Snowflake

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She couldn’t have written Snowflake anywhere other than her family farm but she says Debbie’s life is not hers. She did have to ask a garda for directions to Trinity when she arrived in Dublin — ‘we live 40 minutes away but I just never went there’.

Irish author Louise Nealon became a literary sensation last year when her debut novel, Snowflake, was sold for a six-figure sum. Shortly afterwards, film and TV rights were snapped up by Element Pictures, the same Irish production company behind the seven-times Bafta-nominated adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. A lithe and limber debut. . . . the reader who, like Debbie, allows herself to be carried along by the swift and unexpected world of Snowflake will be rewarded in the end.” — Chicago Review of Books Attempts by her Dubliner classmates to romanticise her upbringing are presented as the patronising comments they are, such as when Xanthe – her best friend – refers to Debbie not knowing who her father is as "like a culchie version of Mamma Mia". It would be tempting to view Nealon as a particularly delicate type of snowflake. She appears gentle and kind, self-deprecating and thoughtful, fragile even, but to define her as such would be erroneous. Considering her achievements and the obstacles she has surmounted, there must be steel and bloody-mindedness and determination in there too. “I have been underestimated my entire life,” she says. “I’m still getting called a ‘good girl’ even though I’m 30 years old.”Even I wasn’t this much of a dope. The ‘exceptionally smart’ Debbie also doesn’t realise she has to register for her course online and has to ask directions to Trinity. From Grafton Street. Um, okay. Besides being a coming-out-age story filled with complications and quirky moments, the story is also about self-acceptance and familial relationship. As Debbie steps out of her comfort zone, she has to navigate between new peers and the family bubble. Things eventually fall apart and the dark issues surrounding the family history and mental health are uncovered. Stars | SNOWFLAKE BY LOUISE NEALON is the coming-of-age story you (probably) didn’t know you needed (or maybe you already knew). If you’ve been following my stories, you’d know how much i’d been taken by it - and it’s all for good reasons! I won’t insult Nealon by dwelling on a comparison with Sally Rooney. Snowflake will, I believe, be likened to Rooney’s novels Conversations with Friends and Normal People over and over – a comparison the marketing of this novel does not shy away from.

Nealon’s debut novel, Snowflake, tells the story of Debbie, a young girl living on her family’s dairy farm with her mentally ill mother, Maeve, and her uncle Billy, who lives in a caravan on the farm and has a problematic relationship with alcohol. Meanwhile, Debbie is struggling to negotiate the alienating transition from school to university, from farm to big city, from childhood to adulthood, which is something Nealon can relate to. She was unprepared for the experience of going to college and all the change it entailed. Hoci to má dlhý rozbeh, tak za polkou to ide šialene dolu kopcom. A koniec! Vločkin koniec bol také pohladenie na duši, kde cítite dobrý pocit z toho ako sa to celé vyvinulo. Proste také ukončenie som potrebovala. A novel for anyone who’s ever felt lost in the world. Louise Nealon balances humor and tragedy in a sharp debut." — John BoyneHowever, Debbie is starting college soon. She has to step out of her dwelling place, commutes to classes and meets new people. In the first week, she was overwhelmed and disappointed by her fellow students and the anonymity of city life. I have been driven to tell this story for a decade. It is the reason I became a writer. There is a buffer of silence around mental illness that psychiatry has failed to penetrate. When I was unwell, psychiatry did not raise me out of the depths of despair, but reading literature did.”