Sweep the Cobwebs Off the Sky

by Mary O'Donnell

Kindle Edition

Published March 19, 2026

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frankie has been obliged to return to her childhood home, Kilnarvon, to care for her ailing mother, Elma, who is still grieving the loss of Frankie’s father Paddy. Although not completely bedridden, Elma is frail, incontinent and has occasional lapses of memory. But she still possesses a sharp tongue, short temper and a stubborn independence often resisting Frankie’s ministrations. ‘In old age my mother has polished her obstinacy so that it radiates, its emotional neutrons, beta particles and gamma rays sometimes striking others like a jolting current.’

Frankie veers between sympathy for her mother and frustration at her ingratitude. She also feels the awkwardness that comes with having to carry out the most intimate tasks for her mother. To add to her sense of isolation, the country is presently in lockdown because of the Covid pandemic.

Most of all she cannot forgive Elma for her cruelty towards Frankie’s adopted younger sister Tess. Throughout Tess’s childhood she was punished for any infraction. Frankie not only feels anger at her late father’s passivity, that he did nothing to stop her mother’s behaviour, but also bears a sense of guilt that, although only a child, she did nothing to intervene. ‘Knowing so much, unable to act, to give voice.’

Frankie and Tess themselves have had a fraught relationship. Over the years they have been playmates and confidantes but at other times there have been fierce arguments and lengthy periods of silence. Frankie resents the fact that the burden of caring for their mother has fallen on her alone and that Tess constantly comes up with reasons why she has not yet arrived at Kilnarvon.

While her mother sleeps or sits in front of the TV endlessly watching quiz shows, Frankie ponders on her life, including her forty year marriage to Christoph. She reflects on the excitement of their travels together in the earlier years of their marriage and the transition to the more settled but still fulfilling companionship of the present, summed up beautifully by her observation, ‘We seem to be necessary to one another.’ She misses Christoph intensely but is torn between her desire to return home and her sense of responsibility towards her mother.

WhenTess finally arrives, a process of reconciliation can begin but not before secrets of the past are brought into the light.

Like many Irish novels the book has an element of the mystical, the notion that the boundary between past and present is insubstantial. There’s a sense that a restless spirit inhabits Kilnarvon, manifesting itself in scratching noises, swinging lightshades, the odour of spices. It’s Frankie who’s particularly sensitive to this, as if the house’s eccentric previous owner is still making his presence felt.

Sweep the Cobwebs Off the Sky is an acutely-observed exploration of family relationships.

[Veronika Opatřilová · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book. It took some time to get engaged, but once I did I had to read on. Some issues still remain unclear, untold. The realationship mother-daughter was so well described/felt, very sad, very true.

[Rosy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel explores what it is that binds and holds us together as we move through the sometimes painful stages and processes of life. O’Donnell’s account of familial love is nothing sentimental or rose tinted. It is a compelling no holds barred depiction of what real caring involves, when the chips are down. It explores how complex and paradoxical close caring relationships are, and how they are bound up with many other intricate emotions and life connections. O’Donnell’s intimate knowledge of rural Ireland along with her abiding delight in nature form a rich backdrop to the novel’s central setting of rural Monaghan. She knows well her favoured places of ‘shy herons and trout.’ All this makes for a rich and rewarding and thought provoking read.
The author’s clear eyed and lyrical account of middle aged Frankie tending to her dying mother, in a remote period home, during the worst of the Covid pandemic, manages to be both understated and intense. The situation tests both women to their absolute limits, and still tenderness and affection go on gleaming through the cracks. Frankie has no other option than to carry out the many difficult ministrations of caring for an elderly parent, against undercurrents of resentment within the family. She manages with a mixture of frustration, flashes of hatred and defiance, along with acceptance. And there is deep love. No question. Yes it smells. It stinks sometimes in fact. It is often repulsive, and nasty and there are moments of downright spite. Love is also changing your parent’s sodden incontinence pants, and comforting them, and enjoying their fleeting moments of residual caprice, as they round the final furlong of life with mind intact but with all dignity gone. It’s ‘a question of love and anger,’ O’Donnell writes about the relationship between Frankie and her sister Tess. It could equally be said about Frankie and her mother.
Love can be a chilly business, an intense and unsettling fusion of mismatched souls, a danse macabre, and sometimes as with Frankie and her mother Elma, a tricky dance that runs from cradle to grave. O’Donnell’s fine and profound novel asks us to confront these matters. Real love, like old age, is about showing up, and it’s not for sissies.
Reading O’Donnell’s book, I found myself mentally rewriting bits of Saint Paul’s letter so often touted at weddings. No! Love is certainly not always patient and kind. Often it’s frustrated and worn to a frazzle, afflicted with bouts of bitterness and downright resentment. People are enraged by those they love. Even when it’s trying not to be, love can be dismissive, snarky and spiteful. It messes with the truth bigtime. It falters all the time. But, for reasons we don’t fully understand, and reasons that remain somewhat mysterious to even the greatest minds, this crazy little thing can tend to endure through all of that. O’Donnell’s latest novel asks us to consider these massive complexities for ourselves.
She charts the deep dark waters of love and hate, the balanced accounting of loving kindness, patience and gallows humour, weighted against frustration and endurance, and fleeting moments of escape, against a shifting canvas of complex family dynamics. There are no fridge magnet Pauline messages of loving kindness, and no mollycoddling or trite solutions to any of these conundrums in this home of Kilnavarn. Frankie has reached a point in life when conditions can be rough, a time when we are often tested to the limits of our humanity. But with its cool, witty and lyrical prose, Sweep The Cobwebs Off The Sky shows us that the rich and complex dynamics of family life is something to be examined close up, engaged with and navigated, if not always fully understood.
The scene where Elma descends in her chairlift, singing with haltingly tender voice the cobweb nursery rhyme to the tune of Lillibulero, is both deeply moving and comical. A good opening movie scene, sharp, funny, heart-breaking and revealing so much of what the novel prompts us to consider.
If the house was a poem, O’Donnell writes, it could speak of losses, absences. O’Donnell is the poet, and the writer, speaking of losses and absences and so much more, right down to the penultimate page where Elma croaks: ‘not…gone…yet…’

[Noemi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frankie is a writer in her 60s, who returns to her childhood home to care for her elderly mother, with whom she’s always had a conflictual relationship. This dynamic is further complicated by Frankie’s sister, Tess, who later joins them in the house. The stories moves from past to present as the return to their childhood home surfaces memories of the two sisters troubled upbringing.

The story is narrated through the perspective of Frankie, who comes across as a glass child of sorts - we learn that Tess had a difficult childhood and early adulthood, taking the bigger share of their parents’ attention, but also that the reason for this is that their mother would be physically abusive towards her, with their dad and Frankie (a child herself) being passive spectators. While we don’t get Tess’ own perspective - her thoughts and feeling are always filtered through Frankie - I loved the depiction of Frankie’s complex feelings: there is guilt, mixed with resentment (because nobody likes to be made feel guilty), mixed with a good dose of selfishness (the good old “what about me?”)

Another interesting aspect was the care of the elderly parent - this is something many of us may have experienced, whether through grandparents, parents, or extended family, and I appreciated how unfiltered and unromanticised this portrayal was, while still showing the heartbreaking part of it.

Overall I loved this book, and I’d strongly recommend it if you enjoy stories of messy family dynamics and how our upbringing shapes who we are.

[Patricia Power · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweep the cobwebs off the sky by Mary O Donnell. This book has layers upon layers but ultimately for me it’s about the circle of life, role reversal of parents and children, family, mothers and daughters and coming to terms with and understanding the past. Beautiful book