This debut novel casts tender eyes over the life of one woman of the Irish diaspora. Tess is only a young girl when her mother dies from tuberculosis and it sets the emotional tone for much of her life. The ache travels within her to America and into love … and it spans six decades.

What are we talking about? Academy Street is the first novel by Dublin-based author Mary Costello.

Elevator pitch … Tess Lohan’s life is unremarkable but it is recognisable. You’ll get an insider’s view of her grief, joys, passions and challenges — starting in the Irish countryside in the 1940s and moving to New York, where she lives on the fifth-floor of 471 Academy Street, Inwood, until she’s 62.

The buzz … Costello’s writing has been compared to Alice Munro’s (high praise) and Anne Enright said Costello’s short story collection, The China Factory, was ‘a satisfying and accomplished debut’. UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada, Australia and New Zealand) for Academy Street were sold in a ‘heated’ UK auction.

The talent …  Costello’s first book, The China Factory, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. Academy Street has been praised by J. M. Coetzee, who said, ‘With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion amid the legions of the meek and the unobtrusive.’

In a nutshell … Academy Street is the story of a life, from childhood on a country estate in Ireland, to boarding school, a move to New York in 1962, and through decades punctuated by passion, loneliness, devotion and the pain of letting go.

It’s great that … the opening is so evocative! I felt I was lured into Easterfield House and the surrounding estate and relished the bird that flew into the dining room and picked off some wallpaper and flew out again ‘with the little strip like a twig’ in its beak. I also thought Tess’s relationships with the farm labourer, Mike Connolly, and with her vivacious neighbour, Willa, in New York, were nicely drawn.

It’s a shame that … I couldn’t avoid comparing Academy Street to Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn — the quintessential tale of the fresh-faced Irish lass making a new life in America. It’s not that this storyline can’t be told in a thousand ways (of course it can) but Tóibín’s approach sets the bar high. If another iteration doesn’t cut me to the quick, it falls short. Also, I know love can be difficult to describe but, even bearing this in mind, Costello’s attempts can be cloying. I found her description of the mother-child bond and her expression of Tess’s desire for David a bit over the top.

Quotes to mull … ‘She sees for the first time all he [her father] has endured. Holding things together, holding himself together, poised, always, to defend against a new catastrophe … Gently she takes each strand and cuts, the sound of the scissors in the air between them, the hair falling to the floor. And his sorrow, for all that is lost, lying silent within him.’

‘“You know something?” he [a man Tess is nursing] says. “I could fit my whole life on one page … And I am astonished that it is over and I am here, at the end.”’

You’ll like it if … you like ‘lifespan’ stories. The way Academy Street lays out Tess’s trajectory reminded me of Someone by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2011) in which Brooklyn-born Marie Commeford’s life is detailed from childhood to old age. You might also like Costello’s gentle Irish flavour: Wisps of Ireland come to America with Tess, especially early on. Her relationship with her homeland is vexed at times but she never completely lets it go.

Why read it? … On a rainy Saturday afternoon, the narrative flowed easily and I finished the novel in a couple of hours. Bookended by steaming cups of tea and dozing, it was a comfortable read.

The details … Academy Street, Mary Costello
, Text, $29.99