This Interim Time

by Oona Frawley

 

How do we live when our loved ones are dying? How do we make sense of the world in their wake? And how do we balance love in the present with memory of the past?

As she witnesses her mother's descent into dementia and a beloved friend's cruel battle with cancer, Oona Frawley reconsiders the death of her father in New York decades earlier, the loss of her parents' home in Ireland before she was born, and the births of her own children. Balancing between grief at the passing of those closest to her, and joy at the emergence of new life, Frawley has wrought a stunning meditation on memory, family and the brief windows of life we share with those we love.

Utterly humane, fearlessly honest and always, at its core, hopeful, This Interim Time is a powerful, moving work at once intensely personal and entirely universal.

217 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 15, 2025

About the author

Born in NYC to Irish-actor parents, Oona has lived in Ireland full-time since completing her Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. She has held post-doctoral fellowships at Queen's University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin, and has lectured in the Department of English at Maynooth University since 2008. Oona's research interests lie in Irish Studies, particularly of the late 19th and 29th centuries, in Memory and Trauma Studies, and in ecocriticism. A Hennessy Award nominee, her first novel, Flight, was published in 2014 and was nominated for an Irish Book Award in the 'newcomer' category.Oona is currently writing a book on postcolonial ecocriticism, comparing Irish, American, Australian and New Zealand literature for attitudes towards land development, waste, and the environment.

(from https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/eng...)