Academy Street

The debut novel from Costello (The China Factory) begins with Tess Lohan, a child attending her mother’s funeral in Ireland, and crisply shuttles the girl through adolescence and deposits her, now a young woman, in New York City, where she lives with an aunt and wonders what the world has in store for her. In just over 150 pages, Tess’s full life passes by, from her days working as a nurse, to her nights out dancing, and her brief romance with a lawyer bound for the Air Force, which results in the birth of her son, Theo. As a single mother in the 1960s, Tess struggles with family disappointment and social stigmas, yet she soldiers on, raising her son solo, and eventually watches him drift away from her grasp as he grows into a man. Costello works wonders on the page, employing precise prose to craft a resonant narrative out of a rather ordinary lifetime. Though a fateful incident near the novel’s end feels somewhat exploitative and out of character with the rest of the narrative, Tess’s overall story—full of struggles and meekness—proves there is often beauty to be found in the mundane. (Apr.)