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Breakdown, the sophomore novel from Irish writer Cathy Sweeney, is a provocative piece of literary fiction that lures you in very quickly and has an urgency that makes it hard to put down.

On a cold, nondescript day in November, a middle class woman walks out the door of her comfortable middle class home, not thinking about where she might be headed but knowing that she has had enough. Enough of her job as an art teacher, enough of the mundanity of household chores, enough of her sedentary marriage, enough of getting things “done��, ticking things off a list.

She drives to her home town of Arklow, then takes a train, a ferry, a car, a bus and another car before reaching her final destination, freeing herself of the shackles of her former life, as she sees it.

I think at the heart of this novel is a sense of loneliness and disconnection that many people when they read the book will be able to relate to. The narrator speaks of the world breaking down around her, everyone and everything breaking down, and what she is seeking is something primal to shake her out of her numbness to life, society’s grinding expectations of her and what appears to be a profound depression.

It’s a pretty stark novel with an unlikeable narrator but it’s so well-written and her character is so well-drawn and so real, it’s impossible to look away. The only aspect I didn’t love was the moving back and forth in time - revealing the ending so early on took some of the tension out of the novel.

Years ago, people in Ireland spoke of women, usually in midlife who “suffered from their nerves��. What was usually meant but never spoken about was clinical depression. Part of you wants to cheer her on, the other part of you is yelling “stop�� 🙉. Breakdown is to menopausal women what Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy is to new mothers. An unflinching read that makes for a great book club pick. Recommended. 4-4.5/5⭐️