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"You know, I've spent most of my life feeling away, and not even sure where I felt away from. My parents' longing for – for elsewhere, it seemed so greedy."
Oona Frawley's first novel, Flight, is full of such statements, as the themes of "awayness" and elsewhere, the unspoken tensions between parent and child, play out against the backdrop of a country blinded by greed. andSet in Ireland in 2004, Flight is not just Frawley's literary debut, but also the debut publication of the Dublin-based Tramp Press. Then again, its founders are no strangers to launching exciting Irish voices, having rescued Donal Ryan's Spinning Heart from the dreaded slush pile at Lilliput Press. Going on to win the Guardian First Book Award, Ryan's novel is now considered part of the "recession lit" genre, where contemporary writers draw on Ireland's devastation in the wake of the credit crunch.
In Flight, the Celtic Tiger is still – just – alive. The country's wealth has resulted in a rise in overseas workers, a nation so synonymous with emigration now suddenly the site of mass arrival. So Zimbabwean Sandrine comes to Ireland in the hope of finding brighter prospects for her family (including her secret unborn child). She is hired by the weary, childless Elizabeth to care for her ageing parents, Tom and Clare. They have spent most of their lives in Vietnam and America, working in the spice trade, so are surprisingly open to this foreigner coming into their home.
Ireland, though, is not so welcoming. Despite its reputation for being a "friendly", "religious" country, which "had experienced such persecution itself", Sandrine is faced with
hostility wherever she goes. This is even more potent given the forthcoming referendum, which will redefine who is granted Irish citizenship, eliminating the so-called "birth tourism" trend.
Such unexpected racism increases Sandrine's isolation. Yet she is not the only one who feels out of place. As we retrace the travels of Elizabeth and her parents across the globe, moments of restlessness and homesickness occur time and time again. From the expat hotel where they lived in Vietnam, to Elizabeth's childhood experiences of St Patrick's Day and Fourth of July, a true sense of belonging remains always out of reach. Similarly, as Tom and Clare descend deeper into their dementia, they become strangers both to their daughter, and then to one another, lost on a very different kind of flight, their minds "floating free".
The novel's point of view shifts constantly, as all these different versions of loneliness blur into one. Elizabeth realises that during her daily visits to her parents she can "do nothing of use", only provide a "meditation on family", and so too the book itself is more thought than action. Very little happens, very little is said, only memories and regrets are allowed to unfold. This is not a problem, for the family's international history is sketched with engaging clarity, but Sandrine's story remains less vivid. As an outsider, she provides a new, effective viewpoint on Irish society, but we are only given a handful of snapshots of her own life back in Zimbabwe. Then again, perhaps this is a deliberate choice on Frawley's part. Our greed for more recalls that of the passengers on Sandrine's first flight, "full of desire to know her, to know what her skin meant".
It is eight years since Frawley wrote this thoughtful, lyrical tale. But despite publishers' interest at the time, none were willing to take the chance on a novel with a black protagonist. Thankfully, Tramp Press has dared to think outside the box, so that just as the prologue defines flight as "a mounting or soaring out of the regular course or beyond ordinary bounds", so too a new voice, and indeed a new breed of Irish novel, has been launched aloft.
• Flight by Oona Frawley is available from Tramp Press.
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