Confessions by Catherine Airey Summary, Characters and Themes
Confessions by Catherine Airey is a haunting, fragmented novel that unfolds across time, memory, and geography.
Told through the intertwined perspectives of Cora Brady and her daughter Lyca, the novel explores grief, identity, trauma, and the legacy of secrets passed through generations. The narrative oscillates between post-9/11 New York and rural Ireland. It combines traditional storytelling with unconventional formats like letters, video games, and dated journal entries. Airey skillfully brings real historical events and surreal symbolism into a raw, emotional coming-of-age story.
Summary
The novel Confessions follows the lives of Cora Brady and her daughter Lyca, tracing a path through grief, trauma, and the search for identity.
It begins with Cora, sixteen years old and reeling from the deaths of both parents—her mother found drowned when Cora was eight, and her father presumed dead in the 9/11 attacks.
Alone in a New York apartment, Cora’s psychological state fractures. She turns to drugs, drifting through a surreal landscape of loss and fear.
She tries to maintain a sense of control while absorbing the enormity of global tragedy and personal devastation. A trip on LSD during the attacks leaves her disconnected from reality, compounding her guilt and confusion.
In the weeks following 9/11, Cora roams the city in a haze. She obsessively documents missing posters and uses movies as a way to escape.
A stranger named Gary helps her during a panic attack, but even kindness feels invasive. Her isolation deepens.
A flashback to her New Year’s Eve meeting with Kyle, a boyfriend more symbol than substance, underlines her yearning for connection amidst chaos.
When she finally opens a letter from an unfamiliar woman named Róisín—her aunt, and newly appointed guardian—she’s invited to Ireland. It is a place that represents both escape and buried truths.
The narrative shifts to Lyca Brady, Cora’s daughter, now living in Burtonport, Ireland. Lyca is curious, emotionally fragile, and obsessed with the past.
A social media search for a childhood friend, Sanjeet, sparks memories of school days and the strict repression of St. Brigid’s.
The Irish coastal village, steeped in secrets and silence, becomes the stage for Lyca’s quiet rebellion. Her interest in literature, particularly The Catcher in the Rye, and William Blake’s “The Little Girl Lost,” highlights her struggle for identity and understanding.
At school, Lyca is reprimanded for asking about her missing sister, Magnolia. This reveals a community unwilling to acknowledge painful truths.
A socioeconomic divide isolates Lyca further. Her alienation grows after reading hidden letters and discovering Michael, the man she thought was her grandfather, isn’t Cora’s father.
Family fractures and uncertainties shake her sense of self. A shared moment with Cora at a funeral is one of rare tenderness.
Mother and daughter momentarily mirror each other’s pain. It is a fragile but significant moment of connection.
In the final section, Lyca returns to New York carrying a bundle of letters—evidence of truths long buried. She hides them inside her childhood computer, symbolizing her inability to confront the past directly.
The attic in their Irish home becomes a liminal space of discovery. An old biscuit tin holds letters addressed to Róisín Dooley.
A game cassette called Scream School features their house. This suggests that their family history has been turned into fiction or fantasy.
As Lyca explores these relics with Sanjeet, the attic transforms into a metaphor for memory and buried trauma. The death of her grandmother, Gaga, adds emotional weight.
Cora confesses she never explored the attic after her mother died. This leaves Lyca to inherit the burden of secrets and silence.
Playing Scream School again, this time from the perspective of Magnolia, Lyca enters a symbolic realm. The choices in the game mirror real-life dilemmas.
She considers destroying the letters but hesitates. She is paralyzed by their emotional and ethical weight.
In the end, the house is up for sale. Lyca, forced to reckon with impermanence, returns the letters to their tin and leaves the attic behind.
Whether the truth will ever be unearthed remains uncertain. The novel closes not with resolution, but with suspended revelation.
It acknowledges that healing, like memory, is never linear.
Characters
Cora Brady
Cora Brady is introduced as a deeply conflicted and emotionally scarred character. At 16 years old, she faces profound trauma stemming from the loss of her parents—her mother’s mysterious death and the uncertainty surrounding her father’s fate during the 9/11 attacks.
This emotional void shapes much of Cora’s behavior throughout the narrative, manifesting in her addiction to drugs, her disconnection from others, and her search for identity and meaning. Cora’s tumultuous relationship with Kyle, her distant boyfriend, adds another layer of complexity to her character.
She seeks solace in escapism, whether through drugs or through immersion in movies, which temporarily shield her from the overwhelming grief she cannot fully process. However, Cora’s emotional fragility is compounded by her growing awareness of the world around her, including the devastating aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy and the weight of adult responsibilities she must suddenly shoulder, such as managing her father’s life insurance claim.
Cora’s journey is marked by a series of emotional reckonings, including the surprise discovery of an aunt in Ireland, which offers a potential path for healing and self-discovery. Her character’s arc explores themes of loss, identity, and the search for familial connections, as she struggles to navigate both her inner turmoil and the external world.
Lyca Brady
Lyca Brady, Cora’s daughter, is portrayed as a young girl grappling with a complex web of identity, loss, and the search for belonging. The “Classroom” section presents Lyca as a curious and introspective individual, often reflecting on the absence of her sister, Magnolia, and the strain in her relationship with her mother, Cora.
Her journey is significantly shaped by her exploration of literature, particularly The Catcher in the Rye, and the emotional landscapes of the books she reads. Lyca’s disconnection from her classmates and her struggle with her inner turmoil are highlighted in her isolation at school, where questioning the past is discouraged.
This internalized alienation intensifies when she learns disturbing family secrets, such as Michael not being her biological father. These revelations unsettle Lyca, making her feel more like an outsider in her own family.
Her search for truth leads her to explore the emotional undercurrents in her family’s past, including her mother’s unresolved grief. The tensions of class, familial expectations, and emotional confusion weigh heavily on Lyca, leaving her in a state of detached reflection.
Despite brief moments of connection, such as the rare acknowledgment from her mother that they share a bond, Lyca remains trapped in her search for identity and a deeper understanding of her family’s complicated history.
In the “Attic” section, Lyca’s exploration of family secrets and her quest for self-discovery intensifies. The attic, a space filled with family relics and buried memories, serves as a metaphor for the emotional and psychological baggage Lyca inherits from her family.
The attic represents a hidden, almost mythical space where the past is not only preserved but also distorted—echoed in the discovery of the video game cassette featuring her family’s house, suggesting that her entire family history may have been fictionalized in some way. The attic becomes a physical manifestation of Lyca’s struggle with the weight of her heritage and the unresolved questions about her family’s past.
Lyca’s search for understanding is compounded by the emotional gravity of the letters she discovers, which reveal painful truths about her mother’s past and her own paternity. Despite the temptation to uncover the full extent of these secrets, Lyca struggles with the ethical dilemma of whether exposing the truth will bring clarity or destroy the fragile sense of stability she has left.
Her attachment to the attic and its contents symbolizes her internal conflict—caught between wanting to uncover the past and the fear that doing so might destabilize her further. The emotional complexity of Lyca’s character is further deepened by her interaction with her mother, who is equally haunted by the past but unable to fully face it.
As the section closes, Lyca’s decision to leave the attic’s secrets untouched, at least for now, represents her inability to break free from the oppressive weight of family legacy and the unresolved mysteries that bind her.
Themes
Memory and Its Influence on Identity in Confessions
In Confessions, the themes surrounding memory and identity are complex and intricately woven into the narrative. The characters, particularly Cora and Lyca Brady, experience profound shifts in their self-perception and understanding of their pasts, with memory playing a central role in shaping their identities.
Throughout the book, the characters grapple with fragmented memories, unreliable recollections, and moments of forgetfulness that influence their sense of self. This theme is further intensified by the characters’ constant battle between remembering and repressing painful events.
The attic, with its hidden relics and forgotten objects, symbolizes the buried parts of their pasts—mysterious, dangerous, yet filled with potential truths. As Lyca searches through these spaces and pieces together fragments of her family history, she confronts how these memories define her current self.
Ultimately, this theme asks whether understanding the past is the key to self-discovery or whether it is more painful to unravel the truths that lie dormant.
The Struggle for Autonomy and the Burden of Family Secrets
Another profound theme in Confessions is the tension between the quest for autonomy and the heavy weight of family secrets. Both Cora and Lyca experience a yearning to break free from the constraints of their family legacies.
Cora’s traumatic past, particularly her unresolved grief over the loss of her mother, and her strained relationships with significant figures in her life, lead her to seek independence in unhealthy ways. These actions, such as her use of drugs and withdrawal from emotional connections, reflect her desire to escape the suffocating grip of her family’s legacy.
Lyca, on the other hand, is deeply impacted by her mother’s secrets, especially those concerning her paternity and the hidden truths about her family’s history. The attic serves as a metaphorical space where these secrets reside, unspoken yet ever-present.
Lyca’s attempts to uncover the truth are conflicted by her fear of how these revelations might change her, her sense of identity, and her relationship with her mother. The question of whether knowledge of the past will lead to liberation or destruction is central to this theme.
The Impact of Trauma and Loss on Emotional Detachment
The theme of emotional detachment as a response to trauma is explored in depth in Confessions. Cora, in particular, embodies the psychological consequences of loss and traumatic events, such as the death of her mother and the uncertain fate of her father in the 9/11 attacks.
Her use of drugs, her avoidance of emotional engagement, and her detachment from others, including her boyfriend, reflect her struggle to cope with grief. This emotional numbness is not just a personal issue for Cora but also affects her relationship with her daughter, Lyca, who becomes a silent observer to her mother’s emotional withdrawal.
The theme suggests that trauma has the power to sever the natural emotional connections between people, leaving them in a state of isolation. This emotional void manifests in Lyca’s life as well, particularly through her sense of detachment from her peers and her own identity.
The narrative illustrates how trauma can create an emotional distance, not just from the world around you, but also from your own feelings, making it difficult to heal or form meaningful connections.
Generational Trauma
A key theme in Confessions is the intersection of personal and historical trauma. Cora’s life is shaped by the broader historical events that affect her on a deeply personal level, particularly the September 11th attacks.
Her grief and disillusionment are colored by the immense tragedy that affected the entire world, yet this trauma is uniquely hers as it intersects with her family’s history. Lyca’s exploration of her mother’s past and the discovery of the family’s ties to the events surrounding 9/11 brings into focus the theme of generational trauma.
The characters are caught in the wake of historical catastrophes that ripple through time, shaping their lives in ways they cannot fully comprehend. This theme suggests that personal histories are inseparable from larger societal events and that the trauma passed down through generations influences how individuals perceive themselves, their relationships, and their place in the world.
The book challenges readers to think about how historical events leave a lasting imprint on individual lives, often without their awareness, and how one can reconcile their personal experiences with a world that is constantly in flux.
The Role of Escapism and the Search for Meaning through Art and Literature
Throughout Confessions, the search for meaning and solace in art and literature becomes a significant theme, with the characters turning to various forms of escapism in the face of overwhelming emotional pain. Cora uses films and other media as a form of detachment, providing herself with temporary relief from the crushing weight of her grief.
Lyca, too, finds herself immersed in books and poetry, particularly The Catcher in the Rye, as she tries to understand her own disjointed emotions and complicated sense of identity. Art and literature provide a space where the characters can explore alternative realities and gain insights into their own struggles, but they also serve as a double-edged sword.
These outlets offer temporary respite but do not provide the lasting healing or resolution the characters so desperately seek. The theme of escapism through art suggests that while it can provide a temporary sanctuary, it also highlights the characters’ deeper need to confront and process their emotions rather than avoid them.