I found a bit on the blurb, about how the main character found out things about his wife after she died, overplayed it a little. Nevertheless it's a really engaging story about life after becoming a widower, and revisiting a holiday destination. ( )

Nothing But Blue Sky is the story of a marriage, seemingly perfect, but is anything actually really as good as it seems when you are forced to confront the memories of it?

This is David's story of his life with Mary Rose. Married for 20 years, theirs was a brilliant relationship. They complemented each other, a foil for one another. Where David sometimes used cruel humour (which he didn't really mean), Mary Rose was a more caring person. David was a journalist with all the hard edges that job brings with it, whereas Mary Rose was a neonatal nurse, caring for premature babies. In every way that they were alike or different, they just worked as a couple.

So when Mary Rose dies unexpectedly it leaves David not only cast adrift and lonely, but questioning his life with her. Did he always tell her he loved her? Did he sometimes take her for granted? How much of what he didn't say did Mary Rose actually know, both good and bad?

This is a beautifully written story of life, love and loss as David looks back over his marriage. His feelings for Mary Rose and his grief at her death come through very strongly in Kathleen MacMahon's searing narrative. It felt very much to me as though David and Mary Rose formed one piece of a jigsaw that was suddenly ripped apart leaving a gap where there shouldn't have been one.

It's very much a character-driven book but I did also enjoy the strong sense of place. David and Mary Rose are Irish and their Dublin life plays its part well. However, the strongest setting is that of Aiguaclara in Catalonia, the place where they spent their annual holidays, where they became a part of the community every year, where they made up little stories for the people they saw. I thought it was really clever how the author weaved all this together for the later parts of the book.

This is not the easiest of reads with its very introspective nature, and certainly not one I could whizz through, but I found it so insightful, tender, honest and brave. I enjoyed it very much. ( )