Solo

Daisy is an exceptionally talented teenage classical musician whose recorder has always been the mouthpiece for all that she is and wants to be: ‘Nothing else mattered.’ Her ceaseless hard work and prowess leads her to competition success and maked her ‘notable.’ However, this status isolates her from her peers and intensive practice and rehearsals leaves little time to socialise. Then David comes into her life and her world is changed as he claims he was first drawn to her because of her devotion to music. After a month they sleep together for the first time – and then after what should have been a special bonding, he tells her he no longer loves her.

The prolonged period of grieving which follows robs her of success in her final music exams and severs her from her beloved recorder and even the choir where she has enthusiastically sung. Having lost the essence of herself she suffers further betrayal when Shannon, her best friend, slips out of her life and joins the girls who cuttingly and jealously criticise Daisy as ‘a nobody’ chosen by ‘a somebody.’ And yet, there is more despair to come when her father is diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He is no longer her rock and her mother can no longer tend to Daisy’s every need. It’s time for her to grow up.

Enter new pupil at school, Flora – exquisitely gifted and with a murderous hatred of her father, so much in fact that she gave up music to punish him. Unable to return to her own work she brutally urges Daisy back to her recorder, her studies, her singing – and her final exams. The circle turns and Daisy returns to the siren call of the music and her new role within her family.

In writing Solo, Grainne O’Brien examines the often-tumultuous lives of teenagers: at the mercy of strong new feelings, helplessly self-centered, confused and frustrated by their own and others’ thoughts and deeds. She also looks at the open-heartedness and determination of young people to embrace their talents and passions and thus travel along that road which takes them to who they are and who they will become. Equally as powerfully, she uses the shape and organisation of her prose to represent music in its many moods, paralleling them with what Daisy is experiencing. This unusual and accomplished book is a fast and furious read, threaded through with a healthy dose of timely wisdom.