The Famine Orphans - Patricia Falvey - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Patricia Falvey

GENRE: Historical Fiction.

PUBLICATION DATE: May 27, 2025

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical fiction novel that goes from Ireland to Australia and based on the Earl Grey Scheme. Excellent historical research, good characters though they take their time to shine, structured episodic plot. A bit too much romance for my liking but it is handled well. Recommended!

Plot Preview:

1845. After the blight results in the potato famine, Kate Gilvarry and her family are forced to give up their land and their home to move into a workhouse. However, after some more tragedies in the family, Kate finds herself alone. When she is selected under the Earl Grey Scheme to be transported to some new place called “Australia” for domestic work, she has mixed feelings. But with the company of the fellow orphans from the workhouse, she feels like her future in the new land might be better than her present. After the harrowing journey, the girls make it to Sydney. But is Australia really all it was promised to be?

The story comes to us in Kate’s first-person perspective, writing from some time in the future and narrating to us her life story going back to 1845 and covering more than a decade.

Bookish Yays:

🐨 Kate as the main character – courageous, compelling, impulsive, caring, and naïve. All attributes that make her a suitable lead.

🐨 The secondary characters, especially the other Irish girls bound for Australia. Some of them are cliched at the start and get only a limited set of emotions. But as the story progresses, their characters show their worth, whether positive or negative.

🐨 The historical atmosphere of Ireland and Australia – seems quite real, with the writing capturing the social, cultural, and moral values of the era.

🐨 Some wonderful new (to me) parts of history to learn from this book: The Earl Grey scheme and its repercussions, the Irish potato famine, the Australian gold rush,… I always love it when a novel teaches me facts without feeling like a history textbook.

🐨 The episodic division of the plot. The story is divided into six distinct parts, each set in a different phase of Kate’s life. Helps us see the progress of the characters as well as their situation.

🐨 The clearly demarcated time and location throughout the story, which makes it very easy to follow the timeline despite the lengthy duration.

🐨 The “romance”. To be honest, I rolled my eyes when the first sparks of romantic thoughts started firing up in Kate’s mind. It seemed to be an utterly predictable move and I was worried that this would turn into a historical romance. To my surprise, the plot used Kate’s feelings quite well later, with the attraction being used as a background instigator to decisions instead of taking the central focus.

🐨 The research of the location, events, and people. The author has clearly done her homework!

🐨 The presentation of the biased views against and the religious views of the Irish Catholics. The books has mild religious undertones thanks to Kate’s belief, but the religious ideas never dominate the plot, nor do they get preachy.

🐨 The portrayal of the negative effects of colonisation, not just on Aussie soil but also on Irish lands. When it comes to indigenous trauma, books rarely focus on the Irish, so this storyline did a great job. Of course, it was slightly ironic that these very characters looked down on the Australian aboriginals. It’s true to the era though, so can't complain about the depiction.

🐨 The dual significance of the title, with the key characters being orphaned from both family and country. Both aspects are used nicely in the novel.

🐨 The author's note: interesting and revelatory.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🦘 Kate is supposedly writing from some unknown point in the future, letting us know the events in her life from 1845 onwards. However, except for one small section at the start and the very end, most of the rest of the book doesn’t read like a flashback narration. It is written like a typical novel. So the start and end by future-Kate didn’t make much sense overall, except for a couple of foreshadowings.

🦘 I liked almost the entire ending except for one tiny development. It seemed shoved in just to drag out one particular reconciliation and didn’t make much sense considering the characters involved.

🦘 While Kate is a good character, it gets a bit tedious to constantly hear her as the sole speaker against any injustice, as the only character who knows better than anyone else. The story might have worked even better for me had it had multiple character perspectives.

Bookish Nays:

🐍 Some events seem over the top, and some of the thoughts a bit too feminist for the 1850s. For instance, would any woman of that era genuinely believe that she would be entitled to an equal share of profits on her husband’s farm? Even that ‘Crossing the line’ ceremony felt exaggerated considering some traumatic scenes occurred in the plain view of women with the men intervening only much later. Works for dramatic intensity, but affects plot plausibility.

Overall, despite a few niggles, I found this a strong historical fiction, focussing on an era and location we rarely get to see in the genre. The characters, their circumstances, and the realistic solidity of the plot far outweigh the minor deficiencies.

Much recommended to historical fiction readers looking for a story that’s not often explored.

My thanks to Kensington Books for providing the DRC of “The Famine Orphans” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Content warnings: premarital pregnancy, attempted abortion, graphic sexual assault, religious bigotry, racial and class discrimination, death.