Overview

In eleven carefully crafted stories, Lesley Mahoney O'Connell's landscapes and seascapes help readers to recognize and to feel the strengths, flaws, and compromises her characters are developing as they navigate their life choices. Most of the stories are set in New England coastal villages. All are sensitive and thought-provoking, the characters relatable and real. Ripple Effects features mostly quiet but intelligent characters who see themselves as outsiders in their own worlds. O'Connell lets readers listen as they work their way toward decisions they can somehow live with. Some swim through currents of parental self-centeredness; others, lacking ordinary filters, dream impossible dreams as they ignore career crises and marital ennui. O'Connell is especially good at exploring the interior lives, the caves and cliffs carved by deep losses, creating empathy and often a sense of peace in readers. In the first story, for example, a young teacher grapples with the strain of being permanent guardian for her neurodivergent younger brother. In the second, a teenage girl trying to escape heavy pressures at home is drawn to shoplifting, and to risky quarry jumping. Another follows a new mother struggling to bond with her baby in an isolated seaside home with a mostly-absent husband. Deception and self-deception blend and ripple when a grieving widower relives moments from his childhood and wonders what sort of future is possible. Memories clash with present moments when a young wife travels from California to sell her family's New England home, the one she'd persuaded her parents to leave behind. O'Connell's stories are connected by nuanced water motifs, and explore the dynamics of both ripples and riptides. Several feature empowered women, or women on the road to empowerment. At their core, most of these stories hint at the strength and hope which can arise in disheartening circumstances.

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9781952232992

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Reviews

Captivating, clear-eyed stories of women and men at crossroads moments, faced with less-than-ideal choices and often on the wrong side of luck. Yet hope seeps in, always surprising, sometimes reassuring-inevitable, like the tide. You'll be glad to know these people and enriched by the time you spend with them. Ron MacLean, author of We Might as Well Light Something on Fire Lesley Mahoney O'Connell's stories are insightful and poetic and as fluid as the water motif running through them. Her characters stay in your mind, their predicaments and choices deeply revealing of human nature and finely controlled. This is a wonderful debut collection. Jessica Francis Kane, author of Rules for Visiting and This Close, long-listed for The Story Prize In Ripple Effects Lesley O'Connell gives us characters adrift in the currents of their own lives. These are outsiders navigating the space between expectation and reality, between connection and the aching loneliness that can exist even in the presence of others. O'Connell writes of loss with compassion and tenderness. She shows us the quiet strength of women when circumstances demand reinvention. These are stories that honor the difficulty of staying afloat amidst life's transitions, while celebrating the hope that surfaces when we least expect it. Intimate, insightful, and deeply human, Ripple Effects marks the arrival of a writer with remarkable emotional intelligence and a gift for illuminating the resilience at the heart of ordinary lives. Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works O'Connell's stories end with movement forward but no guarantee of happily-ever-after. Often the climax is a change of perspective. They bring to mind lines from ""In the Chemo Room..."" by the late poet, Andrea Gibson: ""Remind me/ all my prayers were answered // the moment I started praying/ for what I already have."" O'Connell's characters inspire us with their perseverance which usually brings insight more than dramatic change. They remind us to live and love as best we can. Jack Powers, author of Everybody's Vaguely Familiar and Still Love O'Connell's stories end with movement forward but no guarantee of happily-ever-after. Often the climax is a change of perspective. They bring to mind lines from ""In the Chemo Room..."" by the late poet, Andrea Gibson: ""Remind me/ all my prayers were answered// the moment I started praying/for what I already have."" O'Connell's characters inspire us with their perseverance which usually brings insight more than dramatic change. They remind us to live and love as best we can. Jack Powers, author of Everybody's Vaguely Familiar and Still Love

Author Information

Lesley Mahoney O'Connell lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts with her husband and son. Her fiction has appeared in Post Road, Psychopomp, and Solstice. She co-ran a reading series in Jamaica Plain, MA, and regularly takes classes at Boston's GrubStreet and Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center. She works with health care in communications, marketing, and digital strategy.

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