Holding Her Breath, Eimear Ryan
“There’s certainly a tangible sense of energy, flow, and vitality in the novel that comes from the journey of a young woman moving forward in the world.”
There are some books that are really effortful reads, like trudging through mud, and others that are virtually effortless, which you sail through enjoyably.
Holding Your Breath is very much the latter, in large part thanks to debutant Eimear Ryan’s easy and natural style of narration. Ryan doesn’t overcomplicate matters or get bogged down in scenes; instead, she moves efficiently from start to finish and takes her readers along for the satisfying ride.
The story itself chiefly focuses on a young woman – Beth Crowe – as she navigates her new life at university and attempts to reconcile it with her former life and the life of her family. She is, in many ways, a very real and relatable character, and she is defined by two crucial elements that distinguish her: her prowess at swimming and being the granddaughter of the famous Irish poet Ben Crowe – a man whose death is as significant as his life. Finally, at university, where Beth is separated from her mother and grandmother for the first time and thrust into an academic world that reveres Ben Crowe, she begins to both explore her grandfather’s story and reconnect with her love of swimming, enabling her to better understand herself and her place in life.
Ryan’s story of young womanhood is pitch-perfect, relatable, and engaging, although the introspection means that some of the wider narrative feels quite constrained. Furthermore, while the book follows the Ben Crowe story through to a kind of denouement, it is a shame that more isn’t given to this arc. Similarly, more about Beth’s swimming, and particularly her mental health issues, would have been welcome; however, there’s certainly a tangible sense of energy, flow, and vitality in the novel that comes from the journey of a young woman moving forward in the world.
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