Nell and her partner, Adrienne, are about to have a baby. For Adrienne, it’s a time to celebrate new beginnings. But the news has sent Nell into a spiral and has them seeing a couple’s therapist. The truth is that Nell can’t become a mother without confronting her past.
She had been a mother before, but she never looked after her child: “she didn’t want to use that word then, now or ever”. Nel believes that if Adrienne were to find out how badly she does not want to be a mother, she will leave her.
Niamh Mulvey’s debut novel, The Amendments, is a multigenerational family saga that begins in London and then takes us through the early 2000s when Nel was a teenager and Ireland was transformed from one of the poorest, most troubled countries in Western Europe to the hedonistic Celtic Tiger.
From there, the narrative moves further back in time to 1983, when Nell’s mother, Dolores, was caught up in the politics of the women’s rights movement. The surge of feminist activism in the 1970s and 1980s had a profound impact on the country. The Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) advocated for equal pay, the removal of the marriage bar that banned married women from working, justice for widows and single mothers, equal educational opportunities, and the right to contraception. The title refers to the various amendments around abortion that were voted on in different decades,
Set against the backdrop of Ireland’s cultural and political transformation and the pervasive influence of religion and morality, The Amendments delves deeply into the personal and societal struggles of the time through individual stories tied together by Nell’s dark secret.
We meet her when she’s barely speaking to her mother and cannot even contemplate returning home to Ireland. Before Adrienne, Nel believed she did not belong: “she sometimes saw rats by the railway track as she cycled to work in the early mornings, or around the back of various restaurants she worked in, and they didn’t scare her, rather they reminded her of herself, the way she skittered around the edges of things, the edges of the city, the edges of life itself”.
Through her short fiction, Mulvey has been critically acclaimed as a talented, insightful storyteller. In her novel, she continues to explore themes of youth, growing up, love, rebellion and heartache. It’s a profound illustration of the pain of feeling peripheral, misplaced and empty, and a desperate longing for security. Through powerful but compassionate characterisation. Mulvey brings the experience of Brigid (Nell’s grandmother), Dolores, and Nell to life, in a carefully nuanced portrait of the discombobulating societal and cultural changes over their lifetimes. Shame is a persistent theme throughout. Overcoming their shame is the work the women have to do.
Though not an easy read, The Amendments is a fine and beautifully written novel. The social history covered may at times feel overwhelming, but it’s an utterly compelling and engrossing saga about the hearts and minds of strong, interesting women.
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