Stranger from Across the Sea

Stranger from Across the Sea is Regina McBride’s fifth novel. She is also the author of a book of poetry and, most recently, a memoir, Ghost Songs. Her novel, The Nature of Water and Air, was a Booksense pick (Independent Book Stores selection), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers book, and a Borders Original Voices choice. It was optioned for a film. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, she lives in New York City where she teaches creative writing and fiction writing at Hunter College.

Takeaway: Powerhouse novel of Ireland, an intense girls’ friendship, and facing the past.Set amidst “the moody depths of Irish coastal light, the volatility of the wild North Atlantic tides,” this gorgeous, resonant novel of self-discovery and mystery in adolescence and womanhood centers on an unexpected connection and its impact over decades. In 1973, American teen Violet is brought by her mother to war-torn Northern Ireland, and soon, after the death of Violet’s Irish grandmother, the young woman finds herself stuck for the summer in St. Dymphna’s, a convent school empty save for one other young woman: blind Indira, from India, betrothed to a cousin and, like Violet, desperate for connection. The two form a fast bond, sharing their days, their cultures, their loneliness, and—in a series of lyric scenes of exquisite tenderness—their reflection, as Violet describes themselves in a mirror, and Indira explains what she remembers mirrors as being like.“You are my reflection and I am yours,” Indira tells her, but what takes root in summer doesn’t always flourish in the school year. As other students return, the pair begins to lose each other, until tragedy strikes. Over a decade later, chance again brings Violet, now a New York waitress and sometime college student, to that same stretch of Ireland as a caretaker for upper-class Emmett, a man distinguished by Aran sweaters, complicated feelings for his family, and a connection to the friend who still haunts Violet—and who has become a figure of local legend.With wisdom and electric scenecraft, McBride (The Land of Women) deftly contrasts the urgent feelings of youth with the pained uncertainties of an adult facing the past and the losses that come with adulthood. The prose is rich but swift, tuned to the heart and the telling detail, exploring coasts, convents, secrets, and the mysteries of the heart with piercing power, all as Violet faces both the past and the “thin curtain between the world of the living and the world of the dead.” Dazzled readers will likely seek out McBride’s earlier books.—Editor’s Pick, Publishers Weekly Booklife