Review: Hearts and Bones by Niamh Mulvey

I flew through this book of short stories. I found each one intriguing and engaging with a simple but evocative prose that created some truly beautiful moments. Safe to say, I couldn’t put it down!

The book consists of 11 short stories, taking place mostly between Ireland and London, with a brief sojourn in provincial Southern France. They are all about the intricacies of relationships, with others and ourselves, and are told by narrators that vary in age, gender and social background.

The thing that links them all though, is Mulvey’s reflections on the fragility of reality and truth. The characters all feel disconnected in some way from what they deem reality, and there is a performativity in the way that they love, grieve, and even fear for their loved ones. 10 year old Julia in ‘Childcare’ feels that she ‘has no centre’ and ‘is not a real girl;’ Dar in ‘The Doll’ needs to feel real objects when he feels himself retreating into his own head; the narrator of ‘My First Marina’ struggles to separate the performative aspects of her grief from the reality of it.

The stories also touch upon the impossibility of truly knowing someone, or the truth of how people perceive you. How we imagine people perceive us and the observations they make about our personalities is highly unlikely to be true and is rooted in our own opinions of ourselves. Many of the characters grapple with this issue whilst navigating relationships and negotiating their own sense of self and how they fit into the world. Joanna in ‘Feather’ also briefly contemplates ‘the interconnectedness of all things’ and how all things, including humans, are dependant on one another for survival and existence.

All of these moments are shrewdly observed by Mulvey, in clever, captivating tales of humans and their emotional complexities. I can’t wait to read more of her work.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Picador for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Hearts and Bones is out 23rd June but is available to pre-order at all the usual places now!