Official Review: Erin's Children by Eileen O'Finlan
Posted: 26 Feb 2021, 10:02
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Erin's Children" by Eileen O'Finlan.]
Erin's Children by Eileen O'Finlan tells the story of two sisters, Meg and Kathleen, and their journey following their arrival in the United States of America after leaving Ireland fleeing the dreadful living situation there in the late 1840s'. Meg follows the advice of her friend Nuala and hides her marital status, as servants are not supposed to be married women, and brings her sister Kathleen from Ireland first, rather than her husband.
Kathleen starts working as a maid too with the Pratt family; from the beginning, something is off about them and how they treat her, but because of the shortage of job options and the possibility of ending somewhere even worse, she stays.
Time passes, but eventually, Meg's husband Rory will come to America, and then she will no longer be capable of working as a live-in domestic. Irish men have very poorly paying jobs, so she is concerned about what will happen when she and her husband are reunited, have children, and are required to provide for all of them with only one salary.
I enjoyed this book immensely. Everything about it is fascinating. The characters are incredible, complex, and detailed. The plot started slowly but built gradually and branched into multiple storylines, and it included underlying subjects like xenophobia, prejudices against Catholics, and slavery.
There are two things I was especially fond of; one was the author's ability to represent the character's past and all the sorrow that they have experienced in a way that felt real and that, even coming up several times in the book and having a significant role in the story, was not repetitive. The other was a specific scene where Clara, the youngest of the Pratt's family, points out the duplicity in religion, arguing that good Christians would want to aid people in need even if they aren't Christians, whereas her family only wanted them gone and couldn't care less.
There was nothing I didn't like about the book. I believe there was a formatting issue because, on occasions, the size of the font would change in the middle of the chapter. Also, I'm not sure what the title means, as it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the book, and I didn't come across any references to it. Nevertheless, neither of these things got in the way of my reading.
Because this novel is exceptionally well-edited (I found not a single typo amongst 19th-century vocabulary and Irish slang), and I loved everything about it, I happily grant it four out of four stars. Lastly, the book has some vulgar language, but nothing too bad. I believe anyone who enjoys historical fiction will like it, but I must warn you there are some violent scenes.
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Erin's Children
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on Smashwords
Erin's Children by Eileen O'Finlan tells the story of two sisters, Meg and Kathleen, and their journey following their arrival in the United States of America after leaving Ireland fleeing the dreadful living situation there in the late 1840s'. Meg follows the advice of her friend Nuala and hides her marital status, as servants are not supposed to be married women, and brings her sister Kathleen from Ireland first, rather than her husband.
Kathleen starts working as a maid too with the Pratt family; from the beginning, something is off about them and how they treat her, but because of the shortage of job options and the possibility of ending somewhere even worse, she stays.
Time passes, but eventually, Meg's husband Rory will come to America, and then she will no longer be capable of working as a live-in domestic. Irish men have very poorly paying jobs, so she is concerned about what will happen when she and her husband are reunited, have children, and are required to provide for all of them with only one salary.
I enjoyed this book immensely. Everything about it is fascinating. The characters are incredible, complex, and detailed. The plot started slowly but built gradually and branched into multiple storylines, and it included underlying subjects like xenophobia, prejudices against Catholics, and slavery.
There are two things I was especially fond of; one was the author's ability to represent the character's past and all the sorrow that they have experienced in a way that felt real and that, even coming up several times in the book and having a significant role in the story, was not repetitive. The other was a specific scene where Clara, the youngest of the Pratt's family, points out the duplicity in religion, arguing that good Christians would want to aid people in need even if they aren't Christians, whereas her family only wanted them gone and couldn't care less.
There was nothing I didn't like about the book. I believe there was a formatting issue because, on occasions, the size of the font would change in the middle of the chapter. Also, I'm not sure what the title means, as it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the book, and I didn't come across any references to it. Nevertheless, neither of these things got in the way of my reading.
Because this novel is exceptionally well-edited (I found not a single typo amongst 19th-century vocabulary and Irish slang), and I loved everything about it, I happily grant it four out of four stars. Lastly, the book has some vulgar language, but nothing too bad. I believe anyone who enjoys historical fiction will like it, but I must warn you there are some violent scenes.
******
Erin's Children
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on Smashwords
