snowflake book review guardian

Your Next Irish Literary Obsession: Louise Nealon’s ‘Snowflake’

Shondaland talks with Nealon about her brilliant coming-of-age debut novel, the pressure we place on young women, and why she wrote this book for herself.

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Louise Nealon’s Snowflake took the Irish literary scene by storm in 2020, when the author’s debut novel reportedly commanded a six-figure deal and then went on to be optioned for TV by Element Pictures, which also produced a small-screen translation of another famed novel by an Irish writer, Sally Rooney’s Normal People . If that wasn’t enough, Snowflake is about to make its U.S. debut, with Nealon set to entrance an entirely new legion of fans with her fiercely written coming-of-age novel.

Snowflake introduces readers to Debbie, a young woman trying to adjust to collegiate life at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. An hour away lies the farm on which Debbie grew up with her mentally ill mother, Maeve, and her alcoholic uncle, Billy. Despite being a smart, hilarious, and capable young woman — a reflective byproduct of her witty and sarcastic uncle and her unconventional, unpredictable mother — Maeve faces challenges in navigating the changes that come with leaving the country for big-city life: binge-drinking, boys, and the general growing up that comes with heading off to university. What’s more, Debbie is terrified she might share her mother’s unique gift — horrifying dreams that can predict the tragedies of the future. When tragedy permeates the family, Debbie is left to juggle all of this, as well as the imperfect love shared among her loved ones.

As Snowflake makes its stateside debut, Shondaland caught up with Nealon to discuss her novel, balancing the dark and hilarious, the best years of our lives, and more.

KATIE TAMOLA: Snowflake contains heavy subject material — loss of loved ones, addiction, et cetera — but also is very human and laced with humor. How do you write with this kind of balance?

LOUISE NEALON: During my late teens and early 20s, I was a bit lost in the world. Around the time I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, I also began to develop a sense of humor. I was quite a serious child, and it was only coming into adulthood that I understood the importance of laughing at life.

A lot of my humor arises out of social awkwardness. My sister makes fun of me for having a nervous laugh. She can always tell if I’m on Zoom with a person I’ve met for the first time because she can hear me guffawing from upstairs. The more comfortable I am in a situation, the quieter I become. I’m a nightmare at a funeral. I often feel compelled to make inappropriate comments to an unreceptive audience. While this aspect of my personality is problematic in my day-to-day life, I find it is useful for writing fiction.

KT: Debbie shows the beginnings of also having her mother’s gift: seeing dreams that ultimately become people’s unfortunate realities. How did you know you wanted this mystical concept as a large point in the novel?

LN: The dreams came before the story. When I was 18, I had a dream that I didn’t feel belonged to me. I was really unsettled by it. I thought I was going crazy, but I also thought that it would be a good idea for a story. For a long time, I wanted to write about a woman who dreamed other people’s dreams. That’s the idea from which Debbie’s story eventually grew. There were points in the writing process that the concept of the dreams began to suffocate the narrative. I had to pass my dream obsession over to the character of Maeve to contain them and make space for the rest of the story. I was worried about having such a mystical element at the core of what is an otherwise realist narrative, to the extent that I even considered removing them altogether, but I couldn’t do it. The dreams are at the heart of the story.

KT: Debbie’s family bickers back and forth. Billy calls Debbie’s mom crazy. Billy is essentially a functioning alcoholic. Billy and Debbie, although close, sometimes butt heads. Would you say, at its core, this is a story about family?

LN: Oh, yes. Absolutely. Snowflake is a story about the dysfunction of family in all its glorious forms. I was interested in exploring generational trauma. Maeve believes that she inherited her dreaming ability from her mother and a long line of female ancestors. Billy is also tormented by events that happened in his childhood, which has a huge impact on the way he interacts with Debbie. There is an unspoken pattern of behavior in the White family that they have subconsciously learned from previous generations. Snowflake traces their journey of slowly waking up from the past, honoring their family history by trying to understand what happened in order to be able to move forward.

KT: Everything that Debbie goes through in regard to making the transition to her first year of college is immensely relatable. Comparing herself to other people, drinking, kissing strangers, worrying about not being smart enough — it all feels so relevant to young women. Are you hoping to reach young people who might be in a similar space?

LN: There is an expectation that your university days are the best years of your life. There is so much pressure to be smart and outgoing, well-read and fun, have a great body but also drink beer and eat pizza, all while volunteering for Greenpeace in Downward Dog position. It’s a lot! As a writer, I feel a responsibility to document the stuff that doesn’t make our social-media feeds. I spent most of my time in university feeling invisible and not quite good enough. I was ashamed to admit to other people that I wasn’t having a great time because it was such a First World problem. It is a privilege to go to college. I felt guilty that I wasn’t making the most of it. I wrote Snowflake for my 18-year-old self. I wanted to write a book that she would find some comfort in, knowing that she wasn’t the only one who was just about keeping her head over water.

KT: At one point in the novel, Debbie’s friend Xanthe tells Debbie that she’s depressed. Debbie begins to wonder how Xanthe could say she’s depressed when Debbie is the one who lives on a farm, has no boyfriend, and doesn’t get perfect grades. What were you exploring in this kind of depression face-off?

LN: The biggest lesson I learned in my 20s was that I didn’t have to be perfect to be happy. I used to be quite proud of being a perfectionist until a doctor pointed out that perfectionism was a kind of neurosis. Our society has cultivated a culture of perfectionism, particularly among young women. Perfection doesn’t exist. It is a myth that pits people against each other to obtain unachievable standards. We become trapped in a cycle of comparison and competition, resenting both ourselves and each other.

In Debbie’s eyes, Xanthe is perfect. She has everything that Debbie wants. She is beautiful, intelligent, financially secure, independent, popular, attractive, and fun. So, when Xanthe tries to tell Debbie that she is human like the rest of us, Debbie isn’t having any of it. What hurts Debbie the most is that Xanthe’s pain has been validated. Debbie craves any form of external validation, to the point that she sees an essay grade and a mental-health diagnosis in the same way. Debbie only begins to find real intimacy in her relationship with Xanthe when she stops comparing and competing with the idea she has of her as perfection itself. She learns to accept that the shiny exterior Xanthe presents to the outside world comes at a significant cost to her own well-being.

KT: “It is socially acceptable to be an alcoholic in our parish as long as you don’t get treatment for it. Being fond of the drink is a form of survival around here.” Can you talk to me a bit more about the role alcoholism and drinking plays in your novel? I thought this quote was brilliant.

LN: There is no shop in the village where Debbie lives, but there is a pub. In Ireland, pubs are deemed more essential than shops because pubs are where the craic lives. The craic [pronounced “crack”] is the life force of Irish culture. It is a kind of wild, blissful energy that is created in social situations, and it has become inseparable from alcohol. A person can have the craic. They can also be good craic or bad craic. Some people are no craic at all, and the really miserable souls are minus craic. The best compliment I’ve ever received was at a wedding when a man asked me what I was drinking. I told him that I was drinking water, and he looked confused and said, “Jesus, you’re great craic all the same. Fair play to you.” It meant a lot to me because I was trying really hard to be good craic. It’s much easier to be part of the craic when you’re drinking. When a person is not drinking, it puts the craic in danger. Irish people have learned to protect the craic at all costs, even if it means ignoring the problematic nature of our drinking culture.

In Snowflake , the people around Billy don’t see him as a functioning alcoholic because he is great craic. He prides himself on being able to handle his drink and even gives Debbie drinking lessons. In stark contrast, when Audrey admitted that she had a problem with alcohol, she threatened the social fabric of the village, and so she became an outcast. It is only as I was editing Snowflake that I realized how much of a role alcohol played in the lives of the characters. It unleashes chaos, which is always useful when crafting a story.

KT: Debbie’s experiences seemed like meaningful commentary on the way we assign so much pressure to the sexual experiences of young people, especially young women. Can you talk to me a bit about what you were aiming for when crafting Debbie, who likes to drunkenly make out with strangers but is later somewhat judged by her friends for her behavior?

LN: Even though we live in quite a liberal society, there is still quite a lot of anxiety around sex. Debbie is afraid to have sex. Xanthe is disgusted by her own body. The only character with a sex-positive attitude is Maeve, which is a source of deep embarrassment for Debbie. There is a running joke that any man in the village could be Debbie’s father. Maeve’s sexual escapades and her relationship with a younger man brings shame on the family. When Maeve asserts her sexuality, she is seen as sloppy, dirty, and dangerous. Debbie is 18, the same age that Maeve was when she fell pregnant with her. She is afraid of ending up like her mother and losing control of her life. As well as giving Debbie drinking advice, Billy also keeps tabs on her encounters with the opposite sex and becomes upset when he finds her kissing an older man. Debbie’s romantic fumbles are criticized by both her friends and her family. Female sexuality should be a powerful, pleasurable energy, but it has been smothered by years of external control and internalized shame. The only way that we can change that is by acknowledging the ways that it has seeped into our culture from previous generations and pointing out problematic attitudes and behaviors.

KT: I think this book could reach a lot of different people from disparate backgrounds, ages, and the like. Whom did you primarily write this book for? What would you want anyone to take away from Snowflake ?

LN: I’ve said before that I wrote Snowflake for my 18-year-old self. That sometimes confuses people because they presume that means it’s a book for young adults. We tend to associate loneliness and isolation with old age, but the loneliest I’ve ever felt was when I was a teenager. I’ve always read for medicinal purposes. For me, reading is a life-affirming activity. The books I love provide me with hope and an authentic connection to the world. Coming out of a pandemic, some people have been starved of physical touch, which produces a hormone called oxytocin. Words can touch people too. When a person reads a sentence that resonates with them, oxytocin is produced in the body. Such is the power of stories. We can reach across time and space to connect to another soul. If Snowflake could reach just one reader on that level, it would be a dream come true.

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Snowflake by Louise Nealon review — breaking the ice

Character-driven debut novel that is an impressive and pacey read.

D espite its cold title, Louise Nealon’s Snowflake is a warm-hearted book: several degrees warmer, in fact, than the work of Sally Rooney, to which it has already been compared. The Rooney comparisons aren’t totally unwarranted: Snowflake is, after all, a novel about a young woman from rural Ireland encountering the pretensions and sophistications of Trinity College Dublin. But that’s just content. Stylistically and formally, Nealon is very much her own thing. Snowflake is intimate, chatty, immensely readable. There’s an original and distinctive voice here, and a strong sense of character and place.

The narrator is Debbie White, who grows up on a dairy farm in Kildare near a village that is “little more than an intersection of lost roads bumping into each other”. Debbie doesn’t

Time and Tense in “Snowflake”

• A review of Louise Nealon's debut novel, "Snowflake."

Among the more interesting trends in contemporary fiction is the rise of present-tense narration, notably in the first person. Perhaps as a response to a shifting, uncertain world, both within the literary community and among society at large, there has been a proliferation in the use of discursive narrators relating a story moment to moment across a rapid plot. This new present tense is notably unconcerned with the temporal tightening that traditionally came with the (relatively rare) use of the form—a compression of how long a period of time the book covers, usually in order to focus a work’s immediacy—pushing the novel in new directions, opening up fresh blind spots, and on balance representing a method welcome in its originality. The most recent offering in contemporary first-person vintage—taking its place alongside Lynn Steger Strong’s Want, Jenny Offill’s Weather, and Elizabeth Gonzalez James’ Mona at Sea— is Louise Nealon’s lithe and limber debut, Snowflake . 

Nealon’s first-person present tense is the defining feature of Snowflake, both for what it offers her and in the ways it limits the book. We first meet our protagonist, Debbie, in a very effective prelude of sorts, a decade younger than the first-year-of-university-aged heroine who will dominate the story and remembering a representative moment with her uncle Billy, himself encamped permanently in wilds of the family farm and serving as the grounding, if somewhat stumbling, force in her life. Debbie, Billy, her mother, and her mother’s young farmhand-cum-beau James all live on the working farm, a setting near to Nealon’s own life and which allows her to showcase considerable descriptive abilities while offering a nice contrast to the bustle of Dublin to come. The book opens in earnest in the weeks before Debbie heads off to college, and that is where the action lay throughout. As we move through the heart of the narrative, we slip into the study in opposites that define Debbie’s life and Snowflake as a literary effort—at her uncle’s insistence, she goes off to university in the city while still living at home on the farm; her mother’s deteriorating mental state offsets a burgeoning worldview that she is acquiring at school; friendships and social encounters in Dublin pull against Debbie’s lasting attachment to Billy and the way of life he both teaches to and from which wishes to free his niece. Throughout it all, Nealon’s honest and candid method provides verisimilitude and depth—it is clear we are dealing with a novelist who is both willing and able to turn the details of her own life into compelling fiction. At the same time, her tense serves as a steady drumbeat in the background, the technical approach that resonates across the narrative.

The strongest feature of the present tense in Snowflake and, one suspects, the reason for its use, is the amplification of Debbie’s sense of vulnerability throughout her wide-eyed introduction to the world beyond the farm. Nealon covers a fairly large amount of time, and in order to do so must rely on strong inter-scenic pacing. Happily, her structuring, to give it another name, is more than up to the task, allowing the narrative to skip rapidly across the significant months in our heroine’s life. Debbie moves through her first year of college almost unnoticed by the reader, much in the way she feels to be perceived herself on campus and in Dublin as a whole. The secondary characters are often finely and richly drawn, foremost among them being Billy, and we are rarely bogged down in a moment due to the present tense’s fixation on action and Nealon’s confidence in her movement. These forces create a strong relationship between reader and protagonist, and give Snowflake much of its sapience and weight.

The structure and tense do, however, create some difficulties. Without the guiding force of a temporally-removed protagonist looking back to frame her life story, the narration occasionally lacks focus, testing readerly interest on a global level as plotlines weave through and around each other without an always-clear sense of direction. From time to time, we lose the thread of Debbie’s burgeoning collegiate experience, and while a book that eschews conventional plotting and rote recitation of events is always welcome, there may have been a touch more room within Snowflake to witness our heroine as she stumbles out into the world, to access to an inner life that we see only in glimpse and aside. Paradoxically, first-person present tense is most vulnerable to a lack of interior development and psychological depth with regards to the protagonist. That risk is run, and once in a while encountered here, as Debbie’s relating of events occasionally slips into something closer to a reporter giving a live update from the field than the central character of a novel opening her mind and consciousness to her reader.

Indeed, Snowflake at times feels more Nealon’s story than Debbie’s; without the retrospective abilities of a past tense central character, the author must insert herself as artificer—any and all choices as to information release or general pace of storytelling bear the writer’s fingerprints, simply because there is no one else to make them. In Snowflake , then, what we gain in the present tense’s ability to bring us along in the moment with Debbie during this transformational thrusting from the nest is mirrored by cuts from the other side of the blade, a sporadic and recurring loss of focus by the narration on the protagonist herself. 

However, the journey—be it Nealon’s, Debbie’s, or in reality, both—is a compelling one, and some of the gaps opened up by the point of view lend an added effectiveness to the plot. The reader’s experience in many ways mirrors the heroine’s; the uncertainty that is so prevalent as to be the basis for her life during these months is given added gravitas through the clipped, somewhat sporadic lens through which we watch. While we are never quite given enough time in a single moment or with a single storyline to secure our narrative footing before moving to the next—her mother’s mental and emotional health, her relationships at school and in her hometown, the state of the farm and the secrets in the family’s past all make their way to the fore as the book progresses—this creates a sensation very true to life, and results in a work of perhaps surprising resonance. Ultimately, while some may wish for a more traditional plot progression or extended scenic moment, 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.

Biting Speculations in “Liquid Snakes”

FICTION Snowflake By Louise Nealon Harper Published September 14, 2021

D. W. White writes consciousness-forward fiction and criticism. Currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he serves as Founding Editor of L’Esprit Literary Review and Fiction Editor for West Trade Review. His writing appears in 3:AM, The Florida Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Necessary Fiction, and Chicago Review of Books, among several others. Before returning to Chicago, he lived in Long Beach, California, for nine years.

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Snowflake by Louise Nealon: A clever coming-of-age novel

Book review: this college-life narrative has an eye for comedy even when the narrator is enjoying a moment of self-pity.

Louise Nealon has the knack of neat similes.

“Acquired in a six-figure pre-empt,” says the back cover. “TV and film rights sold to... the team behind Normal People.” The title has an asterisk, explaining inside the flap that “snowflake” means “sensitive, complicated, intense, flawed”. The first sentence of “about the author” tells us that she is 27. Snowflake is a novel by a young woman who studied English at Trinity about a young woman studying English at Trinity.

The narrator’s mental health is fragile, she doesn’t keep up with her classes and she’s given to sexual misadventures that make her feel worse. A reader might think that we have seen this before, and also that the marketing at least is directed towards a demographic into which many readers of The Irish Times probably do not fall.

As the kids would say, yes but no. Snowflake is well-written: Louise Nealon has the knack of neat similes (a screen saver “floats definitions of words across the monitor, like fish on a modelling catwalk”), and though the narrator Debbie is indeed an 18-year-old who can’t cope/won’t cope with the step from school to undergraduate life, she’s also curious, knowledgeable and darkly funny.

The pace is brisk and the narrative has an eye for comedy even when the narrator is enjoying a moment of self-pity. There’s a painfully delectable moment when the therapist at the university counselling centre follows the form asking Debbie to rank symptoms of anxiety from 1 to 10, with 1 asking her to rank her satisfaction with the therapist from 1 to 10; anyone familiar with modern third-level education will wince and grin.

Debbie has more obvious reason for her distress than some recent literary heroines. To the horror of her new vegan friends, she lives on a dairy farm and rises early – most of the time – to help her uncle Billy with the milking before taking the train to Dublin. Billy lives in a caravan behind the house where Debbie, her mother and her mother’s 25-year-old lover spend their time.

Billy drinks (“there are as many types of alcoholics as there are stars in the sky and I’m glad I’m the social kind”). So does her mother, Maeve (definitely not the social kind), drinks. Maeve also sleeps most of the time, dances naked in the nettles (“they’re natural needles that inject you with a happy chemical”) and devotes most of her waking hours to writing down her dreams. She fell pregnant at 18 and doesn’t know who Debbie’s father might be, can’t be trusted with money, doesn’t work and takes little part in running the house or farm.

After an accident on the farm, Maeve becomes delusional and dangerous to herself. Billy goes on coping for a long time, but he runs out of patience with Debbie’s more ordinary troubles: “You’d want to cop on to yourself… College handed to you. Car handed to you. Lessons handed to you.”

By way of contrast, we have Debbie’s new and only friend Xanthe, living in the spare Dublin apartment of a friend of a friend, pretending to Debbie that she bought her €200 boots from a charity shop and also depressed and anxious, starving herself but never thin enough, in love with her gay best friend, unable to please her parents. Debbie greets Xanthe’s diagnosis of depression with rage: “You paid a doctor to tell you that you’re special. That you’re sad and edgy.”

Everyone in this novel thinks they have real problems – even, in the end, the secret psychologist in the village who can help some of the others – and most of them are right. The ending doesn’t exactly solve anything, but it does assert a joyously unconventional way forward for those broken in heart and spirit.

This isn’t a perfect book; a subplot about prophetic dreams is convenient to the plot but unconvincing, and a thematic emphasis on literal snowflakes doesn’t earn its keep. But Snowflake is much more than the tribute act suggested by its hype. It a sweet, clever coming-of-age novel that finds charity and depth for its older characters as well as the young, and I look forward to seeing what Louise Nealon does next.

Sarah Moss, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a novelist and academic

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StarTribune

Review: 'snowflake,' by louise nealon.

In Louise Nealon's debut novel, "Snowflake," we are introduced to the world of life on a small Irish dairy farm by Debbie White, our 18-year-old narrator, who milks cows each day and prepares to enter university. While this may sound sweet and wholesome, what lies beneath the surface is anything but.

Nealon's gradual exposition of Debbie's chaotic home situation and her own deep feelings of unworthiness create in "Snowflake" a vivid tale of courage and discovery, of engaging with a world that contains so many interpersonal traps, so many sources of shame, guilt, and self-deception.

In this novel about transition, Debbie has a pair of would-be mentors, both damaged themselves. Her mother (Mam) is an unpublished writer, who is sleepy, mysterious, generally checked out. Once a promiscuous teenager in a small town, Mam now drinks and records her dreams. The stories she tells her intelligent, often troubled daughter speak of the attractions of the dreamworld. Mam's reading of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," for instance, centers on Alice's worry: "I wonder if I've been changed in the night? … But if I'm not the same, the next question is: 'Who in the world am I?' "

Though Mam would like to guide her daughter into adulthood, she herself needs constant care, and Debbie lives in terror that she shares her mother's mad mind.

If Mam is a soporific shaman in Debbie's life, her Uncle Billy, who runs the farm, is her number one cheerleader, pushing her to work toward college, chasing away predatory men, scanning constellations with her from the roof of his caravan. Yet while Billy envisions a great future for his niece, he is filled with guilt, and, like almost all of the novel's cast of characters, he is an alcoholic. Debbie, too, tells us, that "drinking is like taking a holiday from my head." In her community alcohol is "the one thing that everyone loved"; the only unforgivable sin is going into rehab.

Such plot as there is comes to us via conversations. The jokey give-and-take of the craic — and there is plenty of it — lightens the book's serious subject matter. At a funeral halfway through the novel, a drunken priest is about to deliver the eulogy. Debbie narrates: "A confused silence descends on the crowd as though we can't decide if we are still afraid of the devil or just blessed with a polite, Irish tolerance for people talking shite."

Nealon keeps us laughing to soften the rawness. And as all is filtered through Debbie's sharp consciousness, we come to appreciate the protagonist's fierce curiosity about how to guide oneself to live in the world.

Tom Zelman is emeritus professor at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.

By: Louise Nealon.

Publisher: Harper, 336 pages, $26.99.

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Books on the 7:47

Book review blog / author interviews / all things bookish, snowflake by louise nealon – book review.

• by Jen | Books on the 7:47
• Posted on April 27, 2021 August 13, 2021

I finished Snowflake last week and I’m still thinking about it. This is Irish author Louise Nealon’s debut novel. It’s an engrossing, really funny, cannily written coming-of-age story about Debbie White, an 18-year old Irish woman who lives on her family Dairy farm and is taking her first tentative steps towards independence by heading off to university – to study English at Trinity College.

Opening sentence: My uncle Billy lives in a caravan in a field at the back of my house.

No two snowflakes are the same

From the title, you might think this book is going to be packed full of woke phrasing and ideas about delicate Millennials and although that version of the word is referenced, this novel really quite movingly takes snowflake imagery and breaks it down to represent nuances and individual quirks, which I really liked.

‘I can’t imagine someone going through life without grasping the concept of the iconic six-armed snow crystal,’ I say.

So, the story: at uni, Debbie is shy nervous and unsure how to make friends. Luckily, she is befriended by the far more confident Xanthe who takes charge of their friendship. Debbie has to then balance her home life (her mother, Maeve and uncle, Billy) with the person she is trying to become at uni, while also facing up to a few home truths about why she acts in certain ways.

Debbie grips your heart from the early pages. So well written, it was not difficult to see flashes of my own wandering 20s in her and feel fully invested in her story. Pretty much every key character we meet has layers and things that are slowly revealed. Snowflake is written in such a thoughtful and nuanced way – every sentence has a purpose and is a delight to read.

Ocean. Say it out loud. You can taste the sound of it in your mouth.

But why do you have to end?

The Trinity College setting and exploration of young people’s feelings obviously puts you in mind of Normal People by Sally Rooney while reading, but Snowflake has its very own unique voice. It’s exploration of dreams, their meaning and impact on life was an element I wasn’t expecting but really enjoyed.

I’ve never kissed a boy that I actually fancy. I don’t know what that would feel like.

One thing though – I felt this book just ended abruptly. I wanted to know more about Debbie and her family! There were a lot of plot points that were left open and I absolutely would have loved to learn more about, fingers crossed for a sequel.

I also read this short story by Louise Nealon, which is so similar in tone and ideas to Snowflake , you can really see her voice and how she draw from her life and I’m excited to read more by her.

• Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC;
• Get your copy of Snowflake here ;
• Published by Manilla Press 13th May 2021;

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Great review! I really like the sound of this. I like the way the author has used the term to show people’s individual quirks.

Like Liked by 1 person

Thank you! Yes, I loved that take on it too. It was a read a still find myself thinking about now, always a good sign!

Sounds great. You know it’s been a good read when you’re still thinking about it long after reading it!

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Thank you to Manila Press for sending me and ARC copy of this book. I enjoyed this story and found that after the first 70 pages I was flying through.

Glad you enjoyed it too! From characters to story, I thought it was great.

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Plain words, uncommon sense

Snowflake by Louise Nealon | Book Review

Snowflake by Louise Nealon is great craic. It’s the story of eighteen-year-old Debbie who has grown up on her family’s dairy farm about 40 min outside of Dublin. She’s a country girl. Everyone knows her uncle, who is frequently at the pub, and her mam, who’s shacked up with a younger man. Debbie’s uncle Billy lives in a caravan on the family property and, despite how transient that sounds, he’s a source of stability for Debbie. Her mom Maeve believes that she has other people’s dreams, she dances naked in the sea, and spends a lot of time in her bed or writing in her dream journals.

Being a special snowflake is a putdown, but each of these characters is unique and has their own quirks. Debbie feels like a country bumkin every time she’s in the city, but she figures out commuting, her coursework, making friends, and how to drive. There are a ton of Irish expressions and I feel like I met many of these people during my own time in Dublin teaching at the university. But I don’t think you need to have lived (or even visited) Ireland to appreciate this novel about growing up and accepting your crazy family.

Snowflake is published in Canada by HarperCollins

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Book reviews, book chat – basically anything books , snowflake by louise nealon – book review.

Title : Snowflake

Author : Louise Nealon

Genre : Fiction

Publisher : Manilla Press

Publication Date : 10th May 2021

Rating : 5/5

Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams, which she believes to be prophecies.

This world is Debbie’s normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College in Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve’s eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy’s drinking gets worse. Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety.

I’ve been reading great reviews of Snowflake for a while now so I was thrilled to finally get my hands on it. It actually managed to exceed my very high expectations and is definitely going to be up there with my books of the year. The story follows Debbie, an 18 year old about to attend university at Trinity College, Dublin. Debbie lives on a dairy farm with her eccentric mother Maeve and her Uncle Billy who lives in a caravan in the garden. She commutes into the city for university and finds herself struggling to navigate this new and frightening world whilst also coping with her complex family as they begin to fall into a dark place.

Snowflake is one of those books that you read and then hold in your heart forever. It is so beautifully and intelligently written with a mix of wit, pathos and a sharp tenderness. Somehow Nealon has managed to write a book including a great deal of trauma and sensitive topics without it ever feeling like a depressing read. There is just something about these characters, who felt devastatingly real to me, that gets under the readers skin. They are flawed, layered people who don’t always behave well and yet I still felt such empathy for them because they, and their relationships with each other, felt so human and organic.

Where Snowflake excels for me is in its depiction of mental illness. It is also incredibly strong in its examining of the perceptions around mental illness and the judgement surrounding it. The book, whilst genuinely funny at times is also achingly sad at others. A lot of books claim to be able to make readers laugh and cry but Snowflake really delivers on that promise which is certainly part of what makes it so special. It is so insightful and witty in a way that never feels condescending or self-important, just really, really smart and concise. I cannot recommend Snowflake highly enough, I think everyone will be able to find something to truly connect to in this emotional, sharp yet gently touching novel. A stunning debut.

I kindly received a gifted copy of the book from the publisher. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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Review: Snowflake

THE PLOT:  “Snowflake” by Louise Nealon is a novel about a young girl from rural Ireland who is accepted into the prestigious Trinity College in Dublin. Intelligent loner Debbie comes from a family of dairy farmers in Kildare. Her mum is eccentric – bathing naked in stinging nettles and scribbling down her dreams. Uncle Billy lives in a caravan down the garden, busy drinking his days away and telling her stories about Greek mythology. When Debbie starts college, which Uncle Billy has worked so hard to afford, she feels out of place. But when tragedy strikes and Debbie starts to believe that she can see other people’s dreams, she worries that she’s losing her mind.

RATING:  This novel feels utterly original, which is why I’m giving it four and a half stars. I’m not sure if it’s “literary” or “new adult”, comic or tragic, yet I like its ambiguity. It has a bit of everything but the small scope (in terms of time frame, locations and a small cast of characters) means that the author pulls it off exquisitely. Overall, I’d say the main theme is mental health and it’s portrayed perfectly through each of the characters. From Billy’s alcoholism to her mothers’ eccentricities and Debbie wondering if she feels uncomfortable at college due to depression – each character grapples with internal demons as they try to find their place in the world.

GOOD BITS:  Although the tone of the novel is somewhat melancholy, the main character is endearingly humorous. Told in the first person, present tense – the main character’s voice is like Adrian Mole or Georgia Nicholson, a slightly self-centred and self-important teenager. However, the atmosphere of the book is murky and dark, like “Milkman” by Anna Burns. I think this is a very clever device because the novel itself feels like it hovers between genres. It’s as if the book’s very essence is on the cusp of adulthood, mirroring the liminal state of the main character’s coming-of-age.

NOT SO GOOD BITS:  The swift conflict resolution towards the end of the book surprised me. There was a tense dynamic between Debbie and her friend, Xanthe, that had been ramping up throughout the novel. The author kept raising the stakes and then it fizzled into a quick “sorry” and done. I know this is realistic but it didn’t feel satisfying to read. This might be basic but I would have been tempted to resolve the conflict by adding another level of external peril. Perhaps Debbie could’ve saved Xanthe from something to start their healing journey.

OVERALL:  If you like sarcastic, funny, oddball main characters, I think you’ll like this book. Debbie reminded me of a younger Eleanor Oliphant because she’s witty and independent yet somewhat sweet and innocent. I’d recommend this book to lovers of “Normal People” by Sally Rooney. The chapters are short, the writing style is sparse and the author, Louise Nealon, is undoubtedly talented. I, for one, will definitely read whatever she releases next.

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Snowflake: A Novel Hardcover – September 14, 2021

"An endearingly off-kilter coming-of-age story. . . . Debbie will win your heart." — People, "The Best New Books"

Selected as the One Dublin One Book choice for 2024

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. 

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Harper
• Publication date September 14, 2021
• Dimensions 6 x 1.09 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0063073935
• ISBN-13 978-0063073937
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

"Nealon’s razor-sharp focus on the shame surrounding mental health issues, sexual promiscuity and substance abuse in Irish culture — and her female characters’ determination to not only face but conquer their shortcomings . . . makes an indelible mark." — Washington Post

“A vivid tale of courage and discovery, of engaging with a world that contains so many interpersonal traps, so many sources of shame, guilt, and self-deception. . . . The jokey give-and-take of the craic—and there is plenty of it—lightens the book's serious subject matter. . . . Nealon keeps us laughing to soften the rawness. And as all is filtered through Debbie's sharp consciousness, we come to appreciate the protagonist's fierce curiosity about how to guide oneself to live in the world.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“In an entirely unique, dark, and hilariously human novel, Nealon manages to weave the pressure of youth with the hopeful reality of unconditional love.” — Shondaland

“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

"Reminds the reader of James Joyce’s most brilliant short story 'The Dead.' Like Joyce’s story, Nealon’s  Snowflake  is about compassion and acceptance, about the difficulty in aligning one’s dreams with reality. Nealon navigates that territory well, making the reader empathize with her damaged characters, allowing an understanding of depression and its consequences, and fashioning out of eccentrics and outcasts a company of ordinary heroes." — New York Journal of Books

“What are they putting in kids’ milk in Ireland?  Snowflake  marks the arrival of yet another striking Irish literary voice. . . . But Debbie’s fresh, bleakly funny voice marks her out as original. So are her brilliant, brittle family. . . . Screen rights have been bought by the team that adapted the hit TV series of  Normal People .” — Sunday Times

“Will inevitably gather comparisons with Sally Rooney. But Nealon has her own voice. Her writing is clever, witty, wryly elegant and full of emotional truth.” — The Irish Independent

“Beautifully written . . . . emotionally intelligent and thought-provoking. . . . I can’t stop thinking about it.” — Daily Mail

“An accomplished debut novel. . . . One of newcomer Louise Nealon's many skills is in finding the tenderness lurking underneath everyday exchanges in a captivating story about a smart working-class country girl who is trying to adjust to Trinity College and its privileged social set. . . . Made me laugh out loud and cringe simultaneously. . . . the book has the power to make you gasp at its revelations and its sheer poetry, which often unfolds with the languid pace of a lucid dream. There hasn't been a book quite like it out of Ireland in years.” — Irish Central

“A fresh and often humorous debut. . . . this tale of two worlds vibrates on an otherworldly frequency.” — Publishers Weekly

“ Snowflake is 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

"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? Yes, yes, yes. Louise 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." — Margot Livesey

"A novel for anyone who’s ever felt lost in the world. Louise Nealon balances humor and tragedy in a sharp debut." — John Boyne

"S nowflake  is raw, sharp-sighted, affirming, and also very very funny. Louise Nealon's prose shimmers as do her irregular and damaged characters. Stunning." — Una Mannion, author of A Crooked Tree

"It's a long time since I've loved a novel as much as  Snowflake . The prose shines with observations about life love family mental health, milking the cows and what it means to be coming of age in the times we live in—I felt I had discovered a diamond—a real treasure!" — Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo

"Beautiful and truthful and touching." — Marian Keyes

“ Snowflake  is a beautiful novel; tender, laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply moving.” — Louise O'Neill

"Astonishing. Louise Nealon is a ridiculously talented writer." — Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars

About the Author

Louise Nealon is a writer from County Kildare, Ireland. In 2017, she won the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition and was the recipient of the Francis Ledwidge Creative Writing Award. She has been published in   the  Irish Times, Southword,  and  The Open Ear.  Nealon received a degree in English literature from Trinity College Dublin in 2014 and a master’s degree in creative writing from Queen’s University Belfast in 2016.   She lives on the dairy farm where she was raised, and SNOWFLAKE is her first novel.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper (September 14, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063073935
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063073937
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.09 x 9 inches
• #1,647 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
• #2,272 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
• #6,903 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Louise nealon.

Louise Nealon is a writer from Co Kildare, Ireland. She studied English literature at Trinity College Dublin, and then completed a master's degree in creative writing at Queen's University Belfast in 2016. Her short stories have been published in The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly and Southword. She lives on her family farm.

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Book review: Snowflake by Louise Nealon

I’d only just hopped in the bath and started to read Snowflake by Louise Nealon when I shared a picture (of the book, not me…) and commented that I didn’t think I was going to be able to put it down until I finished.

Such is the addictive allure of 18 year old Debbie and the world in which she inhabits. Nealon opens by giving us some history into Debbie and her family – her uncle Billy and, to a lesser extent, her mother Maeve. in fact it takes Debbie a while to reflect on childhood events involving her mother and when she does it’s centred around her dreams and her mother’s belief that both she and Debbie have the ability to see other’s dreams.

Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams, which she believes to be prophecies. This world is Debbie's normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College in Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve's eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy's drinking gets worse. Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety.

Debbie is a delight. And not just because we share a name. Though I haven’t really been called ‘Debbie’ since my school years which apparently finished *checks notes* over 35 years ago. 🙄

She’s done well in school and excited to be heading to Trinity College but sure she won’t fit in. We learn she’s not really had friends at school and I probably would have liked a little more backstory here. There’s a boy from her school and small town – for eg – that she’s never spoken to and this seems unlikely if they’re the same age and went to the same school.

This is one of two books I read in a row featuring Greek mythology. Here Debbie’s uncle Billy shares with her his love of star gazing. Their relationship is a special one and I very much liked the way Nealon reveals more (later) about Billy and his past.

The blurb implies that her family life (and life on the farm in general) is incompatible with her new life in Dublin. It’s not necessarily the case however and Debbie makes a friend at University fairly quickly. I guess though there’s some doubt though about Xanthe – who’s Debbie’s complete opposite – and the basis of their friendship.

As well as reflection on the stars and Greek myths there’s an underlying theme around identity, of knowing and understanding who we are. When she was young Debbie’s mother told her a story about a speck of dust who didn’t believe in snow. Every night, the speck (Aisling) turned into a snowflake when it became cold, but each morning melted back into dust. Aisling dismissed any memories of her life as a snowflake as (just) fragments of dreams.

There is no way to catch a snowflake. And I haven’t met anyone who is able to catch a dream. p 45

This book is very much about family and friendships. I could use all the cliches. It’s certainly bittersweet and very much a coming-of-age novel. The latter however doesn’t relate only to Debbie.

Nealon also dips into more serious subjects of mental health and its stigma as well as the legacies we carry.

I very much enjoyed the time I spent in Debbie’s world. Nealon’s developed complex yet relatable characters and tackles very real issues but balances any rawness with an element of whimsy.

Snowflake by Louise Nealon was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin and is now available.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.

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Commissioners, residents express frustration at Huntington Beach Community & Library Services meeting

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This week is National Library Week, and libraries continue to be a hot topic in Huntington Beach.

Wednesday night’s Community & Library Services Commission meeting turned into a sort of venting session as commissioners and residents alike expressed frustration about two library issues in the city.

A study session held in Council Chambers featured a presentation by community and library services director Ashley Wysocki on the parent/guardian children’s library book review board and possible outsourcing of the Huntington Beach Public Library to a private, for profit company.

The City Council voted 4-3 last week to approve adoption of an ordinance that establishes the review board. At the previous meeting , the council voted 4-3 to seek bids for outsourcing of library management.

A lot has happened since the community and library services commission last met on Feb. 7, incidentally the same day librarians began recataloging children’s books in the Central Library per City Council instruction.

Commissioner Laura Costelloe said the timing of the possible change in library management made it seem vengeful.

“If it was truly about saving money and presented at any other time, I feel like it would be different,” she said. “Librarians are not perverts.”

As for the children’s book review board, efforts would be made to sell or donate non-approved books to other libraries, and Costelloe also found this flawed.

“We’re polluting other local cities like Costa Mesa and Fountain Valley, our good neighbors,” she said. “‘Hey, this book isn’t OK, but we’re going to throw it in your direction.’ It doesn’t make any sense. There’s so much of this that doesn’t even make any sense, and I’m struggling to keep my thoughts together.”

Commissioner Taryn Palumbo noted that of more than 60 total speakers Wednesday night and emails received, she only heard four people in support of the review board and outsourcing. She said she has two children, ages 3 and 5, and does not want to give up control of assessing what they read to a review board or anyone else.

“As a parent, I believe that my child should be able to see, read and learn about all inclusive communities,” Palumbo said. “However, if you do not share the same values as me, then do not read that book to your child.”

Committee Chair Austin Edsell posed a lengthy series of questions to Wysocki, who confirmed that the request for proposals for outsourcing the library management could include certain things that the city wanted out of an operator, including requirements on the education of staff. He also asked about pay scale.

“At this time, that’s something we can’t speak on because we don’t know what the details of that may be,” Wysocki said.

Wysocki said there is currently no confirmed timeline for this RFP to be released.

During her presentation, she also said parents will soon have two new choices for library cards for their minors. The Imagine card will allow access only to books for 17 and under, while the Inspire card will allow access to the entire collection.

“These cards are currently being designed and printed,” Wysocki said. “Once ready, our team will conduct a marketing campaign to notify the public of these new options.”

Commissioner Ceason Baker was open in her support of the measures brought forward by the conservative members of the City Council.

“I know a lot of people have questioned the qualifications for the review board, and I did find that a bit ironic considering not everyone sitting up here has a degree,” she said. “So, pot meet kettle. We have someone sitting on the City Council that got six votes,” she said, apparently referring to Councilwoman Rhonda Bolton, who was appointed to her seat in June 2021 on a 4-2 vote of the council after Tito Ortiz resigned. “Why are we not doing everything in power to protect and nurture our children, rather than allowing them to be exposed to harmful content because they’re mere pawns in an agenda?”

Also on Wednesday, California Assembly Bill 1825 passed the Assembly Education Committee . The bill would prohibit public libraries from excluding materials based on the origin, background or views of those who made them or the opinions expressed in the materials.

The bill, authored by Assembly member Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance), now advances to the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

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Matt Szabo is a sports reporter for the Daily Pilot. A Southern California native and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo graduate, he has been covering sports for L.A. Times Community News since 2006, most extensively water polo and tennis. (714) 966-4614

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