Book of the Day: Nuala O'Connor's Seaborne
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Loading... - Dalia Taha
- 24 Jul 2024
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takes the reader on a transatlantic journey from Kinsale to Charleston, as the narrative follows Anne Bonny’s life from child to pirate.
"Why cannot she love who she loves without constraint?" asks Seaborne, and our heroine Anne embraces this fluidity without thought for oppressive societal constraints that try to hold her back. In many ways, this is two parallel love stories: between Anne and an indentured servant, Bedelia, on her family plantation in the States; and between Anne and the sea. Anne and Bee’s love story is complicated, not least because Anne is the daughter of Bee’s slaver.
Anne is steadfast in rejecting both this dynamic and societal homophobia as they escape to the sea together. Out on the open waters "all sorrows [for Anne] go to rest."
This is a dazzling novel. It seems nearly cliché to describe a book as a ‘beach read,’ especially a book so concerned with the tides, but O’Connor’s Seaborne is the perfect accompaniment to an escape from the everyday.
This summer, readers are going to fall in love with Anne; she’s the ultimate bisexual pirate icon Irish fiction has been waiting for.
