The Promise

If you enjoy a sentimental romance such as I do, you will love this tale. The promise that is made between the two lovers will keep you in suspense until the end. In between, you will travel from Ireland to the mystical city of Venice. The imagery painted by the author will delight you. You will feel as if you are there. To me, any love story is a spiritual story. I especially appreciated that since I am the author of a spiritually-themed novel entitled "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude." This author swept me off my feet and transported my soul. Davis Aujourd'hui, author

No one describes the Irish landscape like an Irish author. Mary Ryan, the Dublin-based lawyer cum writer has this to say about the childhood farm of Colm Nugent, The Promise's nut character: "The flat countryside has only enough intermittent rise in it to save it from being a plain.... On summer days the sunlight would move from one side of the barnyard to the other and flit across the fields; at harvest the breeze would carry the scent of new-mown hay." It's fair to say that Ryan also draws out sights, smells and sounds of Florence, Italy, and culls enough conversational Italian in the effort to ensure that readers knows she has spent time there. Much time. And in Paris she navigates the Left Bank with ease as a tormented Colm Nugent seeks resolution to problems endemic to the Irish culture. For Nugent cannot rid himself of a painful past long enough to enjoy the present and anticipate a bright future, which always seems just out of reach. In his melancholy youth lurks memory of a pedophile Irish priest who caused him mental and physical pain while Colm boarded at a diocesan school, Clonarty College. And there was his wife Sherry, who abandoned him with impunity for another man after they struggled for years to overcome the loss of their only child, Alan, to a horrible accident. His father, Tom Nugent, held special disdain for Colm, who as a child was often too ill to help with farm chores. And when Colm's mother Maura died of cancer, Tom Nugent blamed him, announcing to the family that Colm's dismissal from the diocesan school precipitated her illness. Small wonder that Colm's siblings turned against him at this point, furthering his descent into despair. Catherine Clohessy, Kattie, Colm's first love, tired of waiting for him to achieve a semblance of manhood and married another. By this point in the book we want to shout at Colm what we learned reading those self-help books in the 1980s and 1990s. He must forgive others their trespasses before he can forgive his own. Or, is it the other way around? Anyway, before we can stop him he is back in Florence to rekindle an affair he had with an American-Irishwoman, Robin McKay, in 1968. The fact that this Robin might've dropped a few feathers in the past thirty years is of little importance to a man who has already lost his own zest for life. In the closing chapter he miraculously finds Robin and grants everyone mass absolution. As readers, we're relieved. The Promise's excellent characterizations and use of local vernacular are its strength. I don't know if a movie deal is in the offing, but the book shows, well, promise.

I'm not sure why this book is not more well known and why it is not more widely reviewed.I am not a big romantic reader nor do I have a life full of mysterious lovers. But something about this novel grasped me like few others have.Main character Colm is nothing special nor are the women he meets. Yet we all have had incidents in our past that we wonder about. If a few details had been a little bit different would our life have been different? If we ran into our first love would they throw their arms around us or say "sorry I don't remember you?"This book captured me. It is easy to read, moves right along and the story line is plausible. Predictable perhaps but that does not detract from the book. The detailed descriptions of the feelings and emotions of the participants is wonderful.I thoroughly enjoyed this story. It is far better than many of the mass market books I read daily and better than most of Oprah's picks.