Saoirse Aylward

Saoirse Aylward is the main character of the novel. The third person narrator primarily inhabits her consciousness throughout the narrative and thus presents the narrative world via her experience and perception of it.

Shortly after Saoirse’s mother Eileen gives birth to her, Saoirse’s father and grandfather are killed in a car accident. Eileen is thus left to raise her daughter alone. Because she and her mother-in-law, Nana, or Mary, both lose their husbands on the same night they come to rely upon one another. As Saoirse grows up she notices the ways in which the women commiserate over their loneliness, loss, and sorrow. Although she is often content to watch and listen, Saoirse also feels excluded from their grief. The older she gets, the more guilty she feels for her inability to mourn these two men who she never met.

When Saoirse is a child...