Hearts & Bones: Love Songs for Late Youth by Niamh Mulvey
“She knew that she had to do whatever she could to make things bearable in her own life, she knew she had to hold steadily and quietly on to Nan while letting Denise think that she was still in charge. She knew Nan would hold Denise at arm’s length and try not to hope, she knew that for herself the torment of hope was gone, And finally, she knew that she had to pretend not to know any of these things.”
Ahead of reading Niamh Mulvey’s debut novel, The Amendments, published earlier this year, I decided to pick up her debut short story collection, Hearts & Bones: Love Songs for Late Youth (2022, Picador). Across the ten stories within, Mulvey dives deep into the fraught relationships and unwanted milestones that tend to define a life.
Split into three loose parts, Mulvey explores mother-daughter (and grandmother) dynamics, first loves and relationship breakdowns, mental health, growing up, sex, and so much more. As an Irish author, Mulvey’s stories are naturally tinged with the sense of tradition and religious rituals commonly associated with her homeland.
I say the collection is split loosely into three parts, as I’ve struggled to pin down what exactly it is thematically that has led to them being grouped in the way they have on the contents page. In ‘Mother’s Day’, a woman expecting her third child, meets with her semi-estranged mother at an art gallery. She is only newly pregnant and not quite ready to announce it to anyone yet but feels compelled to tell her mother despite the distance between them. It’s a story I felt I could identify with, one where children break out of the class moulds assigned to them and the guilt that often pursues them when family silently judge the loss of roots while fearing judgement for their own continued economic status:
“When I saw her sitting in the cafe near the wing of the gallery that I remembered all too belatedly had been built by pharmaceutical blood money, I realised that this meeting was not about me or my body and its new life at all – it was about her, and her body and its, old, tired ebbing life. And I felt irritated by the way she had shown me up already, and again.”
In ‘My First Marina’, a woman reflects on a friendship that ended in tragedy and how she’s allowed men to intersect her life and friendships, noting her young daughters' emerging friendships and the vigilance this inspires in her. In ‘Blackbird’, a woman returning to the family home as an adult with her own children reflects on her relationship with her brother, the divergence in their pathways, and the different lives it ultimately leads to.
Something that stood out to me early on in the collection was Mulvey’s sparse and strategic use of dialogue. Almost every story is focused on the interior world/s of the character/s it explores. When dialogue is presented, it’s often tight, one or two lines, honing our attention to the dynamics at play. I found this quite a masterly approach, having read a few collections recently where dialogue often formed the main content of the stories, and enjoyed being led through characters' internal reflections.
Another aspect of the collection I enjoyed was Mulvey’s development of young male characters and their desires, shame, and difficulties. In ‘First Time’, a young teen reflects on his first relationship, the confusing compulsions and the need to connect and remain disconnected from her. Mulvey perfectly captures the tense sense of loss that potential rejection from affection often brings in adolescence and the young teen’s battle with ideals of masculinity:
“A girl. He was nothing more than a pathetic girl. He hoped the shadow would rip open the door and hit him very hard across the face. He saw himself bloodied and bruised. It would be such a relief to be battered. To feel the splatter of his own blood.”
The challenges of being a young man, social comparisons and mental health, are also keenly explored in ‘The Doll’. Told in three parts, featuring three different perspectives across a period of time, we’re given three distinct views of the emotional and mental health of Dar, a young teen who finds a ventriloquist doll and uses it as a mouthpiece to verbally abuse himself. First hearing from Dar, then his mother and then Aoife, a girl he dated briefly, ‘The Doll’ is a heartbreaking yet hopeful take on what it means to survive adolescence and the long-reaching mark it can leave on adulthood:
“He just needed to keep it together for a little while longer. He’d read that once you turned twenty-five, your brain is finally fully developed and you stop feeling so mental all the time. His older brothers testified to that. You’ll be okay, they’d said to him the few times they got stoned enough to have a real conversation.”
Like most short story collections, Hearts & Bones is filled with stories that will resonate strongly and stay with you for years and others that will be quickly forgotten – but that’s always the beauty of short stories for me. You never know what gems will resonate, and there are certainly plenty to be discovered in Mulvey’s collection.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
