Review: The Latecomers

The Latecomers by Helen Klein Ross
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

3.5 Stars

The Latecomers is the story of Bridey, an 16-year-old Irish young woman who elopes, or tries to, with her beau Thom, who plans to emigrate to America in the early 1900s. Her plan goes awry from the start when the priest is away and they are unable to get married. They decide to keep to their plans of sailing to America and hope to marry there. But after succumbing to what naturally happens with two teens in love and sharing a bed, Thom dies when an illness sweeps the crowded ship, and Bridey arrives in America with no real contacts and a swelling waistline. Thus begins The Latecomers, the story of Bridey Molloy, the Hollingworth family, and their darling child, Vincent. The novel also gives us a more modern timeline, with the fall of the Twin Towers and the flight of young Emma out of the city, on her mother's instructions, while her mother searches for her father who was in the North Tower.

Providing a potent reminder of how Irish immigrants were once as scorned and reviled as Latino or Muslim immigrants often are in the present day, the novel is being billed as a Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn meets Christina Baker Kline (presumably Orphan Train story. While I can see the comparisons, the uneven writing left me disappointed in the end. Bridey's story was well-developed, but the last section of of the novel, dealing with the more modern generation of Hollingworths, felt rushed and the characters felt sketchy. The resolution of the Bridey- Vincent storyline felt too emotionally flat to me, and the revelation about the truth of old Mr. Hollingworth's passing felt too much like an footnote. Although the Epilogue provided a link from the present day Hollingworths back to Bridey Molloy, I just wanted more exposition forging those links from Bridey to Vincent to Emma. I wish the whole last third of the book had been developed with the same care as the first part of the book and I'm still not sure how much of this was an editorial choice or authorial choice. I'm inclined to think the former because it's obvious that Ross did a huge amount of research. I wish that its last sections lived up to the promise of the first. Still, the first two thirds of the book provide an enjoyable read, earning this book 3.5 stars handily.

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