"Mad and wonderful. I thought I was reading one thing, then discovered—several times—that I was reading a different, even better thing.”—Roddy Doyle
“Snowflake is a wonderfully inventive, deeply felt novel full of the best kinds of surprises.”—Margot Livesey
An exquisitely talented young Irish writer makes her literary debut with this powerful and haunting novel—a tale of love and family, depression and joy, and coming of age in the twenty-first century.
Eighteen-year-old Debbie was raised on her family’s rural dairy farm, forty minutes and a world away from Dublin. She lives with her mother, Maeve, a skittish woman who takes to her bed for days on end, claims not to know who Debbie’s father is, and believes her dreams are prophecies. Rounding out their small family is Maeve’s brother Billy, who lives in a caravan behind their house, drinks too much, and likes to impersonate famous dead writers online. Though they may have their quirks, the Whites’ fierce love for one another is never in doubt.
But Debbie’s life is changing. Earning a place at Trinity College Dublin, she commutes to her classes a few days a week. Outside the sheltered bubble of her childhood for the first time, Debbie finds herself both overwhelmed and disappointed by her fellow students and the pace and anonymity of city life. While the familiarity of the farm offers comfort, Debbie still finds herself pulling away from it. Yet just as she begins to ponder the possibilities the future holds, a resurgence of strange dreams raises her fears that she may share Maeve’s fate. Then a tragic accident upends the family’s equilibrium, and Debbie discovers her next steps may no longer be hers to choose.
Gorgeous and beautifully wrought, Snowflake is an affecting coming-of-age story about a young woman learning to navigate a world that constantly challenges her sense of self.
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“Can a young woman be innocent yet outrageous, longing to succeed at university yet close to failing, deeply embarrassed by her manic depressive mother yet devoted?…Nealon’s beguiling narrator Debbie is all these things, and much more. Snowflake is a wonderfully inventive, deeply felt novel full of the best kinds of surprises.”
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Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field