Confessions - by Catherine Airey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

"Confessions is a remarkable debut. A complex and compulsive read that unravels the intricate twists and revelations among three generations of women with elegance and urgency." --Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace

A "dazzling puzzle box of a novel" (Oprah Daily) following three generations of women as decades of secrets spill out of the attic of one family's mysterious old home in rural Ireland--a propulsive, page-turning story about the power of choice.

New York City, late September 2001. The walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady's father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. When a letter arrives from an aunt she didn't know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life, the name jogs a memory: an old videocassette game Cora used to play as a child where two sisters must save the students of a mysterious boarding school.

County Donegal, 1974. An eclectic group of artists known as the Screamers arrives in Burtonport and moves into the old schoolhouse down the road from where Róisín lives with her older sister Máire. Alternately kind and cruel, brilliant artist Máire is a mystery to Róisín, as is Máire's relationship with the boy next door, Michael. When the Screamers look to hire an artist in residence, Róisín enlists Michael's help to get Máire the job, setting in motion a chain of events that will put an ocean between the sisters and threaten to tear them apart forever.

Burtonport, 2018. Lyca Brady lives in a sprawling old house with her mother, Cora, and great aunt, Ro. Abortion has just been legalized in Ireland, and Lyca is struggling to find herself outside her mother's activism. An unexpected message from a childhood friend sends Lyca searching her house's mysterious attic, with its strange collection of old medical equipment, piles of paperwork, and dusty boxes of ancient video games. There, she unearths secrets hidden for decades--secrets perhaps better left unknown.

Catherine Airey's haunting debut spins a mesmerizing story of family and fate, survival and revelation, examining the irresistible gravity of the past--how it endures through generations, pervasively present even when buried or forgotten.

Review Quotes

"Catherine Airey's Confessions is a wonderfully moreish feast of family drama, flowing prose, and psychologically compelling characters. I devoured this remarkable debut that charts the lives of three generations of women and their intense, interior lives. Gracefully plotted with sentences that glide along, it's a book that rollercoasters with secrets and revelations, exploring love and desire; longing and belonging. Airey's novel has the complex yet deeply human undertones and poetry of Anne Enright combined with the effortless flow and vim of Louise Kennedy. I absolutely adored this novel and will be reading all future books by this immensely talented author." - Rupert Dastur, author of Cloudless
"Confessions is a beating heart of a novel, intricate both in its weaving and its unspooling. An irresistible read." - Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep
"[A] bold and intricate debut. . . Airey crafts a sharp psychological sketch of each woman as they contend with their parallel crises, adding nuance and depth without shying away from making a strong statement for reproductive rights. Readers will be eager to see what Airey does next." - Publishers Weekly
"Confessions is an absolute triumph and deserves to be read widely."
- The Bookseller
"Confessions is a remarkable debut. A complex and compulsive read that unravels the intricate twists and revelations among three generations of women with elegance and urgency." - Miranda Cowley Heller, New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace
"Brilliantly conceived and magnificently executed, I truly could not put it down. I haven't come across as honest, truthful, compelling, and gripping a writer for decades. The work of a debut novelist that feels like the work of a seasoned and highly accomplished author."
- Anna Fitzgerald, author of Girl in the Making
"The narrative zips along with the crackling intelligence of Donna Tartt, full of twists and turns, and genuine surprises. I was reminded, too, of reading Elena Ferrante, for the sheer propulsive, page-turning pleasure...Confessions is an astonishing and remarkable novel, and truly deserving of all the accolades coming its way." - Irish Independent
"Airey's debut is a historical novel, but its concerns are lodged in 2025. It arrives at a time when artists are looking for ways to represent our strange reality." - The Atlantic
"[An] intoxicating debut. . . Each narrative, conversationally yet eloquently phrased, has a bracing openness that transfixes one's attention. Women seeking outlets for their tumbling emotions--via writing, art, and more--weave through this polyphonic story, as do the secrets and interpersonal connections that invisibly scaffold their lives." - Booklist
"An intricately woven epic, Confessions is both intimate and expansive, a novel that teems with raw, hungry life." - Colin Walsh, author of Kala
"Thoroughly impressive. [Airey] exquisitely cap-tures the attitudes, atmospheres and language of communities spanning five decades and two coasts of the Atlantic; and she tackles mental health, rape, exploitation, abortion rights and political imprisonment with serious and heart-felt tact that never edges into preachiness. . . Confessions recalls the structural unique-ness of Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, the generational intertwining of Tara Stringfellow's Memphis, and the emo-tional complexity of Sally Rooney's Normal People; it feels in some way reminiscent of each. This is a firecracker of a debut novel that never gives up any slack." - BookPage
"An absolute triumph." - Bookseller
"One of 2025's most exciting literary debuts."
- Service 95
"This episodic, multi-layered debut crosses decades and continents to shine a light on the universality and uniqueness of women's experience...The book is a saga: its serious pleasures are its expansiveness and range, and Airey's rare, particular instinct for scenes or worlds that are interesting to be with, from 1970s New York art kids to early female gamers.... A cool, bold image of female pain and liberation." - The Guardian
"Confessions is a tender and bitingly original work that effortlessly weaves the parochial weight of Irish family history with the mendacious allure of Manhattan's seedy streets. Catherine Airey reads like a natural successor to Maeve Brennan, a chronicler of the pain and peril of self-determination." - Darragh McKeon, author of Remembrance Sunday
"Exciting, expansive and transporting storytelling. It's hard to believe Confessions is a debut novel." - Roxy Dunn, author of As Young As This
"A sweeping story that spans both generations and continents, Catherine Airey's Confessions is, at its heart, about the desire to know ourselves and those who came before us as well as an exploration of the mystery that lies at the heart of love. A bold and ambitious debut from a remarkable new writer." - Daisy Alpert Florin, author of My Last Innocent Year
"I was mesmerized from the very first pages of Catherine Airey's startling debut, Confessions. The story of Maire and Roisin, two Irish sisters living an ocean apart, proceeds with an almost hypnotic power and grace - it has the certainty of fable and the true originality of a powerful new voice in fiction." - Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics
"Airey's dazzling debut is a puzzle box of a novel with a solution you discover along with the characters in the satisfying final chapters. A video game, secret correspondence, 23andMe, reproductive rights activism, and french fries dipped in a vanilla milkshake all play a role." - Oprah Daily
"Stunning with an emotional wallop." - Montecito Journal