Where the Heart Should Be is a quintessentially Irish novel. A love story about a lower-class Irish girl living in a one-room cottage with her parents and little brother, falling for an upper-class English boy living on the landlord’s estate. The book is set in 1846, a year after the Famine started, in the fictional town of Ballinkeel. It’s filled with all things Irish, from leaving offerings out for the faeries, hating the English aristocracy, and a healthy dose of the Catholic Church.
Following Nell, the reader gets a story about the Famine different to how most have heard it before. Hearing it told through the perspective of a teenage girl, instead of through a history book, makes the Famine so much more heart-breaking and real. Reading about the English landlords demanding rent, having seven-course meals, and ordering crates of champagne while Irish families were being kicked out of their homes and dying from hunger on the side of the road was horrifying.
I loved almost everything about this book. Watching the course of the famine play out in Sarah Crossan’s unconventional poetry style of writing was attention grabbing and impactful. The only issue I found with this book is that it felt as if Sarah Crossan was so attached to telling the story of the Famine that Nell’s romance ended up being sidelined towards the end. Where the Heart Should Be is a heartbreaking but hopeful and truly Irish story about one of the darkest parts of our history.
Isla Kerr, 16
Where the Heart Should Be
Sarah Crossan
Bloomsbury Publishing, March 2024
Paperback, £10.49
ISBN 9781526666567
