{"id":32386,"date":"2025-08-30T06:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T06:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/32386\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T06:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T06:49:09","slug":"more-than-romance-fiction-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/32386\/","title":{"rendered":"More than romance fiction \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Paper Heart<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p><strong>Author:<\/strong>  Cecelia Ahern <\/p>\n<p><strong>ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-0008608194<\/p>\n<p><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> HarperCollins<\/p>\n<p><strong>Guideline Price:<\/strong> \u00a320<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The \u201cpaper hearts\u201d of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/cecelia-ahern\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/cecelia-ahern\/\">Cecelia Ahern<\/a>\u2019s new novel are small origami crafted by Pip Sheridan, who lives and works in rural Ballybeg. To the great shame of her parents, Pip became pregnant at age 16. Since then, she has lived in the family home with her daughter Bella, now herself 16 years old, under intense maternal surveillance. These hearts, which contain short confessional poems that Pip writes and carefully hides, represent her lone means of free expression.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Paper Heart announces itself as romance fiction and tracks Pip\u2019s ongoing affection for Bella\u2019s father Jamie, who has returned home from Liverpool to support his father in a court case. It is also a powerful account of the collateral damage of an unplanned pregnancy in a shame-ridden society, one where the promise of protection goes awry and takes punishing forms. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ahern effectively details how Pip accommodates the oppressive monitoring of her narcissistic mother, tolerates various instances of sexual harassment and endures the ubiquitous dust from the local quarry, which has infiltrated the homes, and lungs, of her family and neighbours. Pip begins to refuse these abuses when she opens up to more personal relationships, including one with a peripatetic astronomer named Io. The novel wisely depicts her discomfort in accepting help from others, even the more actualised Jamie. She intimately understands that any assistance, personal or professional, ultimately might be used to undermine or harm her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">This is yet another work of Irish contemporary fiction focused tightly on female interiority. It calls attention to the complex emotional life of a woman too easily neglected \u2013 the server who makes sandwiches at the local petrol station, the neighbour who rarely makes eye contact, the woman on a date with an aggressive rich guy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/books\/2023\/05\/27\/cecelia-ahern-i-feel-very-comfortable-writing-about-peoples-foibles\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cecelia Ahern: \u2018I feel very comfortable writing about people\u2019s foibles\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">At its best, Paper Heart offers an immersive account of individuals trapped by harmful habits of thinking but eager to find new, more satisfying ways forward. Near the conclusion, Ahern introduces several highly dramatic plot devices that feel at odds with the novel as a whole. But throughout, she vividly conveys Pip\u2019s suffocating distress, which enhances the relief of watching this character dig out of burdensome history in pursuit of her happy ever after.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paper Heart Author: Cecelia Ahern ISBN-13: 978-0008608194 Publisher: HarperCollins Guideline Price: \u00a320 The \u201cpaper hearts\u201d of Cecelia Ahern\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,25385,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-32386","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-cecelia-ahern","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}