The novel explores love, desire, and the secrets of the past with the background of student life...And it does so deftly, with complex, but fully realized characters, and is so accomplished; so wonderfully written and thought through, that it’s hard to imagine it’s a debut at all.

Despite having frozen on the starting block, turned her back on her Olympic hopes and repeated her Leaving Cert in the wake of a breakdown barely mentioned in the novel, Beth is not the fragile and self-destructive heroine of much new Irish fiction...She doesn’t drink much, eats well, and makes fully informed and interesting decisions about sex...As she begins to explore the archive in her grandmother’s attic room, it becomes clear that the abiding sense of darkness in Beth’s life is not about her athletic performance but about the untold story of her grandfather’s suicide...Crowe’s poems haunt the book, unspoken, and though the device is obvious it is successful...I enjoyed Holding Her Breath. The premise is familiar, but this is an appealing iteration, stylishly written, with strong female voices.

In Eimear Ryan’s moving debut, 20-year-old Beth Crowe arrives at Trinity College Dublin accompanied by the shadow of her late grandfather Ben...One of the country’s most celebrated poets, his works are included on the Leaving Cert syllabus and frequently quoted at weddings, funerals and political rallies...What sets Ben apart, however, is his suicide: he died by drowning when Beth’s mother was still a child, so Beth never had the chance to meet him...Given the public’s fixation on his death, both her mother, Alice, and grandmother, Lydia, prefer not to talk about him, turning down interviews, burning his journals and denying scholars access to his archives...The title of Ryan’s novel nods to the other shadow following Beth: her past as a promising competitive swimmer...A couple of years earlier, a breakdown brought her Olympic hopes crashing down, and when she recovers enough to enrol at Trinity, she is eager to carve out a new identity distinct from her earlier swimming glory...Readers may wonder how many novels about students finding themselves at Trinity College we really need...Happily, Holding Her Breath takes us out of Dublin for the final section...It is on this road trip across the country that Beth uncovers hidden truths about not only her grandparents but herself, too...The beautiful closing passage will stay in readers’ minds, bringing this story to a satisfying conclusion.

Beth Crowe is a quiet soul, who shares college accommodation with a much more extroverted friend, has a sort of boyfriend at home and an older, sort of boyfriend on campus...But Beth has more going on than worries about freshmen parties and end of term exams...She's a former champion swimmer who is dipping her toe back into the water of competitive swimming, an interest that gives her character focus and allows for fascinating periods of natural introspection, as swimming is practically the only pastime left where you can’t use headphones for distraction and are forced to be alone with your thoughts...Beth also has a fascinating family history...The book is packed with smart observations of Irish life, such as Beth’s trip 'down the country’ with her flatmate, where she discovers that even those who seem perfectly happy with college life may have something at home to hide...And speaking of ‘down the country’, another interesting thread to Beth’s story is the fact that her own family home is at the end of the DART line, meaning that although she has moved into campus accommodation, she can return home whenever she likes...Like Benny in Circle of Friends, she is so close to home and her old, pre-college existence that it's difficult to fully break away...All of the traditional campus trappings are in this novel, the awkward parties, the supermarket wine and the older academic with whom Beth forms a tentative relationship...But Eimear Ryan manages to bring a fresh twist to the story, alongside what seems like genuine affection for her characters and a much-needed dollop of humour, too...A final road trip brings many of the strands to a fascinating conclusion, making Holding Her Breath a gripping and ultimately very satisfying read.

Because the literary world can’t resist comparisons, Irish writer Ryan’s debut coming-of-age novel will inevitably be compared to the work of Sally Rooney...But there’s no need to bring Rooney into the discussion...This is an assured, absorbing first novel that follows a young woman as she begins the delicate work of finding out who she is and where she stands in relation to her history...Beth Crowe is juggling the demands of college and family, making new friends, and struggling to cope with two legacies: her own lost potential as an athlete and her Irish poet grandfather’s suicide by drowning, which happened before she was born...A competitive swimmer, Beth is recovering from a breakdown that most likely ended her Olympic dreams...She’s swimming again, learning that the discipline and repetition of an athlete’s routine are hard to shake (as are her father’s expectations)...Throughout the novel, water plays an important role as both balm and torment, a way for Beth to test and soothe herself, a way for her troubled grandfather to escape...But Ryan never goes too far with metaphor: This is a crisply written, empathetic novel...Ryan offers a realistic, perceptive view of the early college years, reflecting how difficult but liberating the first steps to adulthood can be.

An Irish collegiate swimmer unearths the truth about her grandfather, a famous poet, in Ran's penetrating debut...Beth Crowe, 20, is just starting university away from home on a sports scholarship, and is slowly acclimating after an undisclosed crisis...As Beth settles into swimming and schoolwork, she begins a secret affair while trying to find out more about her grandparents...As tensions from her personal life come to a head, Beth begins to wonder if she's inherited her grandfather's self-destructive tendencies...Despite some underdeveloped plot points, Ryan's strong character-building and intriguing narrative parallels keep this afloat.