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Something Bigger
When fourteen-year-old Marcella Coyle leaves Ireland to join her older brother Jimmy, a priest in Birmingham, Alabama, nobody could imagine where the journey would take her. Plunged into the tense cauldron of the Deep South at the turn of the Twentieth Century, she struggles to understand her outspoken brother, and her place in his world. The life she left behind becomes equally incomprehensible, as war and Irish nationalism change her memories and the lives of the people she loves most. When the KKK revive and take to the streets, a dangerous friendship puts Marcella and those closest to her at risk. The consequences shake the city, and change her life forever.
300 pages, Paperback
First published July 20, 2021
2 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 23, 2021
Something Bigger is a wonderful novel that takes complex and consequential moments from history and places them in a beautiful, almost intimate context. Drawing together universal themes of emigration, family, racism and social justice in a style that is at once compelling and lyrical, Sheila has written a novel that spans generations and yet feels extremely personal. This book is a stunning reaching into the past to explore moments we’re living through in the present.
August 11, 2021
Beautifully engaging and original, Something Bigger is a story of the KKK in Alabama in the early 1920s, only it's told from an Irish perspective and includes not only the racism but the anti-Catholicism of the Klan. Based on the true story of the author's great aunt and great uncle, it's a rich imagining of the experience of immigration, trying to make a new home, and the depth and importance of family relationships. There is also an exploration of how to face hate, of the power and powerlessness of love and a belief in social justice. Killian takes her time in the telling and creates a compelling and textured story with vividly drawn characters. Absolutely worth a read, and I look forward to more from the author.
July 23, 2021
I had the privilege of reviewing an advanced copy of Something Bigger by Irish author Sheila Killian. The first thing I noted about the meticulous prose was the attention to detail regarding the small stuff. Things such as the weather, time of day, smells in the air and lots more, all have a valuable function in driving the story forward.
Secondly, I recognised it to be a complex, multi-layered story. It reminded me of Anne Enright’s novels The Green Road and The Gathering as these novels are also about family drama, emigration and loss. But unlike Enright’s characters who come home – one more time to be together – Killian’s characters aren’t afforded that luxury due to several unfolding difficulties.
In many ways, Something Bigger engages you in an immediate sense of time and place. The story opens in 1962 New York, with memories from a bygone time. Marcella, the female protagonist, is seventy-two and she has a story to impart. Going back in time to an Ireland of 1904 where job shortages and poverty led to mass emigration. Economic opportunities to faraway places such as America, Australia and Canada propelled the rural young male population to travel abroad, especially “if there was no land to hold them” in Ireland. But “girls didn’t have to leave” they just needed to cook, sew and preferably marry a man with land.
Interesting episodes of Irish history took place in the early twentieth century and families were displaced by political and religious unrest. This is the story of the Coyle family. Five brothers, two sisters, a teacher father –long passed– and a mother who tries to do her best. The favourite son, Jimmy, is a Priest in Alabama and in an effort to ease the family financial burden he takes his sister with him to America, where he believes she will have a better education and a new life.
Marcella is the innocent younger sister, plucked from her Irish home at aged fourteen and brought to an alien land. She is thrown into a new life that challenges her to the very core.
“Maybe we can just blame the war” for what happens next in this intricate tale, which is reflective, yet pacey.
Killian’s rich sense of place awakens the reader. Turf fires burning, the smells of the Irish country hedgerow and the descriptions of the low town of Athlone are juxtaposed with the dead heat of Birmingham, Alabama, the industrial city’s coal dust, alongside the French and Creole fragrant cuisine. The strange southern accents and “the parade of Black men and women…walking in from the other end of town every morning to cook and clean and garden, walking home again in the dark evenings…”.
The novel is split into two parts; the first section is recounted through third person narration and the second part shifts to Marcella's first person chronicling. Not only is the novel a Bildungsroman of sorts, it’s also an epistolary tale, incorporating both letter and newspaper cuttings. Yet, the cleverly placed researched details never get in the way of the story moving forward.
Marcella's brother Jimmy is dedicated to his vocation and on a mission to strengthen and nurture the local parishes. He plans to build churches and schools in the Catholic dioceses, bringing men, women and children– regardless of their colour or creed – together. Despite numerous objections from the local government and the town’s business people – also known as the Ku Klux Klan– Fr Jimmy Coyle is not easily swayed. His opinionated political poems are published in local newspapers drawing unwarranted attention to himself and the parish house he shares with his sister and his coloured Catholic housekeeper, Johanna. A lack of support from his fearful colleague and several warnings from the bishop to behave a little more anonymously, unfortunately falls upon deaf ears.
This novel offers a social commentary and a political undercurrent blended with emotional realism that is elegantly composed. The characters will stay in your heart long after the book is finished.
Though this is a debut novel, Killian has won previous awards for fiction, travel writing and poetry. There is no doubt she is a talented writer.
Secondly, I recognised it to be a complex, multi-layered story. It reminded me of Anne Enright’s novels The Green Road and The Gathering as these novels are also about family drama, emigration and loss. But unlike Enright’s characters who come home – one more time to be together – Killian’s characters aren’t afforded that luxury due to several unfolding difficulties.
In many ways, Something Bigger engages you in an immediate sense of time and place. The story opens in 1962 New York, with memories from a bygone time. Marcella, the female protagonist, is seventy-two and she has a story to impart. Going back in time to an Ireland of 1904 where job shortages and poverty led to mass emigration. Economic opportunities to faraway places such as America, Australia and Canada propelled the rural young male population to travel abroad, especially “if there was no land to hold them” in Ireland. But “girls didn’t have to leave” they just needed to cook, sew and preferably marry a man with land.
Interesting episodes of Irish history took place in the early twentieth century and families were displaced by political and religious unrest. This is the story of the Coyle family. Five brothers, two sisters, a teacher father –long passed– and a mother who tries to do her best. The favourite son, Jimmy, is a Priest in Alabama and in an effort to ease the family financial burden he takes his sister with him to America, where he believes she will have a better education and a new life.
Marcella is the innocent younger sister, plucked from her Irish home at aged fourteen and brought to an alien land. She is thrown into a new life that challenges her to the very core.
“Maybe we can just blame the war” for what happens next in this intricate tale, which is reflective, yet pacey.
Killian’s rich sense of place awakens the reader. Turf fires burning, the smells of the Irish country hedgerow and the descriptions of the low town of Athlone are juxtaposed with the dead heat of Birmingham, Alabama, the industrial city’s coal dust, alongside the French and Creole fragrant cuisine. The strange southern accents and “the parade of Black men and women…walking in from the other end of town every morning to cook and clean and garden, walking home again in the dark evenings…”.
The novel is split into two parts; the first section is recounted through third person narration and the second part shifts to Marcella's first person chronicling. Not only is the novel a Bildungsroman of sorts, it’s also an epistolary tale, incorporating both letter and newspaper cuttings. Yet, the cleverly placed researched details never get in the way of the story moving forward.
Marcella's brother Jimmy is dedicated to his vocation and on a mission to strengthen and nurture the local parishes. He plans to build churches and schools in the Catholic dioceses, bringing men, women and children– regardless of their colour or creed – together. Despite numerous objections from the local government and the town’s business people – also known as the Ku Klux Klan– Fr Jimmy Coyle is not easily swayed. His opinionated political poems are published in local newspapers drawing unwarranted attention to himself and the parish house he shares with his sister and his coloured Catholic housekeeper, Johanna. A lack of support from his fearful colleague and several warnings from the bishop to behave a little more anonymously, unfortunately falls upon deaf ears.
This novel offers a social commentary and a political undercurrent blended with emotional realism that is elegantly composed. The characters will stay in your heart long after the book is finished.
Though this is a debut novel, Killian has won previous awards for fiction, travel writing and poetry. There is no doubt she is a talented writer.
August 16, 2021
A brave and authentic debut about family, identity, emigration and race.
Something Bigger tells the story of 14 year old Marcella Coyle, who leaves her hometown of Athlone in Ireland to join her older brother, an outspoken Catholic priest, in Alabama. Ten years later, Alabama is home for Marcella, but the American South is also a pressure cooker of turmoil, with KKK activity on the cusp of exploding in a mass movement against ethnic minorities and Catholics. Marcella must find her identity and navigate her way in this new world, and when an unusual relationship with a young, local girl - the daughter of a member of the KKK - leads to a devastating and significant event, the community of Birmingham and the lives of those affected will never be the same again.
There is so much to love about this book. Set against the backdrop of the First World War and the War of Indepence in Ireland, Something Bigger is a compelling walk through a particular time in history, stopping for a while with a host of flesh and blood characters. I found myself gripped by the historical fiction/factual piece, while also forming an emotional attachment to the people within the pages. It can be difficult to weave together research and storytelling and make a reader's head and heart simultaneously react, but Sheila Killian does this effortlessly.
This story is told partly in epistolary form but it is Marcella's conversational and intimate narrative that shines. We witness her experiences as her thoughts meander through the novel, ebbing and flowing, yearning for the comfort of home but bound by the love of a new place. I also adored the character of Tommy, Marcella's young love interest back home who promised to wait for her. His loyalty, his charm, the softness of him.
Sheila's writing is lyrical and beautifully restrained. It's rare to find an author with a gentle, warm voice who can evoke such a gripping and tense story. I was enthralled by Marcella's tale and I didn't want it to end.
Something Bigger is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about the stories of our past and the choices we make, and how we bear these marks into the future.
Something Bigger tells the story of 14 year old Marcella Coyle, who leaves her hometown of Athlone in Ireland to join her older brother, an outspoken Catholic priest, in Alabama. Ten years later, Alabama is home for Marcella, but the American South is also a pressure cooker of turmoil, with KKK activity on the cusp of exploding in a mass movement against ethnic minorities and Catholics. Marcella must find her identity and navigate her way in this new world, and when an unusual relationship with a young, local girl - the daughter of a member of the KKK - leads to a devastating and significant event, the community of Birmingham and the lives of those affected will never be the same again.
There is so much to love about this book. Set against the backdrop of the First World War and the War of Indepence in Ireland, Something Bigger is a compelling walk through a particular time in history, stopping for a while with a host of flesh and blood characters. I found myself gripped by the historical fiction/factual piece, while also forming an emotional attachment to the people within the pages. It can be difficult to weave together research and storytelling and make a reader's head and heart simultaneously react, but Sheila Killian does this effortlessly.
This story is told partly in epistolary form but it is Marcella's conversational and intimate narrative that shines. We witness her experiences as her thoughts meander through the novel, ebbing and flowing, yearning for the comfort of home but bound by the love of a new place. I also adored the character of Tommy, Marcella's young love interest back home who promised to wait for her. His loyalty, his charm, the softness of him.
Sheila's writing is lyrical and beautifully restrained. It's rare to find an author with a gentle, warm voice who can evoke such a gripping and tense story. I was enthralled by Marcella's tale and I didn't want it to end.
Something Bigger is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about the stories of our past and the choices we make, and how we bear these marks into the future.
July 2, 2021
It's not just the compelling, tenderly-researched story that kept me turning the pages of Sheila Killian’s debut novel ‘Something Bigger’. It’s also the gorgeous. lyrical, multisensory writing. Page after page I was dazzled. Marcella is so fully formed and utterly believable that I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd looked up from the book and found her sitting beside me, writing that letter to her mother or quietly playing memories in her head 'preserved by candied orange peel, too sweet, too bitter to be real'. She will take your breath away. What a beautiful book.
October 14, 2021
Wonderful storytelling from Sheila Killian. This is historical fiction at its best. The historical events are fascinating (and chilling!) and obviously extremely well researched. The author conjures up the time and place so convincingly and the sister and brother protagonists are psychologically very interesting.
August 18, 2021
This was a wonderful first novel. Based on a family tragedy 100 years ago this month, Something Bigger brings the American south of the WW I era into focus through the lives of the author’s young grand aunt Marcella and Marcella’s brother Fr. James Coyle. Sheila’s prose is at times simple and descriptive, yet often lyrical and moving. I look forward to more from this author. (Full disclosure, Sheila is my fourth cousin, evidently the talented side of the family!)
July 2, 2022
An interesting and enjoyable read. The plot focuses on Marcella, the sister of Fr James Coyle, an Irish priest who was murdered in Birmingham, Alabama by a Methodist minister, and Klu Klux Klansman in 1921 because he dared to perform the marriage ceremony of his daughter to an immigrant. The narrative culminates in Coyle’s murder, and the aftermath. Definitely worth reading.
July 2, 2023
Such a sad book about a young girl whose life really was not what she had dreamt it would be growing up in rural Ireland in the early 1900’s. Even though she was able to travel to America and get educated by living with her Catholic priest brother her life just seemed so bleak. From the boat trip to America and her later days in an apartment in New York , Marcella’s life just seemed so miserable. She experienced great loneliness , lost loves, racism , hatred , war. She lived vicariously through her brother and his parish. Through her letter writing the reader sees a once hopeful , vibrant woman become a lost soul who missed so many opportunities to achieve a more fulfilling life.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews