Sunburn is a dreamy, sapphic bildungsroman that will suck readers in with its lush, atmospheric prose and fraught relationships. Chloe Michelle Howarth's debut novel follows Lucy, a teenager living in rural Ireland in the 1990s and the forbidden feelings that develop between her and Susannah, who's in her inner circle of friends.
Lucy lives in a traditional Catholic family, doesn't think much of herself, and seems compelled to seek approval from her community, especially her mother. Susannah is a golden-haired spitfire growing up in a divorced, liberal family. Her mother comes and goes and struggles with her own problems after being left with only the trappings of wealth but no actual money following the departure of her husband.
Susannah rebels for attention from her preoccupied mother and wants to come out in part to shock her, while Lucy is desperate to hide her sexuality from her own mother. This perfect storm of cultural and interpersonal conflicts lends momentum to the novel's gorgeous prose. The text sings on the subject of romance, with lyrical descriptions: "Already her fingerprints have disappeared from my collar, gone fast, like smears of the day moon."
Howarth perfectly captures the intensity and nostalgia of adolescent emotions, the overwhelming internal drama of a time when everything feels like "mine are real problems, nobody else's." But Sunburn's conflicts are real, including deep-rooted problems of a country just beginning to grapple with questions of who is allowed to love whom and the inexorable consequences for those who grew up being told that their very identity was a sin. --Carol Caley, writer