Her Classic Book Of The Week – Star Of The Sea

With our hectic lives and all of the new books that we are trying to keep on top of, we can often forget about the classics, those books that we loved to re-visit or the books that we just haven’t got to quite yet. Every week, we pick a classic book of the week that is a favourite of ours in the office. This week, we will be looking at the brilliant, Star of the Sea. “It is not a matter of ends justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.”  Although it may not have yet become a classic novel in the sense that this is not an old book, Star of the Sea is certainly one of our classic picks here in the office. Published in 2004, the book has made it on to so many notable lists of books to read, it would be impossible to list them all here. Suffice to say that the book sold 800,000 copies in the UK in one year alone. Star of the Sea's story takes place on a famine ship which sets sails from Ireland and is bound for America. During the journey, we learn about the lives and backgrounds of the various people that have undertaken the voyage and what has led them to where they are. Although we are introduced to many characters in the pages of the book, our main focus is Mary Duane, a servant to David Merridith Lord Kingscourt, his wife Laura and their children. Quite early on, a murder is revealed to us along with the murderer, but it takes the course of the novel to understand the motivation of the incident and those that are connected. While the Star of the Sea is a novel, it is told expertly through documentation and interviews and is presented as though it were historical fact; O'Connor even includes footnotes at the end of each page with references. There is one point in this book where you will realise you have just not been able to put it down and that last chapter will stay with you for quite a while after the last page.