This House Will Feed

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Before I start my review, I want to say this.

Please heed the content warnings that are stated in the beginning of this novel before you jump in head-first. The topics explored within are dark, and even as someone who is not Irish by blood, some deep part of me ached for the absolute horrors that were explained within.... as if some part of me that I have not known was mourning what the Irish people had to endure during An Gorta Mór... The Great Hunger, or what we may know simply as the Irish Potato Famine. These topics are very very well-researched, and described on a level of detail that will leave me reeling, and will definitely be something that will be in the back of my mind, haunting me on those midnight hours when I am unable to rest...

The year is 1848.... the Potato Famine has been occurring for several years now.

Maggie O' Shaughnessy has lost everyone she holds near and dear. Now she works at the Ennis Workhouse, a bare shell of herself, doing what she absolutely has to in order to get the meager rations to sustain herself.

She is presented with the opportunity to escape the harsh conditions of the workhouse, but on one condition. She must become someone she is not.

She assumes the role of Wilhelmina, to help the one who saved her hoodwink others into releasing her daughter's pension. On the promise she will receive her own land and be able to live the life that she promised her brother before his death....

This content was so heavy that while I devoured the first half... I had to turn to something more light-hearted so as to give my mind a rest before I could turn back to the remaining pages of this novel. Even then, there were times where I found myself staring off into the shadows of my dimly lit room at night, the imagery summoned within my mind too horrible to speak about. Maria has truly wrapped the events of the Potato Famine into a lush, and utterly horrific emotional Gothic tale... sprinkled with the specters of the dead....

Just as any part of history that we may not be proud of, An Gorta Mór is a dark piece of history that we should always remember, not as something to be proud of, but as a reminder of how resilient we are.