SAVING GRACE / ciara geraghty
SAVING GRACE / ciara geraghty
Written by Olive Ann Walden   
Tuesday, 26 May 2009 16:07
saving grace - ciara geraghty
“Like most bad ideas it seemed like a good idea at the time”.

 


I refer,
to selecting this book to read.

Lacking a bit of romance in my own life,
a saucy, easy-to-read,
romantic comedy,
sure to have a happy, feel-good ending...
was just what I felt like reading.

However,
'Saving Grace'
disappointed.
That may seem unduly harsh. I appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into writing a novel, and I applaud Ciara Geraghty for doing so, especially while raising three children. However, with this knowledge of Geraghty’s lifestyle, I can’t help but view this book as an escapist romantic fiction (much like that of 'Twilight' by Stephanie Meyer). Lacking drama in her own life, Geraghty decided to invent some. This is how many novels are born, with a longing to experience living a different life, to escape from reality for the duration of the book. But the setting in 'Saving Grace', wasn’t a setting in which I would want to live.

Geraghty works in real life for an insurance company, and this is the scene in which 'Saving Grace' is set. The characters were realistic-ish, albeit not ones that I found intriguing or would want to befriend.

The central character, Grace, enjoys eating food (the single trait that I could relate to), yet has a long-distance boyfriend (Shane) who criticises her eating habits and weight. She regularly talks to her feet, reassuring them whenever she dons high heels that “this won’t hurt at all my little darlings”. We follow her daily routine while she recovers from her brothers’ death, for which she blames herself. Her life takes a further turn, after she spends the night with a Bernard from the IT department. It is from here that mild, melodramatic chaos ensues.

I concede, the storyline had more depth than your average rom-com, but it did not interest me. I felt pings of empathy for the characters, but they didn’t last long. This is not because I lack compassion – I wept watching 'King Kong', and cried reading Harry Potter (but then again, who didn’t?!). No, this was because, while the characters seemed genuine, they had few redeeming features.

My favourite sentence was when Grace described the books in the house of Bernard O’Malley, her geekish, accidental one-night-stand: “There were dog-ears and circles of red wine, dulled brown with age.” Another notable, fairly insightful sentence was: “My little sister was getting married to a modern-day version of a prince wielding his sword: a banker wielding his wad.” However, these were few and far between.

Now, 'Saving Grace' was easy-to-read, had a bit of romance, a happy ending, but lacked in other crucial areas, namely evoking emotion, and sparking interest in characters livelihood. While this book left me wanting to read something of more substance, I was content when all the loose ends were tied and there was clear-cut closure. Oddly, it also left me longing to be buried in Paris: “Apparently you haven’t lived till your dead and buried in Paris.”
 

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