Into the Night Sky by Caroline Finnerty

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The events in this book are told from the differing points of view of three main characters. I found it confusing in the early part of the book not knowing how these three strands were going to be drawn together. Of course, this is a clever part of the author’s strategy – the reader sticks with it in order to find out.
The gradual drawing together of the strands draws the reader in so that by the final third of the book I found it impossible to put down.
As the main plot and several sub-plots unfold, more characters are introduced with their varying problems. Finnerty has created utterly believable characters facing the day-to-day problems experienced by many people in post-boom Ireland. The situations they encounter mirror those seen all too often in the republic’s newspapers and television news programmes – and, I have no doubt, elsewhere in the developed world.
This could easily have become a depressing account of despair and desperation as people try to deal with addiction, mental breakdown and imminent financial ruin. It is a credit to Finnerty that she has avoided that trap and given us, instead, an affirmation of the resilience of the human spirit and the power of love to overcome the most difficult of life’s challenges.
The only reason I felt unable to give this book five stars is because, despite the praise Finnerty bestows on her editor, there are far too many errors of the kind that any half-decent editor would not have allowed to pass.

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