Let Go the Glass Voice

The transforming power of family myths lies at the heart of this suspenseful, if occasionally facile, portrait of an extended Irish-American family. In her early 30s, Nora Cavanaugh has left her family's New York City home in search of a life in the countryside, beyond the clutches of her grandmother Nonny. An immigrant who fled Ireland at 17 against her family's advice, Nonny has determined to hold her own family together in the New World at all costs--one of which has proven, indirectly, to be the sanity of Nora's mother. Even 300 miles from this legacy of pain and madness, Nora fails to cut the threads that bind her to her traumatic youth. As she tries to untangle the mysteries of her childhood (mysteries rooted in both Celtic mythology and Irish Catholicism), she finds herself haunted by memories of a death in the family. While there's much that's evocative in McCafferty's treatment of Irish heritage, the novel suffers from unrelieved melodrama. (Dec.)