Despite living more than 3,000 miles (4,828 km) apart, in Canada and the UK respectively, they’ve been the best of friends for more than 80 years. Beryl says it would have been good to meet more but it just didn’t happen. But they have remained good friends all these years.” Speaking to us on Beryl’s behalf, her son Alan added: “It all started when her teacher organized in 1939 with her class to write a letter to reply to letters from similar aged children in Canada. Beryl’s letter was chosen by the teacher as the best letter to send to Ruth and that was how it all started.

Side note- After seeing that Emilie Pine is a professor in UCD, I have added her to my list of Irish women (hello Paula Meehan and Louise O'Neill) that I will be running into in Dublin one day. No one can tell me it won't happen because I'm certain it will. Ruth said: “I was only 10 or 11 at the time and we didn’t think too much about what was going on, we just enjoyed writing to each other, and I had no idea I’d still be writing to her at 95, in fact, I didn’t even think that 15 years ago. Many of these themes – which really describe the contemporary female condition – are at play here, too, most notably in Ruth’s storyline. It is infertility and multiple unsuccessful rounds of IVF that have forged a wedge between her and Aidan, a miscommunication over what each wanted at their time of desperate vulnerability that has brought the relationship to its knees.

I loved every word of Notes To Self. I inhaled it in one go, reading till the middle of the night. I was excited when I heard Emilie Pine was writing her first novel and gave a little yelp of excitement when notification of this advance reader copy landed in my inbox. Once again, Emilie Pine's writing demanded my full attention , impossible to put down once you start. Ruth's marriage to Aidan is in crisis. Today she needs to make a choice - to stay or not to stay, to take the risk of reaching out, or to pull up the drawbridge. For teenage Pen, today is the day the words will flow, and she will speak her truth to Alice, to ask for what she so desperately wants. This book was so raw and honest, in a way that I've decided only Irish women (that I've seen) have been able to create. I'd definitely put this in a list of recommendations with Sally Rooney and Claire Keegan, and I definitely need to expand that list further. I must admit I found that both storylines took their time to interest me. Pen’s initial sections - with details of the bullying she experiences, and of her habits (stimming, an obsession with Latin and with English idioms), as well as her beliefs around the urgency of climate action, felt rather over-familiar from teenage fiction.

The action of Ruth & Pen, Emilie Pine’s debut novel, also takes place on a single day, in this case September 20th, 2019, the day of the climate strike protest in Dublin. Like Mrs Dalloway, it follows two unrelated characters through their waking hours; in this case, Ruth Ryan, a psychotherapist, and Pen, who is 16 and, as her friend Alice puts it, “on the spectrum”.Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian «Pine hace que sus capítulos sean enérgicos, escribiendo con una afable curiosidad que hace recordar a Ali Smith. La sopesada pero tierna yuxtaposición que hace Pine de la vida de las mujeres no dibuja paralelismos demasiado nítidos, sino que demuestra que una necesita a la la joven necesita a la mayor, la optimista a la pesimista, la introvertida a la extrovertida. Y nuestros opuestos pueden ayudarnos a encontrar la claridad». In a 1923 diary entry, Woolf wrote of her intentions for Mrs Dalloway: “I want to give life & death, sanity & insanity; I want to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense.” Woolf’s novel is charged because of these conflicting elements, which are held in tension by means of two primary characters that exist as dark doubles for each other. There is not enough friction, not enough pressure between the protagonists of Ruth & Pen; its coordinative, paratactic style of “both/and” is the final limitation to its success. Pen is a neuro-diverse sixteen-year old, still struggling with the aftermath of a bullying event at school and her subsequent relapse into self-cutting - something she explores both with her divorced mother (a University lecturer) and her unnamed therapist. Her one true friend is Alice and she has agreed with Alice to bunk off school and attend the climate change protests, having meticulously planned (without Alice’s knowledge) to turn the day, including a surprise invite to an evening concert, into a first date.

She writes in a fluid, eloquent style, never overblown & always controlled, finely tuned into the interior world of both protagonists. How’s this for a line? “𝘗𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺’𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 “. This is a deeply moving, emotional, cathartic novel & is due to be published on 5 May 2022. A book to treasure. This, her debut novel, shares a concentration on interior voices and also explores some very similar topics to her essays. This did improve over time - mainly I felt as we also got to explore the interior viewpoints of Alice (who has her own wants and struggles - particularly around the very concept of being touched by others) and of Aidan (himself really struggling with both the increasing reality of his and Ruth’s inability to have children and with what he perceives to be Ruth’s passive acceptance of that situation) Beryl, a retired secretary and later housewife, moved from Liverpool to Glasgow, Scotland, in 1951 after she married her husband Archie. Over the course of one day, or 6:19 a.m. to 1:15 a.m to be precise, the story of Ruth, the therapist and Pen, the sixteen- year-old teenager (with autism) unfolds. As we learn of Ruth’s struggles to get pregnant and carry a baby to term, her relationship with her husband falling apart because of the strain of both of them wanting a child and having a family. While Pen heads to a protest for climate change with her best friend and love interest, Alice. The story alternates between both main characters, with some of the minor characters (Aidan, Ruth’s husband and Claire, Pen’s mother and Alice) chiming in where relevant to the story. The brilliance in the storytelling lies in the way in which Emilie Pine pulls the reader into the character’s minds so profoundly. As you read, you feel what the characters feel. The pain, the heartache, the sadness. Most importantly, this is a story about love….or as Emilie Pine writes “this is what love looks like in real life…..YOU ARE ENOUGH.” At the end of the day, that is what everyone wants to hear from the person they love.Emilie Pine is one of the most important new voices in Irish Literature. Everything she writes is imbued with wisdom' David Park The author throughout takes us on an emotional journey from pain to love and clearly shows that we can never know what people are feeling on the inside. I really like the ending which feels just right. Despite each moving home numerous times and through getting engaged, married, expanding their families, losing their husbands, and retiring from work, one thing has remained constant for Ruth and Beryl – writing to each other.

The i Dublín, 7 de octubre del 2019 . Un día, una ciudad, dos Ruth y Pen. No se conocen, pero ambas se hacen las mismas ¿Cómo habitar el mundo en completa sintonía con los demás y, a la vez, con uno mismo? ¿Cómo encajar y hacernos un hueco cuando el destino pretende excluirnos? El matrimonio de Ruth con Aidan pende de un hilo, y hoy ella debe tomar una decisió quedarse o partir para siempre, arriesgarse y tender puentes o cortar por lo sano. Para Pen, una adolescente de diecisiete años, hoy es el día en que las palabras fluirán, le contará su verdad a Alice y le preguntará lo que tan desesperadamente desea saber. La crítica ha The two main characters’ paths cross during the day, which I thought was clever and fantastic! And, towards the end of the novel, the name of Pen’s mother’s best friend is revealed. It is Lisa. Lisa happens to be Ruth’s business partner and friend as well. Two degrees of separation! What did you want from another person, was it the same or bigger than what you wanted from yourself?'' (!)

Assured tale of two women tugs at the heartstrings

Emilie Pine's beautiful character driven debut novel immerses the reader in the lives of Ruth Ryan, a counsellor who has focused on building the success of her practice, and 16 year old Pen who lives with her wonderful mother, Claire and younger sister, Soraya. Pen is autistic, someone for whom words do not come easy, more at home in the world of texts and emojis. We follow their lives over one day, 7th October 2019 in a Dublin hosting a climate protest that Pen has taken a day off school to attend with her best friend, Alice. Today is the day Pen is going to take a huge risk, being open, making herself vulnerable, she is going to find the words to tell Alice how she feels about her, as far as she is concerned she is going on a date with Alice, even if Alice doesn't know it. You can feel her ever increasing state of excitement, the way she is loaded with the intensity of her expectations, and I was all too aware that it is unlikely to end well. The stories overlap physically via a couple of encounters which are I would say are pleasingly fleeting but still importantly empathetic. Chloë Ashby, The Spectator «Impresionante. Pine explora con gran agudeza y ternura la reparadora y amplia naturaleza del amor. Un libro inteligente y agradable».