In the summer of 2005, I accidentally discovered the novel
that changed my life as a writer. I wandered into an English W H Smith to check
out the buy-two-books-get-one-free deal, and picked up a novel with these words
on the cover: “A story about love, loss—and surviving them both.”
The novel was The
Catalpa Tree, and the author was Irish writer, Denyse Devlin. Seven years
later The Catalpa Tree remains one
of my favorite novels, and the hero, Oliver Sayle, still lives in my head.
When the reader meets Oliver, he’s waiting to tell his best
friend’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Jude, that she’s been orphaned. Sitting in
the office at Jude’s Catholic boarding school, squirming as the senior nun
watches across the desk, Oliver is trying not to feel intimidated. And he’s desperate
for a cigarette. That was the moment I fell in love.
Oliver is Jude’s legal guardian. They’re always been close,
but everything changes once they’re thrown together through grief and tragedy.
Oliver has his own family and a young son, but Jude has no one else. From the
beginning you know these two people are tied in a bond that is unique and
isolating and not always healthy. Over the next seven years, they test each
other constantly. The push and pull of their messy, entangled relationship
creates an emotionally gripping page-turner. You cheer, you cry, and when you
put the novel down, you have to know where these characters are ten, fifteen,
twenty years into the future.
And this is why I Iove The
Catalpa Tree: Ms Devlin peels back the layers of relationships,
taking the reader deeper and deeper into every twist and turn, every conflict. Stephen
King talks about excavating a plot; The
Catalpa Tree taught me how to excavate the emotional lives of characters. When
I discovered The Catalpa Tree, the
world stopped, my life went on hold, and I thought, “This is how I want to
write.”
I reread the novel a few years ago and tried to be more
critical. I couldn’t. Once again I was swept up in the turmoil of
Jude and Oliver’s relationship.
I no longer have the copy of The Catalpa Tree I bought in England. It fell apart like my
favorite Dr. Martens. Now I have two copies: one that’s signed and sits on my
desk, and a copy I graciously lend out—but only if
people promise to return it unharmed.
The Catalpa Tree
is published by Penguin Ireland and available in paperback and e-book through Amazon.com. If you like women’s fiction with a
darker edge—it’s the best book you haven’t read.
Okay, you convinced me! Another one to add to the pile!
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