Aisling and the City: Primark meets Prada in the Big Apple

Aisling and the City

Author: Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen

ISBN-13: 9780717182688

Publisher: Gill Books

Guideline Price: €14.99

Two things can happen when a character captures the zeitgeist: they can catch a wave and then grow stale, or they can become an establishment. The latter has happened to Aisling, of Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling. She’s risen from a humble Facebook page (where co-authors Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen first sketched her) to bestsellers whose fans can’t get enough. She’s a dote. She’s a force. She’s such a complete Aisling.

For those who don’t know what the fuss is about, you might say encountering Aisling is like watching one of your friends navigate a romantic comedy. The motions she goes through are familiar, but you care about her more than you would a generic leading lady. She is sensible but gas craic, frantic but on it, a basic b**ch but utterly herself.

In Aisling and the City, she swaps her hometown of Ballygobbard for the Big Apple. Still a country bumpkin at heart and unaccustomed to the brash New York way, she is nonetheless, in the words of a schoolteacher, well able. She can be spotted around Manhattan carrying a packed lunch in a Bloomingdales Little Brown Bag (“They’re handy and cute and good quality!”) and starting crusades over recycling.

Sex and the City references abound (Aisling is “seventy per cent Miranda, thirty per cent Charlotte”). There is a Devil Wears Prada vibe to the plot, with indomitable events organiser (sorry, “events architect”) Mandy Blumenthal as a Miranda Priestly figure, and her assistant Aubrey as a bristly Emily. The New York workplace is predictably cutthroat and it’s pleasing to watch Aisling hold her own.

The New York workplace is predictably cutthroat and it's pleasing to watch Aisling hold her own

Likewise on the dating scene, “everyone has their options open all the time” and Aisling’s excursions on Bumble provide much fodder.

The pandemic isn’t avoided completely but morphed into something slightly different. Readers may find this a little strange, but it probably makes sense for continuity’s sake. Aisling will need to know what Zoom is going forward.

The Irish-American clashes of culture can feel a bit on the nose – Aubrey’s surprise at Aisling bringing “crack”, rather than “craic” to a wedding isn’t the most original joke – but for the most part the humour is spot on and readers will get from this book what they came for: some laughter, some familiarity, some Aisling for the soul.