I'll Be Home For Christmas by Roisin Meaney

3.5 Stars

Well, a lot has happened on Roone since I last visited - most notably Laura has added to her family with another baby daughter.  In fact, this caused me to spend the first few pages convinced I'd been here before but something just didn't quite match up for me then George the Donkey got a namecheck and I remembered reading about this rather odd Irish Isle previously and it all began to slot in to place for me.  To be honest, the book did get slightly more enjoyable from that point on as I realised these were a set of characters I had already been introduced to (I must read the first of the 3 books set on Roone).

This tale though is all about Tilly and her search for her sister.  You see, she was born in Australia and found out 5 years ago that she had been adopted; now she is 17 she has finally traced her rather disinterested birth mother and found out that she has a full sister.  After a disastrous event in her personal life she decides to travel to Roone to meet her sister in the hope she can run away from her problems and hide out with her.  She lies to her adoptive family and manufactures a Balinese holiday with a friend's family to explain her absence and off she sets.

As with most of Ms Meaney's novels the book covers the lives of disparate people, so, interspersed with tales of Tilly's fateful (and very eventful) journey we get regular updates from Laura.  This isn't a Laura we recognise from previous books - this is a struggling Laura, her sunny disposition lost to personal circumstance and a trying mother-in-law.  When the storm hits Roone all communication with the outside world is lost and, most worryingly, so is the strange apple tree that fruits all year round.  Does the storm bring good with it too?  It certainly blows more "trouble" in to Laura's life and leaves Tilly stranded.

As with all of her books this deals with the eternal themes of love and loss.  Even though this book is set at Christmas we still have death to contend with and severe illness alongside the usual family borne frictions.  The huge dollop of real life could add a depressing dimension to the read but somehow it lifts it in this reader's estimation.  Whilst escapism and happy ever afters are nice something with a bit more bite is always welcome.

Unfortunately, for me, the characters just didn't come alive in the way I felt they should have done.  Gavin's Mother (Gloria) and Laura's Father in particular are very two dimensional and the characters that Tilly meets on her long journey from Heathrow to Dublin to Roone are either ne'er do well Southerners or salt of the earth Irish and it did begin to grate a little with me.  Tilly and Laura are at least very full feeling characters and I loved the changes wrought in Laura and her attempts to get her old self back - this rang so true (fortunately my reasons for the massive change in my personality were far less traumatic than hers) and was dealt with beautifully.  Tilly is 17 and it shows but the author managed to get all the insecurities and constant self-doubt of this age on to the page without making Tilly a caricature.

This is a very good read but it was the lack of characterisation of the supporting cast that marked this one down for me.