#BlogTour ‘PAH’ by Orla Owen

About the book…

“A compelling novel full of brilliantly villainous characterisation. Orla Owen is a natural storyteller.” Rónán Hession

Susan Brown is trapped. She lives in nurses’ accommodation she hates, on the run from a past she detests, desperate for a future she can’t afford. Yet.

Calton Jonas is lost. He travels across the country, from beach to city, settling in a small town with a job at the morgue.

Jeffrey Jeffreys is happy as long as life provides him with enough whiskey and beer.

Their lives cross. Old wounds open. Susan takes control but not all of them can survive…

My thanks to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for the tour invite, and me for having the awesome reading skills to pre-order the second novel by Orla Owen, ‘PAH’ which is out now. This is because I absolutely loved her first one, the widely acclaimed ‘The Lost Thumb’-seriously, you should read it, it is unlike pretty much anything you will read.

I had no idea where this book was going, just chucked myself fully into it and surrendered to the process. I cannot remember reading that is a linking novel to ‘The Lost Thumb’, but the overwhelming feeling of surprise tempered with delight and also deep and unabiding sadness, is symptomatic of what Orla Owen engenders in you, as you journey with her.

PAH is a expiration of breath, a dismissal and a putting of another in their place. It is the keyword with which Susan, the principle character of the novel uses for maximum impact against the strictures of her very narrow life.

Working as a nurse brings her no joy, and even less to the people she cares for-she really is the most appalling ‘care giver’ imaginable . She sees people in her life as a means to an end, and the parallels between her experience as an adult orphan, and that of Calton who undergoes the same thing at the novel’s opening, is stark and brutal.

Neither of them had parents who were prepared to take on the responsibility which the role entails, and, as you journey in deeper, the details of Susan’s childhood are simultaneously moving, pathetic, and heart rending. She is a monstrous creation of a monstrous creation who cannot use her sense to relate to anything which would bring joy to the common or garden individual.

She uses poor Jeffrey Jeffreys, himself far from a catch, as a means to end to get away from her job, and they find themselves on a course which has an inevitable, and tragic outcome. Calton becomes mixed up in this, and the resulting fallout creates the situation which is further explored in ‘The Lost Thumb’.

I don’t want to spoil it in any way, shape or form, so I will merely say that if you love dark, beguiling trips to the center of the human heart, or what occupies the space in characters rib cages where it should be, then Orla Owens is the writer you need in your life.

Constrained by her sex, expectations on her to be caring because she is a woman, yet raised by one who is a hollow sham of a mother, it becomes painfully obvious why Susan is like she is.

In contrast, you have the smothered, much loved Jeffrey who is indivisible from his surname, a representation of the Jane and John (deliberately named after the childhood book series, perhaps?) school of childrearing, is a person with no sense of responsibility, authority, or masculinity. Calton is abandoned by his parents by death, one purposeful and the other caused by disease. He is at a prime age where he could go either way, become a grownup or cling to his orphan status and use it as excuse to back out of life.

All 3 are the results of their parent’s actions, however, they do not stay around to see the outcomes of their cruel, borderline inhumane parenting.

Monstrous creations beget monstrous offspring, and the sense of being trapped and unable to break away from this , makes for a claustrophobic, insular and unstoppable narration. Orla Owen is a writer to cherish, her words are impeccably chosen and I wish to goodness that I hadn’t pushed my copy of ‘The Lost Thumb’ onto my friend. Because when I finished ‘PAH’ I wanted to read it all over again!

About the author…

Orla Owen is a writer, online editor, and author of the novel The Lost Thumb. She’s been writing since she was a child, and in 2016 was picked to be mentored by Sarah Savitt at Virago.

Her writing focuses on the dark and macabre side of family life, the parts that go on behind closed doors.

Before she became a writer, she was an actress and drama practitioner, studying Theatre at Bretton Hall College of the Arts. She has performed at the Royal Court and Edinburgh fringe, as well as working on The Women’s Theatre Workshop mentoring scheme.

Supporting women in writing is important to her, and she was lucky enough to work on a writers’ mentoring scheme, as an assistant to the author Kerry Hudson, at the WoMentoring Project

She is currently working on her second novel, PAH, which was released in 2021.

Links-https://www.orlaowen.com/

Twitter-@orlaowenwriting @RandomTTours