Mr. Flood's Last Resort by Jess Kidd

​Because I was so charmed by Kidd’s Things in Jars.  Because the novel’s description sounded awesome. Because there’s something devilishly right about Jess Kidd’s writing.
It isn’t just the beauty of her language or the way it comes alive, it isn’t just the Irish brogue you can practically hear in her books, the Irish lilt and musicality to her narratives. It’s the way she seamlessly blends genres hopping from realism to (I suppose) magic realism, from natural to supernatural and back, all while maintaining a delicious air of mystery.
It was the case with Things in Jars and it the case here. Admittedly, I liked the former more, but this was still a delight.
Mr. Flood is an Irish giant of a man; he’s old, grumpy, with a sizable hoarding situation in his sizable estate where he lives alone, save for the occasional brave caretaker who dares to darken his threshold. They seldom last, but Maud Drennan is different. Tougher, steelier, stubborner.
She alone seems to be able to get through to the old man, to help him sort his life out amid the clutter, debris and all the secrets and mysteries that linger around the place and have for decades.
Mr. Flood was once a family man. Maud gets fascinated with the fate of his family, the tragedies that occurred. She decides to investigate. With her agoraphobic neighbor as a sounding board and the coterie of Saints that follow her around, armed with a bus pass and a rape alarm, Maud is an unlikely but determined detective.
This is her story. It’s offbeat; an oddball, at turns humorous and eerie, light and dark, uplifting and devastatingly sad. A study of juxtapositions but it works and well. Lovely through and through. Recommended.