September Fiction

A dramatic turn of events might induce literary whiplash in this otherwise enjoyable novel

- James Walton

Freckles

Cecelia Ahern

WHEN ALLEGRA BIRD was a girl, she used to join up the freckles on her arms with a pen to create constellations. Now, in her twenties, she’s finding it much harder to make connections, either with other people or between the different parts of her life—although, in her defense, there are quite a lot of those. Among other things, Allegra has a beloved father back in Kerry; a current job as a parking warden in Malahide, near Dublin; a part-time career as a nude life model; a former beau who’s just made her best friend pregnant; and a desperate desire to track down the mother who abandoned her at birth.

Allegra’s quest to link up these various elements is the premise of the new novel by Cecelia Ahern: daughter of the former Irish Taoiseach Bertie and, for the past two decades, a leading figure in women’s fiction. Or, more accurately, it’s one of the premises— because, somewhat ironically in the circumstances (and a bit surprisingly for such a seasoned pro), Freckles never really succeeds in joining up all of the many things it wants to be.

There is, for example, a central love story, which takes the traditional form of a man who seemed horrible turning out to be nice. There’s also that other staple of the fiction formerly known as chick-lit: a heroine whose main flaw is that she doesn’t realize how great she is. But Ahern throws in plenty more besides—including the idea that “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”: an idea that has Allegra learning to separate the glamorous but ultimately shallow Dublin types from the “real honest to goodness people” she eventually comes to treasure.