At the heart of every one of us is this insistent need to belong, to fit in, to be unconditionally cared for, loved and part of something that extends far beyond ourselves.
It’s understandable; we are social creatures who have evolved to always be in concert with others, to find ourselves in the mirror of another, not in some unhealthy way, though we fall into that trap too, by coming to appreciate how others see us which is often more honest and real that we are capable of being with ourselves.
We need that reflection from others, illuminating the good and bad in us, shaping us to be who we will become, a deep-seated truth that is on profound display in Cecilia Ahern’s beautiful novel, Freckles, the story of one woman’s quest to find her peace with who she is, and most importantly for her, who she wants to be.
24-year-old llegra Bird aka Freckles, so named because her arms are scattered with the distinctive light brown dots on her skin, and who hails from Valentia Island on the wild west coast of Ireland, has moved to Dublin to find herself like so many others have before her.
She has left her beloved Pops behind, an unconventional man who has raised her singlehandedly and whose love for her is gloriously, affirming certain and unstinting, as well as close friends whom she reassures herself will be her family of sorts even when she’s far from home.
She takes on a new job, not one she was longing to pursue but it has given her the chance to stay put in Malahide, a coastal village north of Dublin, where she is determined to find out who she is away from home and in the presence of one person in particular whom she has secretly come to Ireland’s capital to get to know.
“I push my food around the plate, because I have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and a lump in my throat and I feel like I’m going to cry at the realisation I don’t have five people, not in Dublin and not here … some deep primal instinct inside of me knew, faster than my head did, that I don’t have five people.” (P. 122)
This is her big chance at reinvention, to be the person that her friends Jamie, Marion and Cyclops, back on Valentia, may not realise she is but whom she desperately wants to be.
Her confidence is shaken however when she encounters an incredibly rude man her own age outside a trendy start-up office who, seeking to hurt her, challenges her to find five people with whom she spends the most time, the people who, because of their closeness, shape and mould her, hopefully for the better.
Shaken by the fact that she’s not sure she has five people – one yes, in Pops but five? She’s not so sure – Allegra struggles with the fact that for all for bravery in moving to Dublin, she may be a failure before she has really had a chance to begin her transformation.
It’s harrowing stuff in one sense, because Ahern has crafted a flawed but loveable protagonist who is willing to be brutally honest with herself even as she makes the kind of decisions that aren’t always in her best interest, but also charmingly sweet because for all foibles and flaws, Allegra wants good things out of life and is willing to do what she has to to get them.
Of course, life is never quite that easy, and reeling from a lifetime of bullying and the kind of self-sabotage employ unwittingly even in the pursuit of the loftiest of ambitions, Allegra finds it hard to work out if she has five transformative people in her life, and whether she can become the person she expects and dreams of being.
For all its charm and warmth, Freckles is a book unafraid to ask some hard questions.
While it affirms life as a good and glorious thing capable of so much, it also unflinchingly truthful about the fact that for all out starry-eyed optimism and desire to push for the heavens, we often find ourselves stuck tight in the mud, our feet of clay holding us fast to a ground we are desperate to leave.
That’s certainly the case with Allegra, who takes the rude man’s attack on her to heart and decides to do something good with it, setting out to find those five people, some of whom are not the people you’d expect her to contact, while others sneak into her world when she isn’t looking and change her in ways that also change them right back (including one surprising person whose arrival in her inner circle is unexpectedly delightful).
What makes Allegra such a joyous delight is that she is so human, so grounded and so fallible, just like all of us; while there is a fairytale quality to Freckles in some ways, there’s overwhelmingly a strong sense that life will drag us backwards and forwards through the mire and we may wonder if we have what it takes to rise up and get to the places that we believe we are destined to be.
“Pop reaches out and grabs my hand. And that’s really all I need.
He’s my one. He’s always been my one. The most powerful, my everything. My five people all in one.” (P. 337)
It’s this mark of beautifully written charm and honesty that makes Freckles such a pleasure to read.
Its holds aloft the idea that life can be extravagantly good and wondrous but that getting to that place is not always the easiest of journeys.
Told in Allegra’s happily honest voice, one marked by a self-admission that she doesn’t quite get people and always says the wrong thing – not entirely true; as the narrative plays out to a life-affirming end, it becomes clear she also says and do quite a lot right in her misguided by well-intentioned way – Freckles is a superbly-realised tale of what it is like to grapple with the worst of life in pursuit of the best and to wonder, more than once, if you have a hope in hell of coming out the end more uplifted than unscathed.
Life makes no guarantees, and for much of its entirely enrapturing length, nor does Freckles, but there’s always the sense that maybe just maybe things will work out okay.
The genius of Ahern’s nuanced, thoughtful and empathetic writing is that she invests a tale of charming reinvention and optimistic hopefulness with the grinding realities of life, all invested in a protagonist you will come to love for her sheer fallible, likeable humanity, making Freckles one of those rare books that holds both the mud and the stars in its hands and challenges you and Allegra to decide what will come out on top.