The Donoghue Girl
I was pulled in to the lives of two sisters, Ann and Lizzie, in “The Donoghue Girl” by Kim Fahner. Two sisters wrapped in and lead through spirals of pain and passion with one single man, Michael Power. A handsome mine manager whose charisma and charm penetrate their world. Seduced by the same man, in an age of strict courting rules, the rural family in 1930s Creighton, Ontario, side-step around the orbit of a man who turns down one sister to pursue the other.
Immersive and carving out a seamless transition into the literary world of the Donoghue family, I was stunned and impressed with the family’s steadfastness in the wake of moral threat and life tragedies, while adhering to the rigid gender constructs of the time. A novel that I hoped would present a timeline of the resilience and fidelity of sisterly love, I was pushed to acknowledge and appreciate the ways these two sisters found freedom in a form of resistance within the perimeters of the ideological fabric they both were born into.
“The Donoghue Girl” offers a subtle critique, for me, of gender constraints and expectations during the novel’s timeline. “The Donoghue Girl” is Fahner’s first novel, but the Sudbury author has published five books of poetry previously and has made a mark as Sudbury’s poet laureate from 2016 to 2018. Published by Latitude 46 in Sudbury in September 2024, “The Donoghue Girl” has been acclaimed for presenting a fictional narrative based on familial history, that was continuous for me in the flow of the author’s voice to enter into the world of her characters.
The novel follows Ann and Lizzie and their trajectories of living from the 1930s in rural Ontario. Set in Creighton, Ontario, the forking and overlapping lives of these women are also set against other geographies like Garson, Sudbury and Petsamo, Finland. “The Donoghue Girl” is based off the family history and storytelling of the author’s own life, having received stories from one great-aunt passed down. Having grown up in the same locations in northern Ontario as the novel, Fahner is effortless in writing to convey the world of this historical family.
Fahner speaks of her family layers of “The Donoghue Girl” in an interview with OpenBook. “One of my great-aunts told me in my late 20s that my maternal grandfather, Len, had dated my great-aunt, Norah, before moving on to date her sister, Alice, who became my grandmother. I had never heard the story before, and it both shocked and intrigued me. I wanted to explore this triangle of a relationship in a creative way. Some of the novel is rooted in the architecture of family history, but most of what happens between the characters is made up as I never knew my grandfather.” Existing just before the onslaught of WWII and a creeping in of the Winter War in Finland, Fahner positions these characters in the centre of their own wars. Battles with each other and battles with themselves. Referred to as the Kennedy’s of Creighton, the Donoghue’s are an upstanding family with firm social fibre in the heart of a small-town.
Kim Fahner resides in Sudbury, Ontario. “The Donoghue Girl” is her first novel with Latitude 46 Publishing. She has published five books of poetry and two chapbooks. She is the First Vice-Chair of The Writer’s Union of Canada (2023-25). A member of the League of Canadian Poets and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Fahner was also Poet Laureate for the City of Greater Sudbury from 2016-18.
This novel pushed through contemplations of the character arcs of women in this time period and the constraints they felt. The storyline follows, for the majority, the life-line of Lizzie, the strong-minded and willful younger sister who ends up with the dashing Michael Power. She is wed and travels with him overseas on a honeymoon, the reader can become lost in romance and passion then. But, the marriage is not a story or turning-out of a carefully tied-together ending. As the couple settles into the reality and corners of their lives, Michael’s true colours begin to emerge and I was left wondering what would happen for Lizzie. Not to give away the plot, Lizzie finds relief and freedom in her own capacity of what was capable for women of her time. A shift in perspective for me too, even in my own time, of what women can seek in liberation amongst the sacrifices and familial duties they carry out. Lizzie’s character arc is accessible and relatable.
The novel could have shifted and included a more personal and first-person point-of-view of Ann’s trajectory. She goes through heartbreak and the feeling of betrayal from her sister. Instead of falling into another relationship, she remains independent, secures her borders and pushes out into the world on her own. That projection and facing of adversity is inspiring, but very much a peripheral sub-plotline that could have taken hold of the novel and grounded it down into themes of transformation, endurance and feminine grit as integral in self-preservation. A feminist plotline. But, the choice of scope of lens of the novel further accentuates what Kahner accomplishes for the Donoghue family.
As other reviews have noted, the greatest depth and range of emotions of one character in the novel is the matriarch, Mrs. Donoghue, who remains a hub to the family wheel. She is presented as a cold and strict mother from the eyes of her daughters in the beginning of the novel, to break from that mold as the novel progresses and it is the closeness and love of the family that carries them through hardship and challenges as their lives carry on. Ironically, it is the baseline components of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Donoghue who come to represent the ideal marriage for this time. I was not expecting that.
Fahner maintains the relatability and accessibility of her characters throughout this historical fiction with fluid dialogue, action and point-of-view. She moves their world along at a respectable pace and leaves the reader wondering how the characters would extend beyond the page. I fully recommend “The Donoghue Girl,” as a contribution to a reader’s list of contemporary Canadian literature.
Thank you to Kim Fahner, Latitude 46 Publishing and River Street Writing for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review!
