When Chloe Michelle Howarth burst onto the literary scene with Sunburn, she was praised for her evocative voice and ability to explore identity, longing, and the complexities of queer Irish life. With her second novel, Heap Earth Upon It, she turns away from the summery glow of her debut and steps into something darker, colder, and far more claustrophobic.

A rural Gothic tale set in 1960s Ireland, the novel follows the orphaned O’Leary siblings Tom, Jack, Anna and their youngest sister Peggy as they seek refuge in the village of Ballycrea after fleeing mysterious troubles back home. The siblings’ hope for a fresh start soon fractures. Secrets creep into the cracks, obsessive attachments form, and those longing for belonging find themselves suffocating under its weight.

The story is told through four fascinating yet unreliable narrators — Tom, Jack, Anna O’Leary, and Betty Nevan — in a structure reminiscent of Howarth’s debut, blending intimacy with unease. Readers are invited slowly into each mind as loyalties twist, rivalries simmer, and forbidden desire rises beneath the grey Irish skies.

“It’s difficult to bury secrets, but almost impossible to bury feelings,” the novel reminds us, a warning and a lament. Howarth grew up in rural West Cork, and Ireland remains at the heart of her creative world. She reflects often on the balance between writing from cultural specificity and reaching universal themes.

Chloe shared, “I think I can get too deep with it, and I’m like, oh, it’s such a nuanced thing to be queer and Irish. When really I think it’s very universal, I learned that from my first book, Sunburn. I thought it was a specific experience that I was writing about, but actually, like people in all different countries say, that’s my story, exactly. And I thought it was very specific to the Irish experience. So I think I’ve learned that actually, the more detailed I try to make it, and the more specifically Irish and queer I try to make it, the more universal it actually becomes.”

That duality, rooted yet expansive, runs through Heap Earth Upon It. Ballycrea is intimate, familiar, and utterly isolating. Outsiders are welcomed, but never without scrutiny, and belonging is a salvation deeply sought after by the characters.

As Chloe explained: “I wanted it to feel like a very closed community. Although the O’Leary siblings are welcomed in, they all definitely feel like outsiders there. And I think that just adds to the intensity that they feel when they do start to make connections. Any scrap of positive attention that they get is massive for them. So then, when it comes to experiencing real intimacy, it is almost uncomfortable to read how they react to that and how intensely they react to it.”

 

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Chloe talked about the atmosphere as unmistakably Irish: dampness, low clouds, and the hush of winter. Whilst Sunburn offered heat, Heap Earth Upon It brings us a much darker coldness. “I wanted to do something quite different to Sunburn in that way, Sunburn is a very summery novel. It’s got a very clear colour palette. So when I was starting this, I said, ‘Just let me do the opposite’. It’s winter, it’s dark colours. It’s dreary, drizzly, grey. That’s where I started with it. And then the sibling thing I was interested in.”

Sibling bonds lie at the core: fierce, tender, suffocating. Howarth wanted to explore that “push-pull” familiar to anyone who has ever loved and been overwhelmed by their own siblings. “It’s like, ‘I love you so much, but also I can’t cope with you’, you know? And I think it’s very unique to sibling relationships. If you had a friendship like that, you would maybe walk away from it, whereas with siblings, there’s just that kind of special something to it.”

For all its psychological tension, the novel is also deeply literary, steeped in the Irish tradition. Even the title nods to Wilde. Chloe shared: “So many of my favourite writers are Irish. Even the title of this book is from an Oscar Wilde poem. People like Orla Mackey and Donal Ryan, they have that same colloquial sort of pattern going on that I admire.”

Howarth’s second novel proves she is not simply repeating herself; she is expanding. From heat to cold, longing to obsession, summer light to winter shadow and sapphic fascination, Heap Earth Upon It is a chilling evolution of her voice and a reminder to us that intimacy can comfort and consume.