excess, nor to be able to write a sentence without adding in a simile or metaphor or without piling on the imagery. Some have called her writing style lyrical and poetic but I found it overblown and cloying.
The novel tells the story of Katherine and George, bringing up their four children in 1969 Belfast with the Troubles in full swing. It opens with Katherine’s close encounter with a seal whilst swimming during a family outing to the sea and nearly drowning. For reasons that are never satisfactorily explained this encounter makes her reflect back on what happened in 1949, when she fell in love with Tom, and had to make a choice between him and stolid George. Michele Forbes would have been well advised to remember Chekhov’s advice that if there is a gun in Act 1 then it must go off in Act 3. In this case, that pesky seal is never referred to again and it is never clear why its appearance, which no one else can see, should create such turmoil in Katherine’s mind.
The focus on the minutiae of daily life with children is well-handled, I must admit, and the stresses of a marriage gone dull are evocatively conveyed. But the affair with Tom is not convincing, as Tom himself is not a convincing character, leaving the reader puzzled as to why Katherine should have risked so much for him. The dual time narrative works well, but the Troubles seem to be there merely to add a bit of gritty realism to the plot and never feel fully integrated into the narrative. This story could have taken place at any time and in any place.
So I am left puzzled as to why this book has been so acclaimed. For me it was a banal and overly romantic love-story which left me unmoved.
The novel tells the story of Katherine and George, bringing up their four children in 1969 Belfast with the Troubles in full swing. It opens with Katherine’s close encounter with a seal whilst swimming during a family outing to the sea and nearly drowning. For reasons that are never satisfactorily explained this encounter makes her reflect back on what happened in 1949, when she fell in love with Tom, and had to make a choice between him and stolid George. Michele Forbes would have been well advised to remember Chekhov’s advice that if there is a gun in Act 1 then it must go off in Act 3. In this case, that pesky seal is never referred to again and it is never clear why its appearance, which no one else can see, should create such turmoil in Katherine’s mind.
The focus on the minutiae of daily life with children is well-handled, I must admit, and the stresses of a marriage gone dull are evocatively conveyed. But the affair with Tom is not convincing, as Tom himself is not a convincing character, leaving the reader puzzled as to why Katherine should have risked so much for him. The dual time narrative works well, but the Troubles seem to be there merely to add a bit of gritty realism to the plot and never feel fully integrated into the narrative. This story could have taken place at any time and in any place.
So I am left puzzled as to why this book has been so acclaimed. For me it was a banal and overly romantic love-story which left me unmoved.
October 19, 2014
This novel is written in a lyrical style with a sombre tone. Bringing skillfully together the lyricism of Irish writing and the sombre ugly backdrop of East Belfast at the beginning of the troubles. Forbes gives as a strange evocative threnody of a thwarted love story and its far reaching implications. There are some marvellous passages of restrained passion as when the tailor measures Katherine for her Carmen costume, or the milky luminescence of the apricot dawn when Katherine and her daughter sit and talk of the ghost moths. I did however at times find Katherine annoyingly disconnected and her apparently thoughtless wounding of both her lovers is somewhat disconcerting and reminiscent of Bizet's Carmen. I did however greatly enjoy the quiet intensity of the writing and will look forward to reading more of her work in the future. Recommended.
July 19, 2013
Ghost Moth is a very lyrical debut novel, though it didn't quite feel like a novel. The author's style, the compactness of chapters, made this work feel closer to a collection of short stories, but the arc connecting beginning to end was certainly one. So while the succinctness and tone reminded me of a collection, and while some of the chapters could stand alone, it would be inaccurate to call Ghost Moth anything but a novel.
Michèle Forbes' debut is profuse in language. She can form a very beautiful sentence that not only stands in sheer beauty, but resonates for pages. With this language as a backbone, she pieces together lovely scenes that work well into the book as a whole. Overall, Ghost Moth is a great story.
If there's one thing I would critique about this book, it would be the fleshing out of its characters. I don't know them well enough or understand their actions. This is most prominent when tragedy strikes young Katherine. Why do we not see inside her mind at this moment? Why do we not see her physical reaction? Why is the reader left with nothing? If we knew Katherine better, we could make assumptions, but we don't know her. Throughout the story there are too many questions left dangling because I didn't feel I knew the characters well enough. What does Katherine see in Tom? What does she see in George? Why doesn't she offer more information to the policeman? Sometimes, it's as though the author is stepping away from the confrontation, avoiding a dramatic scene by ending it before the reader is given answers. When George and Katherine share their confessions, the author takes the easy way out and quickly moves onto the next scene. This, as a whole, was my only issue with this novel.
I did appreciate the perspective of Elsa. At first, it was a bit jarring as this seemed to be Katherine's story, but in the end, I though it was a bold and smart move. It added a layer to the story that would've been sorely missing without.
So overall a great debut. I can't say the story will stay with me for long, but this has more to do with the characters than it does the story itself. I liked the story they had to tell, but just didn't feel like their hearts were into it.
Michèle Forbes' debut is profuse in language. She can form a very beautiful sentence that not only stands in sheer beauty, but resonates for pages. With this language as a backbone, she pieces together lovely scenes that work well into the book as a whole. Overall, Ghost Moth is a great story.
If there's one thing I would critique about this book, it would be the fleshing out of its characters. I don't know them well enough or understand their actions. This is most prominent when tragedy strikes young Katherine. Why do we not see inside her mind at this moment? Why do we not see her physical reaction? Why is the reader left with nothing? If we knew Katherine better, we could make assumptions, but we don't know her. Throughout the story there are too many questions left dangling because I didn't feel I knew the characters well enough. What does Katherine see in Tom? What does she see in George? Why doesn't she offer more information to the policeman? Sometimes, it's as though the author is stepping away from the confrontation, avoiding a dramatic scene by ending it before the reader is given answers. When George and Katherine share their confessions, the author takes the easy way out and quickly moves onto the next scene. This, as a whole, was my only issue with this novel.
I did appreciate the perspective of Elsa. At first, it was a bit jarring as this seemed to be Katherine's story, but in the end, I though it was a bold and smart move. It added a layer to the story that would've been sorely missing without.
So overall a great debut. I can't say the story will stay with me for long, but this has more to do with the characters than it does the story itself. I liked the story they had to tell, but just didn't feel like their hearts were into it.
March 21, 2015
This, Forbes' debut novel, was a terribly sad read, but one that I'm glad I picked up.
Set in the 'present' of 1969, the tells the story of Kathleen, her husband George and her three daughters as Belfast, their home city, stands at the brink of self destruction. Early on, it becomes clear that Kathleen's relationship with her husband is complex, and through flashbacks to 1949, we soon find out why. In 1969, the fact that the family are Catholic and living in an increasingly hostile area while sectarian tensions rise creates further complications and uncomfortable moments for them individually and as a unit. In turn, a couple of major plot points that were unexpected to my eyes drive the book to a sad conclusion.
I know that critics and fellow writers have been impressed by this novel, and Forbes certainly comes across as an author who knows how to write. Her portrayal of Belfast city centre in the late 40s was one that I loved, and I even learnt the name of a street that I'd never taken notice of before when following the path she took on a journey through the city centre. As regards her handling of the subject of the infant conflict that was soon to engulf the city, she avoids becoming sensationalist, yet effectively conveys the menace that individuals felt from forces at work at the time. I have to admit that I didn't much like Kathleen, rather sympathising with George, whose love for his wife shines through in both past and present.
All in all, an impressive debut, and as a result of reading, I'll be looking out for novels by Forbes in future.
Set in the 'present' of 1969, the tells the story of Kathleen, her husband George and her three daughters as Belfast, their home city, stands at the brink of self destruction. Early on, it becomes clear that Kathleen's relationship with her husband is complex, and through flashbacks to 1949, we soon find out why. In 1969, the fact that the family are Catholic and living in an increasingly hostile area while sectarian tensions rise creates further complications and uncomfortable moments for them individually and as a unit. In turn, a couple of major plot points that were unexpected to my eyes drive the book to a sad conclusion.
I know that critics and fellow writers have been impressed by this novel, and Forbes certainly comes across as an author who knows how to write. Her portrayal of Belfast city centre in the late 40s was one that I loved, and I even learnt the name of a street that I'd never taken notice of before when following the path she took on a journey through the city centre. As regards her handling of the subject of the infant conflict that was soon to engulf the city, she avoids becoming sensationalist, yet effectively conveys the menace that individuals felt from forces at work at the time. I have to admit that I didn't much like Kathleen, rather sympathising with George, whose love for his wife shines through in both past and present.
All in all, an impressive debut, and as a result of reading, I'll be looking out for novels by Forbes in future.
July 30, 2013
When I was offered the chance to review Michele Forbes' debut novel Ghost Moth, I had heard nothing about either the novel or the author before. The description was enticing and seemed to be just up my street. The debut novel of an female Irish author, a dual-time story, set in Belfast - what's not to love?
The uncorrected proof copy is a slim paperback, just 237 pages long. The first few pages are taken up with praise for this novel, from editors, publicists and managers of the publishing company. Praise that includes the words 'poised', 'effortless' 'powerful' and 'searingly beautiful' - those words frighten me! Huge praise to live up to.
There is no doubt that Michele Forbes is a very accomplished author, as a debut novel, this is outstanding. Her use of language does create a story that is a joy to read, although at times I felt that the descriptive prose could have been aimed more at her characters than at the setting. Sometimes short novels have a somewhat sparse feeling to them, but not this one.
The story centres around Kathleen, married to George, and a mother of four children and begins when she gets into difficulty whilst swimming in the sea. This episode awakens memories for Kathleen, of a time twenty years ago when although engaged to be married to George, she begins a liaison with Tom - a dressmaker who fits her for a costume.
The story flits back and forth from the late 1960s back to 1949. Personally, I enjoyed the 1960s story more than that set in the 40s. I found Tom a difficult character to envisage, or to understand why he became so important to Kathleen.
This is a story of love, of changing political climate, of secrets left unsaid. It's also a story of relationships between a mother and her children and between a wife and her husband. The ups and downs of marriage, of illness and ultimately of tragedy.
A fine debut novel, I have no doubt that Ghost Moth will make an impact on anyone who reads it and that this is just the start of a successful writing career for Michele Forbes.
The uncorrected proof copy is a slim paperback, just 237 pages long. The first few pages are taken up with praise for this novel, from editors, publicists and managers of the publishing company. Praise that includes the words 'poised', 'effortless' 'powerful' and 'searingly beautiful' - those words frighten me! Huge praise to live up to.
There is no doubt that Michele Forbes is a very accomplished author, as a debut novel, this is outstanding. Her use of language does create a story that is a joy to read, although at times I felt that the descriptive prose could have been aimed more at her characters than at the setting. Sometimes short novels have a somewhat sparse feeling to them, but not this one.
The story centres around Kathleen, married to George, and a mother of four children and begins when she gets into difficulty whilst swimming in the sea. This episode awakens memories for Kathleen, of a time twenty years ago when although engaged to be married to George, she begins a liaison with Tom - a dressmaker who fits her for a costume.
The story flits back and forth from the late 1960s back to 1949. Personally, I enjoyed the 1960s story more than that set in the 40s. I found Tom a difficult character to envisage, or to understand why he became so important to Kathleen.
This is a story of love, of changing political climate, of secrets left unsaid. It's also a story of relationships between a mother and her children and between a wife and her husband. The ups and downs of marriage, of illness and ultimately of tragedy.
A fine debut novel, I have no doubt that Ghost Moth will make an impact on anyone who reads it and that this is just the start of a successful writing career for Michele Forbes.
May 15, 2025
I can't remember the last time I read a book where I came away wondering what the point of it was. Even with poorly-executed reads or books that don't suit my taste, I can usually appreciate the wider narrative but with this book there were so many aspects to it that felt unnecessary and even the parts that were necessary were underbaked to the point of failing to engage my interest at all!
An Irish woman - Katherine - goes swimming (too far out) and sees a seal (?) which transfixes her to the point where she ends up in danger and her husband has to rescue her, he himself having not seen the seal. A wider metaphor for their marriage? An ominous omen of events to come? Ech. This moment somehow transports her to the past where she fell in love with a tailor in the 1940s, embarking on a passionate relationship with him despite the fact that she was engaged to the man that we know goes on to become her husband. I say "passionate", nothing of substance was actually portrayed of these relationships that were pulling her in opposite directions for us to appreciate the complexity of her feelings.
In the present day, the past seems to be dragging Katherine down as her four children flit around her and she becomes increasingly plagued by weariness. A significant chapter was given over to her children holding a fair in their neighbourhood, the point of which absolutely baffled me. Also somewhat baffling was her husband's role as a voluntary fireman during The Troubles which were alluded to but never actually formed a coherent narrative to give it a point.
So much and so little of it actually containing substance. When certain truths were revealed, it only led to more questions as a reader and made their marriage all the more perplexing given that George was supposed to be Mr Safe and Reliable. I appreciate that divorce for Irish Catholics was an absolute no-no in the 1960s, but to simply bury the truth and plough on for twenty years felt beyond a stretch of credibility.
An Irish woman - Katherine - goes swimming (too far out) and sees a seal (?) which transfixes her to the point where she ends up in danger and her husband has to rescue her, he himself having not seen the seal. A wider metaphor for their marriage? An ominous omen of events to come? Ech. This moment somehow transports her to the past where she fell in love with a tailor in the 1940s, embarking on a passionate relationship with him despite the fact that she was engaged to the man that we know goes on to become her husband. I say "passionate", nothing of substance was actually portrayed of these relationships that were pulling her in opposite directions for us to appreciate the complexity of her feelings.
In the present day, the past seems to be dragging Katherine down as her four children flit around her and she becomes increasingly plagued by weariness. A significant chapter was given over to her children holding a fair in their neighbourhood, the point of which absolutely baffled me. Also somewhat baffling was her husband's role as a voluntary fireman during The Troubles which were alluded to but never actually formed a coherent narrative to give it a point.
So much and so little of it actually containing substance. When certain truths were revealed, it only led to more questions as a reader and made their marriage all the more perplexing given that George was supposed to be Mr Safe and Reliable. I appreciate that divorce for Irish Catholics was an absolute no-no in the 1960s, but to simply bury the truth and plough on for twenty years felt beyond a stretch of credibility.
June 8, 2013
Ghost Moth is utterly heartbreaking. Not that Michèle Forbes debut novel should be confused with that bathic and manipulative genre contrived to play on ones emotions - the tear jerker. Forbes tells a haunting story of an Irish family during the early days of Belfast's troubles. Rather suddenly mother Katherine is drawn back to her past, trobled by memories of a tragic affair that nearly brought about the end of her engagement to the dependable, but rather dull George. As she is haunted by memories of this lost love, her marriage to George begins to suffer. Meanwhile their family life as Catholics in Belfast takes on a new menacing pall, one often seen through the eyes of the family's youngest girl, Elsa. These threats though are nothing compared to the ultimate, devastating menace of the books final chapters.
The first three-fourths of the book artfully weave Katherine's life in more carefree post-WWII Belfast with the troubled late 1960s. Katherine has a genius for being loved, for drawing love from others. As a mother she is compassionate and loving. The depictions of her interactions with her children are beautifully evoked. Her misery and uncertainty during her simultaneous engagement and affair with Tom a passionate tailor are palpable as is the ecstasy of her meetings with Tom. This same misery later is masterfully echoed in the 1969 episodes. She finds herself trying desperately to hold herself together for her family while struggling with spectors of the past and a troublesome physical weariness. Ultimately Forbes's book is a haunting, lyrical paen to family and marriage.
The first three-fourths of the book artfully weave Katherine's life in more carefree post-WWII Belfast with the troubled late 1960s. Katherine has a genius for being loved, for drawing love from others. As a mother she is compassionate and loving. The depictions of her interactions with her children are beautifully evoked. Her misery and uncertainty during her simultaneous engagement and affair with Tom a passionate tailor are palpable as is the ecstasy of her meetings with Tom. This same misery later is masterfully echoed in the 1969 episodes. She finds herself trying desperately to hold herself together for her family while struggling with spectors of the past and a troublesome physical weariness. Ultimately Forbes's book is a haunting, lyrical paen to family and marriage.
April 5, 2015
This book wasn't what I expected. It's described as Ireland during the "troubles" and I suppose the present-day stuff is that, but hardly. The only way that enters into the story is Katherine's husband is a fire-fighter and her daughters get teased for their religion. But they are not the focus, Katherine is the central force of the novel.
The way the novel started, with Katherine swimming and staring into the eyes of a seal (and almost drowning) I thought oh maybe this is a selkie story. That first chapter is beautiful but then it has little to do with where the story goes, moving back and forth between this woman who is drifting in her present day and her memories of her days as an opera singer. None of it felt all that realistic but I'm not sure I could say why. And because I am never a fan of forced metaphor, the silly ghost moth thing really annoyed me.
I think I would have preferred a selkie story. Or on the other end of the spectrum, maybe the story of her children!
The way the novel started, with Katherine swimming and staring into the eyes of a seal (and almost drowning) I thought oh maybe this is a selkie story. That first chapter is beautiful but then it has little to do with where the story goes, moving back and forth between this woman who is drifting in her present day and her memories of her days as an opera singer. None of it felt all that realistic but I'm not sure I could say why. And because I am never a fan of forced metaphor, the silly ghost moth thing really annoyed me.
I think I would have preferred a selkie story. Or on the other end of the spectrum, maybe the story of her children!
January 4, 2014
Ghost Moth, Michele Forbes debut novel, is not only beautifully written but heartbreakingly mesmerizing. The story haunted me for days once finished.
Set amidst the religious conflicts of 1969 Belfast this is the story of Katherine Bedford a wife and mother of four. In her earlier years she was an opera singer in the production "Carmen" and met a tailor Tom, whom she feels an immediate attraction for. However, she is engaged to her longtime boyfriend George at the time. The intense desire that Katherine and Tom feel for each other is wonderfully described and the angst of uncertainty being torn between two men has Katherine totally distraught. The outcome of her decision is known from the beginning of the book and we are taken through the struggles of her marriage as well as bearing witness to the horrific scenes and unrest of growing up as a Catholic child in 1960's Belfast, through the tales of Katherine's children.
A remarkable story and highly recommended!
Set amidst the religious conflicts of 1969 Belfast this is the story of Katherine Bedford a wife and mother of four. In her earlier years she was an opera singer in the production "Carmen" and met a tailor Tom, whom she feels an immediate attraction for. However, she is engaged to her longtime boyfriend George at the time. The intense desire that Katherine and Tom feel for each other is wonderfully described and the angst of uncertainty being torn between two men has Katherine totally distraught. The outcome of her decision is known from the beginning of the book and we are taken through the struggles of her marriage as well as bearing witness to the horrific scenes and unrest of growing up as a Catholic child in 1960's Belfast, through the tales of Katherine's children.
A remarkable story and highly recommended!
May 13, 2013
I feel so-so about this book. I was thrown by the seal scene -- it never did reveal itself as to meaning. Still, I was rooting for Katherine and George. I thought the character of Tom wasn't as fully fleshed out as he could have been, so I found myself wondering what about him so bowled Katherine over. I liked the interweaving of the stories, and I think some of the writing was excellent. Having said that, however, I agree that there are probably better books on the list for general reading and for book club discussion.
July 30, 2013
In this poignant debut novel, the weight of suppressed guilt haunts and torments a couple, threatening their relationship and exhausting their spirit. An eloquent story that draws beauty from ordinary life, placing scenes of charming domesticity against the misery of grief, remorse and civil unrest. Many thanks to Penguin Canada, for providing this heartbreaking ARC (box of tissue not included). Also enjoyed voting for the winning book cover. Brilliant.
June 14, 2023
More of a 3.5 but the ending was really beautiful
March 19, 2020
I would give this novel 2.5 - 3 stars . It’s described as a story set in Ireland during the fights of religion it touches on it but it’s a background topic. The first chapter was great I thought this was going to be a silkie story but was then disappointed.
January 6, 2019
Beautifully written. This had to be one of the saddest novels I’ve ever read.
May 5, 2024
Content
Tw: Death. There is a lot of death, but you can't really read the book without those scenes/themes, so just don't read it if you prefer every single character to stay alive until the end. It's not overly graphic or anything.
It's also about an affair, like it says in the blurb. And there's some catholic hate which is also pretty obvious.
Ah yes, this book was like putting moisturiser on your face after a crazy night out. It was the perfect companion through the last few weeks. A rare gem I had to randomly find at the back of the second hand section in a tiny communist bookshop in Dublin, which my friend's girlfriend recommended to me. I can't believe I got this kind of reading experience for 3 euros and I can't believe I almost went my entire life without knowing it existed. As far as I'm aware, Ghost Moth is the only book that tackles this exact topic in this exact way.
It is about pain and about waiting and hoping, idealising someone but losing them. It is about grief and motherhood and loving someone deeply but also loving someone else in a very different way, and these feelings not being in competition with each other or denying each other's existence.
As the book goes on, there is an interesting mix of nostalgia for childhood summers and first loves and the simplistic joys of the 40s and 60s combined with the increasing unrest and looming danger in the city, both very vividly portrayed and well weaved together, exacerbating each other.
The children's activities are painfully idyllic, they read books and play in the garden together all day or with their model village, or even something as simple as an amber brooch that creates optical illusions.
The few, deliberate twists really stabbed me in the heart and I never saw them coming.
Their obsession with their mother, particularly Elsa's, was heartwarming and gorgeously written, to the point that I could feel it as both the mother and the child. Seeing Katherine and her past through Elsa's eyes was refreshing and magical. Another cinematic scene was the
I also loved the moral of it, or how Katherine resolved her feelings for herself (I don't want to spoil it but it's beautiful and wholesome and satisfying and makes a lot of sense).
And there was even some representation, which is unusual but not uncommon irl.
Style
The language is just beautiful and a delight to read, even without any context.
Every word smells of childhood and summer, but also of longing. I loved the immersive detail of setting, emotion, and body language as well as the gently implied nature metaphors, veering just slightly into the magical, dreamy, and surreal.
Wonderfully crafted sentences like "splinters of high voices peak on the blue wind", "she hangs in a quiver of cold sea", "fast, fat slices of sun", "a thin whisper of sand", ...
that describe situations perfectly and create dazzling, meaningful moments through neologisms and other techniques such as using nouns as adjectives and verbs as nouns, using colours to describe temperature, objects to describe colour, etc.
It captures specific emotions like the calm of a summer swim or a morning before dawn perfectly so that you can not only imagine but FEEL it as if you're there. Every description is so detailed, not forgetting a single tiny sound, feeling, or texture, from the cold wet hugs to the soft towels to the voices echoing across the wide shore, carried by the wind.
Sometimes (not too often) the author doesn't even write full sentences but still says so many things in so few words. It's never grammatically incorrect, just more like poetry.
Quotes
Mind, sea, and sky seemed all one.
Now the air is charged with his absence.
Sitting with the car window open, Katherine can hear voices travelling from the far end of the street, the way summer air seems to hold sound on a long leash.
In the ghostly light, his body cast a broad, featureless shadow of swollen blues on the world behind him. As she stood close to and a little below him, her shadow was completely immersed in his, so that she could no longer see what mark she made on the world. What made him stay so long and so close to her?
He bought her an ice cream at Fuscos, near John Long's Corner, and then sang her a vanilla and raspberry serenade as they crossed Isoline Street. A dome of soft memory in the making, creamy white, trickled with sugar sweetness, berry-berry red. Their tongues tasted childhood and their lips chilled and they walked together, creating a song line through east Belfast.
The lie now sat like another presence in the room, expecting to be fed. (...) If she ignored the lie, she told herself, if she chose not to feed it, it would go away. (...)
'Yes,' she said, still trembling, while on the wooden floor of the parlour, under the table, the lie still sat, its tongue coated with sugar, waiting for scraps.
Both concealed the true extent of their desire for each other, choosing instead a cautious foreplay of touch and conversation. Their senses were magnified by the uncertainty of decorum – its inappropriateness or its waste of time – and so they hovered in a state of sexual suspense.
Floating and burning and different from before. So these are the codes of love, glimpsed and now shared. And Katherine has explained it to her daughter as though she has understood it herself. As though she has understood how the experience of love preoccupies and claims its space. As though she has understood how the experience of love has preoccupied and claimed her.
Katherine is feeling tiredness like a soft white pain. She looks at her three daughters, expectant, imploring, needy. They are shuffling awkwardly into their night clothes, hurriedly stuffing two legs into one pyjama leg, like giddy mermaids. Katherine feels the weight of Elsa's manipulation as though a drowning man is pulling her under the surface of the sea. If she yields, is easy in herself, her own lightness will save them. If she resists, the children will become saturated with her irritation, slipping away from her into a dismal and unnecessary fretful sleep, while she will return to the kitchen, her lungs full to their saltwater brim with a nagging and futile remorse. But after a day doing every little and last thing for them, she now longs to close the door on motherhood, just for a brief while, and be whoever she is with them. If that possibility exists.
The contours of Maureen's face have been altering continuously through these summer weeks, so that now it is all future.
It was only when she heard the click of the glass panelled door from the main room as Ivy left to go home did she feel the small bite of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach.
The waiting over.
Her hair falling from its soft coil. His hands loosening it. The movement filling the pores of her scalp. She cannot take enough of him in. A brushstroke of cloud in the evening sky. The ticking of the clock. A bruise now on her left hip.
(Posh bus ride)
She alighted the number thirty-one trolley bus into town. The conductor pulled on the bell rope. As the trolley bus pulled away from the curb, she reached the rounded grab handles on the ends of the seats and carefully made her way down to the front of the lower saloon. She tucked her pearl grey woollen coat under her and sat down on the princess blue leather seat.
Over and over again she brushed against, then swept past the unthinkable: She was one week late.
She felt her body as a leaden weight. She could not deny to herself how her heart had opened like a glorious flower at seeing him. But now there was a darker edge to everything. Now as she looked at Tom, she felt the overwhelming weight of her intentions. In admitting to herself what she would lose, she wasn't so sure that she wanted to lose it anymore. Or, perhaps in truth, she wasn't so sure that she could deal with the consequences. She could feel her courage slipping, as though the floor itself had tilted and she had nothing to hang on to. The courage she had fought so hard to find. The courage she knew she needed in order to tell George. She couldn't hold on to it.
In the back room beside the kitchen, where the fibres of love and life are woven together, Katherine now stands and waits for the kettle to boil.
Despite her tiredness, Katherine smiles at how her daughter finds humour in Stephen's getting his sisters hand-me-downs. As she watches Elsa now, she marvels at the inconsequentiality of time. In an instant, Katherine can look at her daughter, as she is, the contours of her young face elongating and changing with each slight shift in her understanding of the world, and also see her, at one and the same time, as a baby, all rounded flesh and soft bones and wisps of fluffy hair. Two images of the same child completely at one, completely preserved and still living, still breathing, still available to her at any moment.
'I like those kind of stories that you don't know whether came from. They're not so scary.'
'Why's that?'
'Because they mightn't of even happened yet; they might have just been dreamed. And that means that there's a chance that they'll never happen, if you don't want them to.'
'And what if you want them to happen?'
'You have to keep dreaming them.'
With morning's inevitable growth, Katherine and Elsa become less like spectres and more like themselves.
They dismantle Madame Maureen's fortune-telling tent as though they are a circus leaving town, imbued with the inevitable contemplation that transience brings and with the growing sense that somehow their world is changing.
He does not exist in her mind. He is real. Her marriage to him does not exist in her mind, it comes from real things. Has always come from real things. It is more than love, is it not? It is the sweet pattern of compromise. It is love and more than love. She has suspected this.
The pain of that keeping, she feels it now. Such a weight for him to carry. George waiting in the dusk of his life, like a child waiting for the big snow, so that it may ease the world with its white promise. Wasting himself with an ill-defined hope.
Elsa sits with her two sisters on the bed, listening to the murmur of voices rising from the room below them. It is like some melancholic music, she thinks, that someone has piped around the house, making everything the 'Four Marys' and 'Pansy Potter' do seem much more serious than usual. Even the obligatory celebration in the tuck shop appears to be a sad affair.
Tw: Death. There is a lot of death, but you can't really read the book without those scenes/themes, so just don't read it if you prefer every single character to stay alive until the end. It's not overly graphic or anything.
It's also about an affair, like it says in the blurb. And there's some catholic hate which is also pretty obvious.
Ah yes, this book was like putting moisturiser on your face after a crazy night out. It was the perfect companion through the last few weeks. A rare gem I had to randomly find at the back of the second hand section in a tiny communist bookshop in Dublin, which my friend's girlfriend recommended to me. I can't believe I got this kind of reading experience for 3 euros and I can't believe I almost went my entire life without knowing it existed. As far as I'm aware, Ghost Moth is the only book that tackles this exact topic in this exact way.
It is about pain and about waiting and hoping, idealising someone but losing them. It is about grief and motherhood and loving someone deeply but also loving someone else in a very different way, and these feelings not being in competition with each other or denying each other's existence.
As the book goes on, there is an interesting mix of nostalgia for childhood summers and first loves and the simplistic joys of the 40s and 60s combined with the increasing unrest and looming danger in the city, both very vividly portrayed and well weaved together, exacerbating each other.
The children's activities are painfully idyllic, they read books and play in the garden together all day or with their model village, or even something as simple as an amber brooch that creates optical illusions.
The few, deliberate twists really stabbed me in the heart and I never saw them coming.
Their obsession with their mother, particularly Elsa's, was heartwarming and gorgeously written, to the point that I could feel it as both the mother and the child. Seeing Katherine and her past through Elsa's eyes was refreshing and magical. Another cinematic scene was the
I also loved the moral of it, or how Katherine resolved her feelings for herself (I don't want to spoil it but it's beautiful and wholesome and satisfying and makes a lot of sense).
And there was even some representation, which is unusual but not uncommon irl.
Style
The language is just beautiful and a delight to read, even without any context.
Every word smells of childhood and summer, but also of longing. I loved the immersive detail of setting, emotion, and body language as well as the gently implied nature metaphors, veering just slightly into the magical, dreamy, and surreal.
Wonderfully crafted sentences like "splinters of high voices peak on the blue wind", "she hangs in a quiver of cold sea", "fast, fat slices of sun", "a thin whisper of sand", ...
that describe situations perfectly and create dazzling, meaningful moments through neologisms and other techniques such as using nouns as adjectives and verbs as nouns, using colours to describe temperature, objects to describe colour, etc.
It captures specific emotions like the calm of a summer swim or a morning before dawn perfectly so that you can not only imagine but FEEL it as if you're there. Every description is so detailed, not forgetting a single tiny sound, feeling, or texture, from the cold wet hugs to the soft towels to the voices echoing across the wide shore, carried by the wind.
Sometimes (not too often) the author doesn't even write full sentences but still says so many things in so few words. It's never grammatically incorrect, just more like poetry.
Quotes
Mind, sea, and sky seemed all one.
Now the air is charged with his absence.
Sitting with the car window open, Katherine can hear voices travelling from the far end of the street, the way summer air seems to hold sound on a long leash.
In the ghostly light, his body cast a broad, featureless shadow of swollen blues on the world behind him. As she stood close to and a little below him, her shadow was completely immersed in his, so that she could no longer see what mark she made on the world. What made him stay so long and so close to her?
He bought her an ice cream at Fuscos, near John Long's Corner, and then sang her a vanilla and raspberry serenade as they crossed Isoline Street. A dome of soft memory in the making, creamy white, trickled with sugar sweetness, berry-berry red. Their tongues tasted childhood and their lips chilled and they walked together, creating a song line through east Belfast.
The lie now sat like another presence in the room, expecting to be fed. (...) If she ignored the lie, she told herself, if she chose not to feed it, it would go away. (...)
'Yes,' she said, still trembling, while on the wooden floor of the parlour, under the table, the lie still sat, its tongue coated with sugar, waiting for scraps.
Both concealed the true extent of their desire for each other, choosing instead a cautious foreplay of touch and conversation. Their senses were magnified by the uncertainty of decorum – its inappropriateness or its waste of time – and so they hovered in a state of sexual suspense.
Floating and burning and different from before. So these are the codes of love, glimpsed and now shared. And Katherine has explained it to her daughter as though she has understood it herself. As though she has understood how the experience of love preoccupies and claims its space. As though she has understood how the experience of love has preoccupied and claimed her.
Katherine is feeling tiredness like a soft white pain. She looks at her three daughters, expectant, imploring, needy. They are shuffling awkwardly into their night clothes, hurriedly stuffing two legs into one pyjama leg, like giddy mermaids. Katherine feels the weight of Elsa's manipulation as though a drowning man is pulling her under the surface of the sea. If she yields, is easy in herself, her own lightness will save them. If she resists, the children will become saturated with her irritation, slipping away from her into a dismal and unnecessary fretful sleep, while she will return to the kitchen, her lungs full to their saltwater brim with a nagging and futile remorse. But after a day doing every little and last thing for them, she now longs to close the door on motherhood, just for a brief while, and be whoever she is with them. If that possibility exists.
The contours of Maureen's face have been altering continuously through these summer weeks, so that now it is all future.
It was only when she heard the click of the glass panelled door from the main room as Ivy left to go home did she feel the small bite of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach.
The waiting over.
Her hair falling from its soft coil. His hands loosening it. The movement filling the pores of her scalp. She cannot take enough of him in. A brushstroke of cloud in the evening sky. The ticking of the clock. A bruise now on her left hip.
(Posh bus ride)
She alighted the number thirty-one trolley bus into town. The conductor pulled on the bell rope. As the trolley bus pulled away from the curb, she reached the rounded grab handles on the ends of the seats and carefully made her way down to the front of the lower saloon. She tucked her pearl grey woollen coat under her and sat down on the princess blue leather seat.
Over and over again she brushed against, then swept past the unthinkable: She was one week late.
She felt her body as a leaden weight. She could not deny to herself how her heart had opened like a glorious flower at seeing him. But now there was a darker edge to everything. Now as she looked at Tom, she felt the overwhelming weight of her intentions. In admitting to herself what she would lose, she wasn't so sure that she wanted to lose it anymore. Or, perhaps in truth, she wasn't so sure that she could deal with the consequences. She could feel her courage slipping, as though the floor itself had tilted and she had nothing to hang on to. The courage she had fought so hard to find. The courage she knew she needed in order to tell George. She couldn't hold on to it.
In the back room beside the kitchen, where the fibres of love and life are woven together, Katherine now stands and waits for the kettle to boil.
Despite her tiredness, Katherine smiles at how her daughter finds humour in Stephen's getting his sisters hand-me-downs. As she watches Elsa now, she marvels at the inconsequentiality of time. In an instant, Katherine can look at her daughter, as she is, the contours of her young face elongating and changing with each slight shift in her understanding of the world, and also see her, at one and the same time, as a baby, all rounded flesh and soft bones and wisps of fluffy hair. Two images of the same child completely at one, completely preserved and still living, still breathing, still available to her at any moment.
'I like those kind of stories that you don't know whether came from. They're not so scary.'
'Why's that?'
'Because they mightn't of even happened yet; they might have just been dreamed. And that means that there's a chance that they'll never happen, if you don't want them to.'
'And what if you want them to happen?'
'You have to keep dreaming them.'
With morning's inevitable growth, Katherine and Elsa become less like spectres and more like themselves.
They dismantle Madame Maureen's fortune-telling tent as though they are a circus leaving town, imbued with the inevitable contemplation that transience brings and with the growing sense that somehow their world is changing.
He does not exist in her mind. He is real. Her marriage to him does not exist in her mind, it comes from real things. Has always come from real things. It is more than love, is it not? It is the sweet pattern of compromise. It is love and more than love. She has suspected this.
The pain of that keeping, she feels it now. Such a weight for him to carry. George waiting in the dusk of his life, like a child waiting for the big snow, so that it may ease the world with its white promise. Wasting himself with an ill-defined hope.
Elsa sits with her two sisters on the bed, listening to the murmur of voices rising from the room below them. It is like some melancholic music, she thinks, that someone has piped around the house, making everything the 'Four Marys' and 'Pansy Potter' do seem much more serious than usual. Even the obligatory celebration in the tuck shop appears to be a sad affair.
January 1, 2014
Here's my review from The List:
This Belfast-set novel, the debut of Irish actress-turned-writer Michèle Forbes, is initially underwhelming: its story of Katherine, a wife and mother in 1969, struck by memories of a defining romantic encounter 20 years earlier, is beautifully written, but not gripping. But Forbes’ writing possesses a stealthy power, and her patient layering of the story, memory upon memory, results in a surprising emotional impact by the time the final page is turned.
On the surface, Ghost Moth is about Katherine’s relationship with her devoted husband George, and how their suppressed knowledge of the past persists in seeping into their life together. But pursuing a plot is not Forbes’ primary concern, and it is in the carefully drawn details that this novel comes alive. The strongest element is Forbes’ heartfelt evocation of parental love, as she dwells on simple domestic scenes that powerfully convey the connection between Katherine and her four children. This is a novel of lived moments captured and explored: moments that become all the more poignant as the story turns to tragedy.
This Belfast-set novel, the debut of Irish actress-turned-writer Michèle Forbes, is initially underwhelming: its story of Katherine, a wife and mother in 1969, struck by memories of a defining romantic encounter 20 years earlier, is beautifully written, but not gripping. But Forbes’ writing possesses a stealthy power, and her patient layering of the story, memory upon memory, results in a surprising emotional impact by the time the final page is turned.
On the surface, Ghost Moth is about Katherine’s relationship with her devoted husband George, and how their suppressed knowledge of the past persists in seeping into their life together. But pursuing a plot is not Forbes’ primary concern, and it is in the carefully drawn details that this novel comes alive. The strongest element is Forbes’ heartfelt evocation of parental love, as she dwells on simple domestic scenes that powerfully convey the connection between Katherine and her four children. This is a novel of lived moments captured and explored: moments that become all the more poignant as the story turns to tragedy.
June 5, 2014
This is Forbe's first novel, but it is one that will stay with me. It is set in Northern Ireland, in a suburban-like neighborhood of Belfast. Katherine is a mother of 4, in 1969, married to a civil servant who also serves as a volunteer firefighter, George. George converted to Catholicism when they married, and aside from a local shopkeeper couple, the only Catholics in their neighborhood. Early on, we learn that Katherine still has deep feelings for another love in her past. Much of Forbes' descriptions are exquisitely written. Some may find the love story and ending tipping into a romance-like genre. Yet considering the era this story takes place, both are plausible. Forbes' mentor is the Dublin writer, Christina Dwyer Hickey. Hickey has commented on the struggle to publish as an Irish woman writer who doesn't dish up 'chick lit'. For this reason, it makes sense she would mentor a younger writer who is coming along when it seems chick lit is losing its stranglehold on the Irish market.
April 18, 2015
I loved this book. I listened to it on audio then bought it in hardback. Michele reads it herself, beautifully.
Ghost Moth is set in 1949 and 1969 by which time Northern Ireland is aflame. It moves between the decades. In 1949 Katherine meets Tom while already engaged to devoted, patient George. She is playing Carmen, ‘a woman not careful with her love’, in a local production. Tom, the head tailor makes her a magnificent costume and sews into it all his love for her.
It is love with all its flaws and uncertainties as well as moments of great tenderness and joy. And tragedy. The plot is remarkable (I do not want to reveal any of it), delving into the relationships and souls of the characters in with a depth and truth rarely seen. The ending – what a surprise and joy. I worried about how she could possibly pull it together, I need not have done.
The language is sensitive, powerful and heartbreaking. A joy.
Ghost Moth is set in 1949 and 1969 by which time Northern Ireland is aflame. It moves between the decades. In 1949 Katherine meets Tom while already engaged to devoted, patient George. She is playing Carmen, ‘a woman not careful with her love’, in a local production. Tom, the head tailor makes her a magnificent costume and sews into it all his love for her.
It is love with all its flaws and uncertainties as well as moments of great tenderness and joy. And tragedy. The plot is remarkable (I do not want to reveal any of it), delving into the relationships and souls of the characters in with a depth and truth rarely seen. The ending – what a surprise and joy. I worried about how she could possibly pull it together, I need not have done.
The language is sensitive, powerful and heartbreaking. A joy.
November 27, 2013
Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes is an excellent story. The tragedy of Katherine's lost love, her settlement for a life with George and her eventual death from cancer are partially balanced by the final acceptance of the life she has chosen and the love of her children. The story line is well crafted and effectively involves the reader in the conflicts in her life. The word images created to describe her world are vivid and poetic.
The story has two settings; one involves her life as a young unmarried actress in 1949 Belfast, immersed in a doomed love affair. The other covers her final year, 1969.
The civil strife in Belfast during her final year is vividly brought to the reader through the narration of isolated confrontations between her Catholic family and their Protestant neighbors. I would recommend 'Ghost Moth' to all readers.
The story has two settings; one involves her life as a young unmarried actress in 1949 Belfast, immersed in a doomed love affair. The other covers her final year, 1969.
The civil strife in Belfast during her final year is vividly brought to the reader through the narration of isolated confrontations between her Catholic family and their Protestant neighbors. I would recommend 'Ghost Moth' to all readers.
May 5, 2016
The novel is so strange in its darkness and ghostliness, I feel hardly able to describe it. I am numbed and silenced by it, but awaken somehow from inside, some deep quiet part of me emerges as I read it. The rolling, swaying rhythm of Forbes's prose lulls you into a magical place that is both here, there and somewhere in-between.
The poetic qualities of her writing perfectly capture the story of a woman who appears to be with one foot in another world, as though is not quite there, as if she is hiding behind a screen even as you are reading about her innermost thoughts. A great debut!
For a more detailed review check out my blog post: http://the-word-muse.blogspot.com/201...
The poetic qualities of her writing perfectly capture the story of a woman who appears to be with one foot in another world, as though is not quite there, as if she is hiding behind a screen even as you are reading about her innermost thoughts. A great debut!
For a more detailed review check out my blog post: http://the-word-muse.blogspot.com/201...
December 3, 2013
Fine, lyrical writing. Large swaths of this novel, however, suffer from overwriting, which sets up the reader for tension or drama that rarely materializes. Most of the major characters are, at first, established with great care, but are not as fleshed out as one would like. A promising, hopeful, but ultimately unsatisfying read.
(This has nothing to do with my rating, but Yankee readers who may not have much knowledge or awareness of Ireland's Troubles, which forms the backdrop of The Ghost Moth, should probably delve into some background material before reading this novel.)
(This has nothing to do with my rating, but Yankee readers who may not have much knowledge or awareness of Ireland's Troubles, which forms the backdrop of The Ghost Moth, should probably delve into some background material before reading this novel.)
July 17, 2015
This is a good, well written story set in the hot summer of 1969 in the early days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Katherine and George are devoted to their kids and seem to have a loving, happy family life. There is however a hidden secret in their past that is gradually drawn out set alongside the fact that the couple originally come from different sides of the growing sectarian divide and are now living in the wrong part of Belfast in terms of the children's religion and schooling.
January 4, 2015
Very powerful and poignant novel about love and tragedy. The story switches between two time points and explores the dilemmas faced by Katherine Fallon, an actress and later on a mother, in love with two men. Michele Forbes' writing is excellent. I highly recommend it.
August 15, 2013
I won this book from Goodreads, firstreads.
I really enjoyed it. It was such a real and simple story.
Beautifully written and thought provoking.
I really enjoyed it. It was such a real and simple story.
Beautifully written and thought provoking.
September 27, 2013
Beautiful and tragic. The final 50 pages gutted me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews