{"id":369068,"date":"2026-03-28T02:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T02:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/369068\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T02:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T02:19:08","slug":"exploring-the-nature-of-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/369068\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring the nature of meaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Mary Costello\u2019s latest novel A Beautiful Loan, 45-year-old Anna Hughes tells us that she has been \u201ctrying to account for certain events in her life\u201d from the mid-1980s to the end of the 2000s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This interrogation, we are told, involves her trying to understand the \u201cmiasma of thought, of appetites and instincts, the little tremors of fear or shame\u201d.<\/p>\n

Anna\u2019s ultimate aim is to explain how \u201cwe do what we do, or tolerate what we tolerate, or love who we love\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the novel opens, Anna is a 19-year-old teacher from the west of Ireland living in Phibsborough who falls in love with Peter Gallagher, a much older and experienced sailor turned accountant from the Donegal Gaeltacht.<\/p>\n

The first part of the novel, told with deft mastery of foreshadowing and implication, charts Anna and Peter\u2019s doomed courtship, marriage, and attempts to become parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dynamic of their relationship, shaped by love, lust, insecurity, and infidelity, is expertly depicted by Costello, who offers convincing, subtle portraits of Irish life in the 1980s and \u201990s.<\/p>\n

At the centre of Anna\u2019s turmoil is Peter\u2019s growing emotional and physical distance; his apparent mystery, at first attractive, becomes his cruellest characteristic.<\/p>\n

Anna is intellectually curious. She reads Milan Kundera\u2019s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and has a working knowledge of Joyce, TS Eliot, and Andre Gid\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n She reads the psychology of Carl Jung, absorbing his ideas of the unconscious, dreams, and the I Ching.\n <\/p>\n

She becomes, however, most obsessed with the French Algerian writer and philosopher of the absurd, Albert Camus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with reading his books, she spends hours looking at \u201cphoto after photo\u201d of the car crash in which Camus was killed, searching in his life, work, and death parallels with her own life.<\/p>\n

Costello is a marvellous writer of the impulses of inner life that reveal who we are to ourselves: When thinking about Camus, Anna feels \u201ca kind of vertigo, a falling towards the man\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet Anna\u2019s lack of self-confidence, however, means she has difficulty in generating her own clear idea of life. She admits that she is \u201ceasily swayed by other people\u2019s ideas and opinions\u201d.<\/p>\n

In part two, the novel continues to explore the nature of love, desire, and meaning.<\/p>\n

Anna enters a relationship with Karim, an Algerian Muslim software engineer living and working in Celtic Tiger Dublin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Karim initially appears sensitive, caring, and kind, though on meeting him, Anna frets her erudition will discourage his interest.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Anna, who is clearly cerebrally superior to Peter and Karim, offers retrospective psychological reasons for falling for such humdrum, limited men.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Onto Peter, who appears to enjoy little beyond hiking and traditional music, she \u201cunconsciously projected the positive characteristics\u201d of her father.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Karim, for his part, seems to have few interests outside of Islam and the gym (her initial attraction to him is linked to a dream).<\/p>\n

At times, Anna demonstrates exceptional self-awareness, speculating \u201cwould I love Karim now if I had not first loved Camus?\u201d; in both Karim and Camus she finds \u201cthe kind of innocence and earnestness\u201d she sees in her father.<\/p>\n

Significantly, Karim\u2019s religion opens up a new possibility for self-discovery. Anna, who is a \u201cGod-minded person\u201d, discovers Islam and then secretly converts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Various conflicts develop out of Karim\u2019s increasingly dogmatic interpretation of the Quran, though the latter parts of the story become somewhat bogged down by Anna\u2019s struggle with the demands of Islamic life.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Costello writes with great clarity and precision, and A Beautiful Loan offers a thoughtful portrait of the drift of life, the perils of the unconscious, and the mysteries of the self.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Mary Costello\u2019s latest novel A Beautiful Loan, 45-year-old Anna Hughes tells us that she has been \u201ctrying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5193,61,60,165947,80],"class_list":["post-369068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-books-fiction","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-person-mary-costello","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}