How intense, imbedded, and far-reaching the impact of a childhood hobby can be on the rest of one’s life has been remarkably narrated in Cecelia Ahern’s latest novel The Marble Collector. It is a story that touches the heart in a unique way, as it could be one of my family or yours. Utterly believable, identifiable and sensitive, Ahern’s expression is lucid and endearing from the start. Ahern is an established novelist from Ireland, and has written 12 novels since 2004 and many more short stories. Her first two novels, P.S. I Love You and Where Rainbows End, both bestsellers, have been adapted as motion picture. This is her 13th novel.

Childhood hobbies may not always be only about fun and games; but the siblings and friends we play them with, the dynamics of how these games are played and developed, and the circumstances in which they are played, all can impact the people we grow up to become. This impact can be pervasive and beyond explanation. It is not often that a fictitious story is so profound that it makes you question, ponder and wonder about how real your own life is. Thought-provoking and disturbing in a good way, it takes one beyond the limit of one’s thought process to ponder on new levels and layers of family relationships.

Sabrina Boggs, a mother of three boys, is a lifeguard at a nursing home. Her world, as she knows it, turns upside down when one day she discovers a box full of marbles, painstakingly documented and catalogued, belonging to her father. Fergus Boggs, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and lives in a care home, has never before mentioned his most prized possession to his only child, and Sabrina is perplexed at the discovery.

Popular writer Cecelia Ahern’s latest offering is a sensitively told story of family relationships

An unusual day off from work and family commitments gives Sabrina just one day to discover her father’s entire lifetime when she finds a few marbles to be missing from the inventory. “Because I can’t tell him why, but I have a deadline. Fix things today or else. Or else what? Everything remains unfixed forever? Tomorrow I’m back on the hamster wheel.” The plot of her father’s life from childhood to the days of his marriage alternates with her journey of unravelling this significant part of his life that she or her mother knew nothing about. Here she comes across unexpected, unusual and rather shocking revelations about him, and in addition about her parents’ troubled marriage and her father’s edgy relationships with his brothers.

Fergus is the fourth of seven brothers. After their father’s death the family moves from Scotland to Ireland, where their grandparents live. Fergus is closest to his eldest brother Hamish, who is a vagabond. Fergus’s skill at playing marbles is unparalleled and Hamish makes money off him by arranging matches. When Hamish dies in London as a young man, Fergus discovers that his brother had been using his name since leaving home.

Fergus’s marriage to Sabrina’s mother Gina suffers when he begins to hide his passion for playing and collecting marbles, following an altercation on their honeymoon in Venice. As a result Fergus establishes a secret life for himself playing marbles, taking on his brother Hamish’s name. The truth about the web of lies that he spins in order to attend marble tournaments never comes to be known by Gina and becomes the primary reason for the eventual breakdown of their marriage.

While uncovering her father’s past, Sabrina comes to understand herself and finds an explanation for her own behaviour towards her husband. “I lived with a dad who I’ve just today learned was incredibly secretive, and despite never knowing this, I too became a secretive person, maybe unconsciously mimicking or shadowing him, not opening up to Aiden.”

The Marble Collector is unique in that it makes one question all that we think we know to be true about our most loved ones, especially our parents. It makes you wonder how much of their lives and their personalities are left unspoken, undiscovered. And do we really make the effort of getting to know them and of their lives when they were not our parents?

Ahern has done very well to open the reader’s eyes towards the dynamics of family relationships and how they become what they are. What little instances, words spoken and actions taken have shaped us. In what ways our past influences us to become who we are today; a passing comment, a slight expression, and an unintentional act too can turn the course of our lives.

Another dimension that Ahern includes in the plot is that of the parent-child relationship, where a child’s behaviour — as a child or during adulthood — can only be understood in the context of the parents’ past. It is not always easy to discern, but a parent’s past can and does influence the present of a child and in ways which one is quite often unaware of.

The uniqueness of the plot and the obvious in-depth research on the subject makes The Marble Collector an enchanting read. Sabrina’s character is somewhat colourless, but Fergus’s makes up for this. This, quite possibly, may have been intentional on the author’s part.

The tone of the novel remains smooth despite the occasional sobriety of the plot. The parallel narratives influence the reader on a deep, unconscious level. While remaining fluid, Ahern’s expression is intense and unambiguous, forcing the reader to think laterally about oneself. Overall, a compelling work by an accomplished novelist.

The reviewer is a former Dawn staff member.

The Marble Collector
(NOVEL)
By Cecelia Ahern
HarperCollins, UK
ISBN 978-0007501816
304pp.