The Mermaids Singing - Lisa Carey

Summary and Review of The Mermaids Singing by Lisa Carey

Category: Books
Genre: Family & Love
Author: Lisa Carey

Major characters are: Cliona, Grace and Grainne.

Setting: Inis Muruch - the Island of the Mermaids and Boston.

This book is about mother and daughter relationships. Its about three generation of mothers and daughters who failed to understand each other and express their love.

Cliona was originally born in Inis Muruch who as a child hated her mother and never came to understand her. She saw her mother as a woman who has no joy in her, a harsh woman and unreachable. She hated her name because it is named after some mythological being and her name is not common. She loved her father who was a fisherman like all the men in their island. She went to Boston (America) to work as a maid while saving up money to go study about nursing. It is her dream to be a nurse at Inis Muruch. While she was working under the Willoughbys as a maid, she got pregnant, and her plan to go back to Inis Muruch failed. She named her daughter Grace.

Grace disliked her mother for naming her simply as Grace. Grace thought her mother as a stern woman who bore no expression on her face whatsoever. She was born in Boston, but when she was almost 15 years old she was forced to go back with her mother at Inis Muruch, which she did not like. Her mother married a man named Marcus who owns a hotel, and has a lot of kids. She hated living with them, she hated living in an island because she did not feel free. The only time she feels free was when she goes under the water and swim the whole day. All her days in Inis Muruch was not good. People always see her sulking, pouting and it was evident she was never happy. She fell in love with a man named Seamus and she bore him a daughter and she named her Grainne. She wanted to abort her daughter but Seamus and her mother would not let her. She felt trapped and all her visions of leaving the island vanished. But later on after three years of leaving in the island married to Seamus she decided to leave with Grainne.

Grainne always wondered why she never knew her father or whether she has any relations aside from her mother. She asked about her grandmother and her mother told her, she is dead and that the only family she has was her mother.

It’s a nice story about mothers and daughters. About freedom, loving one another, conformity and family.