“Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking” is the mockingly alluring title of Aoibheann Sweeney’s debut novel about self-discovery and family secrets. The novel details Miranda Donnel’s reluctant first steps away from her sheltered childhood on Crab Island, off the coast of Maine. It is on this island that she takes care of her father, who glozes over the concrete aspects of his life, and instead focuses solely on translating the works of Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.” Deprived of her father’s interest and a mother, who died when she was young – a possible suicide, though the narrator never confirms this – Miranda feels isolated and stagnant most of the time, saying, “Sometimes I could almost feel my skin thickening into bark, my toes rooting into the ground, my arms raising stiffly to the sky.”

Miranda observes and examines the world around her, but can’t seem to figure herself out. Early in the novel, she seems like a blank slate. She caters to her father at home, typing up his translations and making his meals, and doesn’t have many friends or goals of her own, up until the day she leaves home for the first time. To discover who she is, Miranda must first learn who she is not. She tries to fit many molds by doing things like befriending the popular girly-girl at school, dating an attractive, wealthy student she meets in New York who seems to be the epitome of perfection, and having her first kiss and  losing her virginity suddenly to a sailor she has just met. Clearly open to new possibilities for lifestyles, Miranda must ultimately decide what feels “right.”

 After leaving Crab Island and moving in with her father’s old friends at the Institute for Classical Studies in New York City, Miranda learns that doubt and insecurity have sheltered secrets about herself and her family that she has possibly known all along. The mystery that overcasts these important details of Miranda’s past, like how her mother died and what Mr. Blackwell’s role in her life is, sets a soothing tone for the novel, but also feels lofty at times. Miranda seems spacey instead of just introverted.

Like its narrator, this novel is both subtle and hesitant, but anxious to leap out of the pages to become real. Stuffed full of insights that are never preachy or cliché, this novel reaches out and drags the reader into Miranda’s very personal experiences.