Strange Flowers

April 19, 2021
Ryan (From a Low and Quiet Sea) impresses with this gorgeous and meticulous multigenerational family saga. In the early 1970s, 20-year-old Moll Gladney disappears from her family’s cottage in Knockagowny, Ireland, leaving behind her postman father, Paddy, and bookkeeping mother, Kit. Five years later, after no contact with her family, she returns just as unpredictably from England. Alex Elmwood, a Black Pentecostal Englishman, shows up shortly after, informing Moll’s parents they are married and have an infant son named Josh, who can pass as white. Alexander slowly integrates into the community, joining a local hurling league and proving himself an excellent landscaper. Two decades later, Josh, now an aspiring writer, repeats his mother’s sudden departure to London, becoming “not a missing person, more a person missed,” as Ryan writes. He meets a young woman named Honey and shares a story he wrote about Jesus healing a blind man whose life subsequently crumbles into ruin. As Honey falls in love with Josh, she hides her connection to Alex’s past, setting up the novel’s surprising final act. Ryan’s sentences have a gentle ramble, which, along with the story’s subtle and oblique revelations, may test some readers’ patience. Fans of Sebastian Barry and Anne Enright will love this delicate and lush portrait.