Halfway through Kathleen MacMahon’s new novel, The Home Scar, a librarian makes a list of her favourite authors, with Anne Tyler unsurprisingly claiming the top spot. It’s to Tyler that your thoughts will return throughout the book, as you delight in MacMahon’s similar mastery of characters so real they feel like friends and a writing style so fluid the pages slip down as smoothly as the wine her protagonists are a tad too fond of drinking.

Her story focuses on two siblings who, despite being in their late 30s and successful in their respective careers, both have trouble forming relationships. Their reticence to open up stems from the formative summer they spent in a picturesque Irish village with their free-spirited mother. Returning there for the first time as adults, they struggle to reconnect with the people and places that made them, and question if it’s wise to confront the hurts of the past or whether they’d be better off trying to forget them altogether.

Perfectly echoing the wistful, windswept landscape of its setting, The Home Scar is a quiet and bleakly beautiful book. Like the siblings and Ireland, it will leave a permanent mark on those who venture into its depths.