Showing posts with label Books Review.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books Review.. Show all posts
Friday, October 24, 2014
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Mary Kenny
Something of Myself and Others by Mary Kenny
Published by Liberties.
This Review was published in Books Ireland, September/October, 2014.
When Mary Kenny was a young journalist working in Fleet Street, she was at a party on the Queen Mary in New York. Mini-skirted, and swilling champagne, she approached George Brown. Worse for wear, the British Foreign Minister was in sombre mood, and told her that everyone in Westminster was plotting against him.
The dance over, the twenty-three year old made an International call to the Evening Standard, recounting every word. The piece appeared alongside a photo of Brown, dancing with a well endowed lady, his eyes, apparently on her bosom. Mary’s reputation soared.
The start of Mary Kenny’s memoir is peppered with such tales. Her early days in Dublin working for the Irish Press, and then in Fleet Street illustrate that female journalists weren’t far behind their male colleagues when it came to enjoying a drink or twenty. Although, truth be told, some held their drink better than others.
The young Maeve Binchy could drink prodigious amounts without getting drunk, Kenny tells us. Then she goes on to list a day’s drinking, logged in the company of her late friend, Mary Cummins.
‘First snifter at 11am (large gin and tonic). Lunch: two gins and tonics followed by a bottle and a half of wine each. Snifter at around 5 PM – a couple of gins, or vodkas, and then back to work. 7PM: pub session with pals – often wine in the evening. 9PM, supper with lashings of vino. 11PM to 3AM: postprandials consisting of brandies, whiskey sours, Crème de menthe, and whatever else we could lay our hands on.’
It seems extraordinary that they managed to put words onto a page, yet such behaviour was never discouraged.
‘Drink as much as you like, but file,’ was the mantra of the time. And though Kenny tells us that some journalists found drink helped them to lose their inhibitions and become more effective, she admits that she drank because she liked the sensation and the way it led to recklessness and risk taking.
‘I once drank Ribena and vodka from a baby bottle, with a friend at the wheel doing likewise, and we had a real baby – mine in the back of the vehicle.’
Something of Myself and Others isn’t a conventional autobiography, yet this collection of articles and essays gives a good picture of Kenny’s life and times. A difficult child – Kenny thinks she had ADHD – she was farmed out with a childless aunt. She left school at sixteen, but soon carved out a career for herself.
It was easier to blag your way into journalism in the sixties; indeed, the thought of employing anyone with a specific degree back then was simply unheard of. But then journalism, Kenny says, was considered a trade not a profession. And it was one her parents disapproved of.
‘Oh darling – women journalists are awful,’ her mother quipped. ‘So cynical, and such hard drinkers.’ Prophetic words, indeed.
There are wonderful descriptions of the feminist movement in Dublin, and of the events of the famous condom train – when a group of women bought contraceptives in Belfast, and flouted their purchases back in Dublin, for publicity.
I was living in England back then, and I didn’t know Mary Kenny, rabble-rouser. Her U-turn to respectability and a right wing stance had happened before I became aware of her writing, but I have been an admirer of hers ever since.
Much of the first section of this memoir deals with journalism, and I found all that fascinating. Reading of her famous interviews, where there was often a chance of lingering over an afternoon made me jealous; those days are rare now, and time is almost always limited.
I especially enjoyed the chapter, Life Lessons Journalism Taught Me. In this, Kenny reminds us that preparation is key. Forgetting this, and winging it for an interview with Eamon Andrews, she was caught out by him. Asking about his childhood, he quipped, ‘were you too lazy to look up the clippings?’
Another favourite bit of advice is, ‘don’t get it right – get it written. Get it right on the re-write.’ She also reminds us that a journalist is basically a professional writer, and a professional writer should be able to write about anything.
In another section we hear of Mary’s encounters with Princess Grace of Monaco; with Margaret Thatcher, Gerry Adams, and Michael Fassbender, who acted in her play.
After reams of valuable advice she ends the chapter of a sombre note.
‘I would not advise any young person today to choose the print media as a career,’ she states. She agrees with a veteran editor who compared the state of the newspaper world to the dissolution of the monasteries.
It was a delight, but no surprise to me that Kenny should dispense so much excellent advice on her trade. I’ve met her often in recent years, and always found her to be hugely supportive, encouraging and above all engaged with every aspect of a journalist’s life.
And she’s not averse to asking advice herself. Teaching at Listowel Writer’s Week, she once rang me, asking how I approach editors I’d not worked with before. Her pupils were anxious for advice, and being so well known, it was not an issue she’d had to deal with.
We’re given an inside view of her contemporaries in the section absent friends. The portraits of such luminaries as Terry Keane, labelled as Ireland’s Madame de Pompadour, Nuala Fennell, Mary Holland, and Mary Cummins are insightful and engaging. Learning of their differing careers gives us a complete view of women’s journalism.
On the whole, the accounts are sympathetic. Kenny adored Clare Boylan, the writer who died aged fifty eight. Though she was, at first, upset when, having become a literary writer, Clare described journalism as ‘practising scales, before getting down to real piano-playing.’
Not all are depicted in a wholly complementary way – she doesn’t altogether share the nation’s adoration for Maeve Binchy, for example, but Kenny is not scared to show herself in a bad light through her accounts.
Mary Holland, a journalist Kenny had huge admiration for, proved a loyal friend. When, in 1992, the two shared a cottage in County Clare for the Merriman Festival, Holland was asked if she was concerned for her political reputation, when she was sharing a house with a notorious right winger like Mary Kenny. Her reply?
‘And what about poor Mary Kenny’s reputation – sharing a house with a notorious left wing subversive like me?’
If there is some point scoring, it comes when she talks of June Levine; who was part of that early feminist movement, and wrote an account of it in ‘Sisters.’ That book has become almost the bible of the time, and Kenny didn’t come out of it well. I’ve read ‘Sisters,’ and remember thinking that Levine’s account of Kenny seemed extreme, and possibly unfair.
‘June and some others regarded me as an errant self-publicist,’ says Kenny, who then goes on to defend her appearance on the Late Late Show, after the condom train episode. Clearly upset of the depiction in ‘Sisters,’ of her conduct that day – she was described as behaving disgracefully on the journey back, Kenny sets the record straight, dedicating a chapter to her own account of the day.
The last few chapters become more meditative. Examining her conscience, Kenny details the case of her friend of over thirty years, Father Kit Cunningham, who was convicted as a paedophile. At first disbelieving, the evidence that he had abused boys, years earlier, whilst a missionary became incontrovertible.
Ironically, Kenny had been already been worried that her friend’s behaviour was indiscreet; his friendship with a woman was becoming closer than Mary felt was wise.
The personal life of Kenny’s middle years is barely mentioned. Her two sons receive scant mention, and we only get to know her husband, Richard, through the searingly honest account Kenny gives of being a carer to him, after he had suffered a stroke.
‘My pity for him is stifled by the despair I feel about my own life,’ she writes. ‘In 2010, I will be sixty-six. Will I still be rising each morning to attend to the kitchen, the laundry, the household chores, making breakfast and serving it to him, fetching the papers, facing a day squeezing in journalistic deadlines?’
Kenny ends this superlative memoir by answering the question, why she turned from a fiery revolutionary to a Burkean conservative. She gives us a long list of reasons, some of which, she says, are true.
My favourite?
‘Because so much of what I thought I liked I gradually discovered was not to my true taste at all, and there had been a lot of self-delusion going on. From imagining I was a good dancer to thinking I was dead sexy when I was just dead ridiculous.’
A wonderful handbook for journalists, this memoir highlights a time when eccentricity was encouraged and admired. Highly entertaining, it shows the range and depth of Mary Kenny’s writing.
© Sue Leonard. 2014
Published by Liberties.
This Review was published in Books Ireland, September/October, 2014.
When Mary Kenny was a young journalist working in Fleet Street, she was at a party on the Queen Mary in New York. Mini-skirted, and swilling champagne, she approached George Brown. Worse for wear, the British Foreign Minister was in sombre mood, and told her that everyone in Westminster was plotting against him.
The dance over, the twenty-three year old made an International call to the Evening Standard, recounting every word. The piece appeared alongside a photo of Brown, dancing with a well endowed lady, his eyes, apparently on her bosom. Mary’s reputation soared.
The start of Mary Kenny’s memoir is peppered with such tales. Her early days in Dublin working for the Irish Press, and then in Fleet Street illustrate that female journalists weren’t far behind their male colleagues when it came to enjoying a drink or twenty. Although, truth be told, some held their drink better than others.
The young Maeve Binchy could drink prodigious amounts without getting drunk, Kenny tells us. Then she goes on to list a day’s drinking, logged in the company of her late friend, Mary Cummins.
‘First snifter at 11am (large gin and tonic). Lunch: two gins and tonics followed by a bottle and a half of wine each. Snifter at around 5 PM – a couple of gins, or vodkas, and then back to work. 7PM: pub session with pals – often wine in the evening. 9PM, supper with lashings of vino. 11PM to 3AM: postprandials consisting of brandies, whiskey sours, Crème de menthe, and whatever else we could lay our hands on.’
It seems extraordinary that they managed to put words onto a page, yet such behaviour was never discouraged.
‘Drink as much as you like, but file,’ was the mantra of the time. And though Kenny tells us that some journalists found drink helped them to lose their inhibitions and become more effective, she admits that she drank because she liked the sensation and the way it led to recklessness and risk taking.
‘I once drank Ribena and vodka from a baby bottle, with a friend at the wheel doing likewise, and we had a real baby – mine in the back of the vehicle.’
Something of Myself and Others isn’t a conventional autobiography, yet this collection of articles and essays gives a good picture of Kenny’s life and times. A difficult child – Kenny thinks she had ADHD – she was farmed out with a childless aunt. She left school at sixteen, but soon carved out a career for herself.
It was easier to blag your way into journalism in the sixties; indeed, the thought of employing anyone with a specific degree back then was simply unheard of. But then journalism, Kenny says, was considered a trade not a profession. And it was one her parents disapproved of.
‘Oh darling – women journalists are awful,’ her mother quipped. ‘So cynical, and such hard drinkers.’ Prophetic words, indeed.
There are wonderful descriptions of the feminist movement in Dublin, and of the events of the famous condom train – when a group of women bought contraceptives in Belfast, and flouted their purchases back in Dublin, for publicity.
I was living in England back then, and I didn’t know Mary Kenny, rabble-rouser. Her U-turn to respectability and a right wing stance had happened before I became aware of her writing, but I have been an admirer of hers ever since.
Much of the first section of this memoir deals with journalism, and I found all that fascinating. Reading of her famous interviews, where there was often a chance of lingering over an afternoon made me jealous; those days are rare now, and time is almost always limited.
I especially enjoyed the chapter, Life Lessons Journalism Taught Me. In this, Kenny reminds us that preparation is key. Forgetting this, and winging it for an interview with Eamon Andrews, she was caught out by him. Asking about his childhood, he quipped, ‘were you too lazy to look up the clippings?’
Another favourite bit of advice is, ‘don’t get it right – get it written. Get it right on the re-write.’ She also reminds us that a journalist is basically a professional writer, and a professional writer should be able to write about anything.
In another section we hear of Mary’s encounters with Princess Grace of Monaco; with Margaret Thatcher, Gerry Adams, and Michael Fassbender, who acted in her play.
After reams of valuable advice she ends the chapter of a sombre note.
‘I would not advise any young person today to choose the print media as a career,’ she states. She agrees with a veteran editor who compared the state of the newspaper world to the dissolution of the monasteries.
It was a delight, but no surprise to me that Kenny should dispense so much excellent advice on her trade. I’ve met her often in recent years, and always found her to be hugely supportive, encouraging and above all engaged with every aspect of a journalist’s life.
And she’s not averse to asking advice herself. Teaching at Listowel Writer’s Week, she once rang me, asking how I approach editors I’d not worked with before. Her pupils were anxious for advice, and being so well known, it was not an issue she’d had to deal with.
We’re given an inside view of her contemporaries in the section absent friends. The portraits of such luminaries as Terry Keane, labelled as Ireland’s Madame de Pompadour, Nuala Fennell, Mary Holland, and Mary Cummins are insightful and engaging. Learning of their differing careers gives us a complete view of women’s journalism.
On the whole, the accounts are sympathetic. Kenny adored Clare Boylan, the writer who died aged fifty eight. Though she was, at first, upset when, having become a literary writer, Clare described journalism as ‘practising scales, before getting down to real piano-playing.’
Not all are depicted in a wholly complementary way – she doesn’t altogether share the nation’s adoration for Maeve Binchy, for example, but Kenny is not scared to show herself in a bad light through her accounts.
Mary Holland, a journalist Kenny had huge admiration for, proved a loyal friend. When, in 1992, the two shared a cottage in County Clare for the Merriman Festival, Holland was asked if she was concerned for her political reputation, when she was sharing a house with a notorious right winger like Mary Kenny. Her reply?
‘And what about poor Mary Kenny’s reputation – sharing a house with a notorious left wing subversive like me?’
If there is some point scoring, it comes when she talks of June Levine; who was part of that early feminist movement, and wrote an account of it in ‘Sisters.’ That book has become almost the bible of the time, and Kenny didn’t come out of it well. I’ve read ‘Sisters,’ and remember thinking that Levine’s account of Kenny seemed extreme, and possibly unfair.
‘June and some others regarded me as an errant self-publicist,’ says Kenny, who then goes on to defend her appearance on the Late Late Show, after the condom train episode. Clearly upset of the depiction in ‘Sisters,’ of her conduct that day – she was described as behaving disgracefully on the journey back, Kenny sets the record straight, dedicating a chapter to her own account of the day.
The last few chapters become more meditative. Examining her conscience, Kenny details the case of her friend of over thirty years, Father Kit Cunningham, who was convicted as a paedophile. At first disbelieving, the evidence that he had abused boys, years earlier, whilst a missionary became incontrovertible.
Ironically, Kenny had been already been worried that her friend’s behaviour was indiscreet; his friendship with a woman was becoming closer than Mary felt was wise.
The personal life of Kenny’s middle years is barely mentioned. Her two sons receive scant mention, and we only get to know her husband, Richard, through the searingly honest account Kenny gives of being a carer to him, after he had suffered a stroke.
‘My pity for him is stifled by the despair I feel about my own life,’ she writes. ‘In 2010, I will be sixty-six. Will I still be rising each morning to attend to the kitchen, the laundry, the household chores, making breakfast and serving it to him, fetching the papers, facing a day squeezing in journalistic deadlines?’
Kenny ends this superlative memoir by answering the question, why she turned from a fiery revolutionary to a Burkean conservative. She gives us a long list of reasons, some of which, she says, are true.
My favourite?
‘Because so much of what I thought I liked I gradually discovered was not to my true taste at all, and there had been a lot of self-delusion going on. From imagining I was a good dancer to thinking I was dead sexy when I was just dead ridiculous.’
A wonderful handbook for journalists, this memoir highlights a time when eccentricity was encouraged and admired. Highly entertaining, it shows the range and depth of Mary Kenny’s writing.
© Sue Leonard. 2014
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Monday, July 28, 2014
Monday, April 14, 2014
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Review. Donna Tartt The Goldfinch.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Published by Little Brown: €20.50 Kindle:€8.42.
Published in The Irish Examiner, 14th December, 2013
It has been eleven years since the American novelist Donna Tartt produced a book. And there were ten years between her ground breaking debut, The Secret History and her second, The Little Friend. So expectation was high, when her new doorstopper, The Goldfinch was finally published.
When it comes to reviews, I have a prejudice against such massive books, and this one is just short of 800 pages, but I was immediately subsumed into Tartt’s world, and knew that I was in for a treat. And so it proved.
The narrator, thirteen year old Theo Decker has been suspended from school. This has irritated his mother, who is a nervous beauty. To kill time before a meeting at the school, she takes her son to an art gallery, and shows him her favourite painting, The Goldfinch. He is more interested in a girl his own age, who is with, he presumes, her grandfather.
When an explosion rips through the gallery, Theo’s mother is killed, and he finds himself close to the old man, who is dying. They talk, and the man hands him a ring, making him promise to visit an address.
Theo hides out in his apartment until social workers place him with a school friend’s family in Fifth Avenue. Feeling adrift; pining for his mother, he visits the address given to him by the dying man, and meets an antique dealer who will prove pivotal in his life. The girl is there too. Pippa was badly injured, but there’s a spark between the two near orphans.
So far, so very Dickens. And there are references throughout the novel to that master of literature. Yet this is, very much a great American novel. Huge in scope; it’s a literary work, but is also a story of survival after a terrorist attack, and of the struggle to overcome the odds. It’s a love story, and it’s a thriller, which explores the criminal side of the art world.
Tartt sends her hero to his estranged, dissolute father in Las Vegas, where he befriends the Russian Boris, and becomes acquainted with drink and drugs. After his father’s death he absconds back to New York, and is reunited with Hobie, the antique dealer. He also becomes enmeshed once more with his erstwhile substitute family who have suffered a tragedy of their own.
There’s no doubt that Theo’s brains are beneficial to him. But lacking supervision, he is in many ways too clever, and he gets caught up in dodgy schemes that lead him into danger. When Boris resurfaces and a devastating secret is revealed, the novel spirals into high drama, and the action races away. The violent section in Amsterdam seemed unbelievable, but Tartt then reins her characters in, and leaves us with, if not total redemption, then with a sense that Theo’s future is assured.
With an obvious nod to nine eleven, this is a classic in the making. The pacing is beautifully judged throughout. Theo is an unreliable narrator, and not just because he is so out of it at times, on drink or drugs that he doesn’t remember some of the action. But when, a few hundred pages later a missing nugget is revealed, it all makes the most perfect sense.
Plot twists are so timely, that there isn’t a moment when the reader isn’t turning the pages, anxious to know what will happen next. Yet the picture of The Goldfinch, which is the talisman at the centre of the story, takes a very subsidiary role until the frenetic final section.
It’s the characters who really make this book so special. Theo’s mother did a good job. Her son is polite and at ease with adults, so he is liked, and given a chance. Boris has the brains, but is damaged and dangerous. It would be easy to lose sympathy with him, had Tartt not illuminated his sensitive side.
She does this through a dog. Theo’s father left his mother for the whacky Xandra. And she owns, and neglects a tiny timid dog. Theo’s pity for Popper turns to affection, but Boris quickly who becomes the dog’s steadfast champion.
Popper is useful in revealing the subsidiary characters too. The taxi driver who is taking the runaway Theo to the airport, advises him to take a bus instead – but to hide the dog, as they are not allowed on board. And he grills the boy, on how to keep the dog hidden in a bag.
“Don’t keep looking at the bag like that. Anywhere but the bag. The scenery, your shoelace.” As Theo remarks, they didn’t call the cab Lucky Cab for nothing.
The reader knows, throughout the novel, that Theo’s grief impacts on his entire life. Yet much of his anguish is only hinted at. It’s not until he’s back in New York dealing with a worsening drug problem, that we learn quite what effect the bomb has had on him.
“The suddenness of the explosion had never left me. I was always looking for something to happen, always expecting it out of the corner of my eye, certain configurations of people in public places could trigger it, a wartime urgency, someone cutting in front of me the wrong way or walking too fast at a particular angle was enough to throw me into tachycardia and trip-hammer panic.”
Equally we’re aware from the start that Theo loves the tiny, red haired Pippa. But the force of his adoration isn’t made clear until the closing chapters. Will their joint tragedy draw them together, or push them apart?
2013 had been an amazing year for novels. I was already spoilt for choice for my novel of the year. But this one is so brilliant; so finely tuned and astute, that it makes everything else seem insubstantial. The sublime writing, superb plot timing and mesmerising characters make this novel stay in the mind long after the last page has been read. I adored it.
(This review is available on the Irish Examiner site, but I wasn't happy with the sub-editor, who actually tempered my praise of the book.)
© Sue Leonard 2013
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Colin Barrett; Justin Quinn: Michele Forbes
Reviews. Colin Barrett; Justin Quinn: Michele Forbes
Published in Books Ireland, November 2013
By Sue Leonard.
2013 has been a great year for debuts. Whether this is because, with the continuing
recession, cash strapped publishers are forced to become more discerning, I
don’t know, but the variation of style, the originality, and sheer standard of
first books seems to be rising all the time.
Some of this year’s debuts focus on that very recession, and
with great effect. Last year, newcomer Donal Ryan won the Irish Book of the Year
award, along with a Man Booker long-listing, for The Spinning Heart - his look
at post boom Ireland in the back of beyond - and in his debut collection of
short stories, the young Colin Barrett has taken a similar backdrop. But
whereas Ryan’s characters had, for the most part, once been relatively prosperous,
the protagonists of Barrett’s stories, have been rubbing along on the bottom
rung of society.
The stories are all set in the same fictional town. Barrett
sets the scene with the first story, The Clancy Kid.
‘My town is nowhere you have been, but you
know its ilk. A roundabout off a national road, an industrial estate, a
five-screen Cineplex, a century of pubs packed inside the square mile of the
town’s limits. ....Summer evenings, and in the manure-scented pastures of the
satellite parishes the Zen bovines lift their heads to contemplate the V8 howls
of the boy racers tearing through the back lanes.’
These stories, exploring male friendship and, often,
unrequited love, convey the atmosphere of post-boom Ireland quite wonderfully.
With little lucrative employment, the protagonists struggle on as best they
can, seeing no way out. The action takes place in pubs; in clubs, cars fields
and woods.
The stories are both violent, and tender. Although the
protagonists are male; and often feature two friends, it’s the women who
dominate. They are shown as the strong ones, with the tough males in thrall of
them.
In The Clancy Kid the narrator is upset when his part-time girlfriend
becomes engaged to a rival. His friend Tug, a damaged softie, shows his support
by upending the happy couple’s car. Fearing Tug’s unpredictable mood, his
friend realises he’s off his meds. But as the two amble beside the river, Tug’s
mood lifts. When they meet a gang of young children, his humour and compassion
shine through.
Stand Your Skin features Bat, who has stinking clothes and
waist long hair. He works in a garage and is thought of as a tough guy; the
signs are clear from his battle scarred face. Why then, is he a near recluse,
who is reluctant to socialise? This is skilfully revealed.
Some of the stories are shocking. Bait, for example, shows
that violence doesn’t always come from the hand of men. Others are more
ruminative. I loved the closing story, Kindly forget my existence which
featured two middle-aged men in a pub. They are skulking there, in the morning,
because they can’t bring themselves to go to the funeral of a woman they both
loved.
In the centre of this collection, lies, Calm With Horses, a
story so long, that it could qualify as a novella. When Dympna, the town’s drug
dealer, hears that the middle-aged Fannigan has molested his fourteen year old
sister, he calls in his ‘heavy,’ named Arm – an ex boxer to deal with him.
Arm is good at his job, and can dispense violence without,
it appear, any qualms. But he shows great sensitivity with his strange young
son. Women like him, and he shows amazing loyalty to his friends.
Towards the end of this dramatic story, an old woman he is
threatening says, ‘This isn’t you. It’s a path that you’ve ended up on, but it
isn’t you.’ This sentence sums up not just Arm, but many of the characters in
the book. All are victims of circumstance.
I loved these stories, and empathised with every one of the
protagonists. I liked the way they challenge the reader’s prejudices, and leave
them wanting more. The writing is superlative. Every sentence counts. We’ll be hearing a lot more from Colin
Barrett.
If you were brought up on leafy Mount Merrion Avenue in the
forties and fifties; if you had every advantage, in life, and were lucky enough
to fall in love with a beautiful convent girl from Foxrock, you would assume
the future was golden. And so it seemed for Declan Boyle, the hero of the
Prague based Irish poet Justin Quinn’s first novel.
Mount Merrion opens
in 1959, when Declan has been admitted to a new County Hospital on the West
Coast, suffering from a lung problem, and closes in 2002, when he finds himself
in the same hospital having suffered a heart attack.
In between those hospital stays he joins the Civil Service,
rather than follow his father into the law, because he hopes, that way, he can
make a difference. And when disillusionment sets in, he starts up a tractor
manufacturing business in Connemara, so bringing employment to the area. This goes well; until, much later, when he is
called as a witness to a tribunal leaving his business, and his reputation in
tatters.
The beautiful Sinead doesn’t fare any better. She finds
herself out of synch with her role as wife and mother. Feeling frustrated and
lonely, she wants to work, but is thwarted. She and Declan don’t seem able to
communicate on any meaningful level. Depression follows, then she turns to
drink, before quitting, and, finally, being taken seriously, she starts working
in her husband’s business.
All this is shown through episodic vignettes, as we follow
the couple through their successes and challenges. There’s a tragedy too, to
contend with. It’s not easy to sweep
through forty two years in just 260 pages, especially when the writing covers
societal and personal changes, but to the main Quinn manages this well.
The changes in women’s lives is starkly shown, when the
couples’ daughter Issie takes up the story. She’s determined to avoid the
stifled life of her mother. The two were never close, so she hot foots it to Berlin to pursue
journalism. She becomes a successful feature writer, but when she bed hops and becomes pregnant, it’s
back to Dublin as a lone parent. And, although Ireland is booming, the Irish papers offer her little more than
the occasional property feature.
Declan’s heart attack brings the family together, and shows
that, at least, they can console each other. Mount Merrion is a thought
provoking novel for our time which cleverly tells the story of Ireland
alongside the mundane tale of a long marriage. At times, the brevity felt disconcerting, but
there are moments when Quinn’s writing positively shines. It will be
interesting to see what he comes up with next.
Michele Forbes is not the first Irish actor to pick up her
pen; there have been several in recent years, and the transition seems to work
well; if nothing else an actor has a feel for words, and a sense of what makes
a scene work. Michele, though, brings even more to her craft. Her wonderful
Belfast based debut is both beautifully paced and poetic. She has an unerring
sense of story, and catches the nuances of relationships, whether between men
and women, mothers and children or between friends exceptionally well.
Ghost Moth opens in August 1969. Katherine, a wife and mum of four is swimming
far out at sea when she comes face to face with a seal. The creature with his
all-knowing eyes scares her; she panics and comes close to drowning. Safe once
more, she can’t shift her mood of doom, and this throws her into memories of
her courtship with her husband George back in September 1949.
Back then Katherine was an accounts clerk whose spare time
was spent singing; rehearsing the part
of Carmen for an amateur production. This section opens when she meets Tom, a
tailor, on the very night that George proposes. From then on the novel flits
between the two timelines as Katherine tries to make sense of the past and reconcile
the present.
A fascinating heroine, the young Katherine seems to drift
through life in a dream; falling head over heels for the enigma that is Tom,
yet never quite managing to tell him she is engaged to someone else, or,
indeed, to end it with George. It doesn’t help that she’s not at all sure that
Tom is all he seems. His receptionist hints that he has gambling debts, whereas
George can be relied upon to love and protect her forever. I adored these scenes for their originality
and sheer drama.
The latter part is well handled too. Belfast is on the cusp
of the troubles. There are an increasing number of incident, and George, a
part-time fireman is getting called out more and more often. Meanwhile the
children, whilst occasionally taunted by protestant neighbours, are more
concerned with their friends, and in the teenage Maureen’s case, with burgeoning
love.
When Maureen asks her mother how you know when you’re in
love, Katherine surprises herself by saying, ‘you feel yourself floating and
burning at the same time… and you’re different from before.’ Those words, she
realises, are a description of the frenetic love she had for Tom – and do not
apply to the steadier marital love.
There are many twists and turns before this novel reaches
its sad conclusion. It’s a literary page turner; poetically written, and with complex
characters that stay in your mind. What more could you ask for?
© Sue Leonard 2013
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Reviews. Catherine Dunne etc
Books Ireland April Review.
The Things We Know opens with a jolt. A mother, Ella, out sailing with her husband, feels sudden fear. Her happiness gone, her instinct tells her something is badly wrong. Trusting her intuition, her husband turns the boat for home.
Catherine Dunne handles this tragic opening with delicacy. It’s the husband, Patrick, narrating the story. As the couple rush for their car, the author changes from the past to the present tense, so increasing the pace. And by the time they find, to their horror, that Ella’s instinct was bang on, we feel we already know this family. We’ve had a glimpse of their lifestyle; we’re aware of their bond, and we share in their pain. It’s an extraordinary achievement, reminiscent of the epic opening of Ian McEwen’s Enduring Love.
Daniel; their adored only son, has hung himself. At fourteen, a talented musician and artist with every privilege, good friends, and a solid extended family, this seems unthinkable. What drove him to it? That’s the question.
This is Dunne’s ninth novel, and is, quite possibly, her most accomplished yet. She’s built up a loyal following since that first book, In The Beginning’ won instant acclaim. And she’s built on that, pushing her writing a little more, and experimenting with form and structure.
Patrick, now 74, tells his story, dipping back in time, talking of his first wife, Cecelia; of his love for her, and intense grief at her sudden death. Then, starting a confession, he admits his duplicity. There were affairs in that first marriage; lots of them, in the early days, but they stopped, he tells us, the moment his young daughter, seeing her mother upset, created a scene.
That daughter, Rebecca, takes up the story. Still furious with her father, she can’t accept his new love Ella. Or won’t. Her twin sisters are welcoming, relieved to see their father rise from his grief, but Rebecca doesn’t see it that way.
We can’t like Rebecca. Self centred in the extreme, she’s bitter, bitchy, difficult, but she’s human. When she says she can’t warm to Ella, a therapist, because of ‘her professional faux-empathy. All that eye contact, that kind attentiveness to your words, her goddam reasonableness of the way she looked at the world,’ I could understand her feelings totally.
Moving back to the time of Daniel’s death, more voices emerge. We hear from the twins, Frances, and the gentle Sophie; from Daniel’s friends, Edward and Sylvia; from Ella’s friend Maryam, and from Daniel, himself, until all the pieces of the jigsaw are complete.
I felt that, perhaps, the author had overdone this; it would have been nice to have been left with a few questions unanswered. Had she left out Daniel’s voice, we’d still have reached the denouement.
It’s a small gripe. I liked the way each character spoke with their own, distinctive voice. Patrick’s is dry; precise; a little pedantic; almost certainly unreliable. Central to the book, is his guilt. Should he have known what was wrong? Did he know? Was he hiding from the truth because he was so intent on having the perfect son?
I won’t give any spoilers, but suffice it to say, The Things we Know Now, is, truly, a novel for our time. It’s important, shedding light on an issue that is hugely relevant to teenagers, and to their parents.
In Dunne’s book, Patrick is rendered helpless with depression after the death of his first wife. The writer, playwright, and columnist, Michael Harding recently suffered depression, though not through grief. And he’s made his physical and mental breakdown the pivotal event for his memoir, Staring at Lakes.
The book opens with Harding in bed in Leitrim, waiting for his wife, the sculptor Cathy Carmen to bring him porridge. He describes his sense of despair, before delving through his life, from his early childhood, marred by the emotional neglect of his mother; through his time as a priest, and despair when Pope John Paul 11 turned back the clock of Catholicism, to his meeting, whilst still a priest, with his dark haired wife.
This happened at Annaghmakerrig, when she had a family elsewhere, and he was still a priest. I adored this section. One gets a true sense of Harding’s unease with life. He doesn’t realise that he is, and probably always was, mildly depressed; thinking that he is simply searching for life’s meaning. He was convinced ‘love’ was the answer.
‘Because if there was one thing that made me feel alive, it was being in love.’
Yet, in spite of wonderfully happy times together, it takes Harding years to commit to the woman he loves. And later, when their daughter decides she must go to school in Mullingar, he wastes no time in agreeing to live there with her; in fact he can’t wait to escape domesticity.
Is this melancholia all down to childhood? Certainly Harding thinks it is. He keeps harking back to a Father Fingers, who, terrifying his pupils with his sarcasm, constantly tells the young Harding that he is an Ass. The adult Harding believes this. Why else is he a failed priest, failed writer and failed family man?
Harding describes the start of Ireland’s recession. His fear as the worst news struck, and his shock at learning his savings – all in bank shares – had evaporated overnight is wonderfully told. In fact, it’s the most realistic account of boom to bust Ireland I’ve read anywhere. Describing the day he discovered his money had gone, he holds it together, until his IPod ceases to work, so denying him Bob Dylan. Ringing India for help, he says,
‘I wanted to tell her that the budget in Ireland had exhausted me, that sorrow comes with age.’
His real decline began in 2010. He gives us a frank, full, and physically explicit disclosure of his two years of physical decay and depression. Spending his days in bed, weeping, he somehow finds the strength to tour Ireland with a one man show. It’s a searingly honest account, which many who have been through depression will surely recognise.
He has, of course, now returned to health. But the book didn’t end here. It meandered on, flitting backwards and forwards in time, and from monastery to Buddhist retreat, as Harding continues to investigate magical thinking. Dipping back to childhood traumas, he goes through ‘re-birthing.’ Other writers make random appearances, but by this stage, I was starting to tire.
I wondered if, maybe, the publishers had demanded a hefty word count, or whether the author was determined to use up all his spare material. Whichever, it was a pity. I reviewed Harding’s most recent novel, The Bird in the Snow on these pages, and was in awe of the economy of his writing.
I’m aware that Harding planned his memoir to be episodic, and at the start this method it works to perfection. Indeed, there is much to be in awe of in this memoir; but as it moves on, there isn’t that same consistency of tone.
John Toomey is nothing, if not economic with words. His second novel. Huddlestone Road fairly rattles along.
The minute Vic meets Lali, he’s smitten. But she doesn’t repay the compliment.
‘Sorry, but I don’t do freckles,’ she says. But when the two meet again, by chance, Lali seduces Vic. She takes full charge of their lovemaking, but the following morning, seems indifferent.
And so begins this tortured love story, set in London, between the cafe owner, and the English teacher from Dublin. It’s obvious, from the start, that this won’t be a straightforward love story. And in fact the author tells us so.
‘Her body, burnt umber against her brilliant white underwear, and the anticipation, imprinted itself on his psyche, and remained there through all the years and discolouring experiences that followed.’
In these days of long, wordy books, this second novel stands apart. At 182 pages it’s succinct to the point of brevity. There isn’t a lot of dialogue, the tone is one of telling, rather than showing, and the text is stripped so bare, that years can pass in a page.
One would think this would be an irritant, and indeed, it goes against perceived writing wisdom, but in this case it works well. And that’s down to the author’s assurance with words. His prose flows, and some of his descriptive scenes are brilliant; so good, that they could compete with those of John Banville.
Toomey’s characterisation is spot on too. Lali might be unlikeable; she’s mean and manipulative, but it’s easy to understand why Vic might become obsessed with her; she takes a hold on the reader, too. The secondary characters are also well drawn, from Vic’s bemused parents back in Dublin, to his friend and fellow teacher James, who had tried, hard, to warn his friend off Lali.
There are times I felt the narrative had been cut down a little too far. There’s one instance where Vic hands Lali a present, and urges her to open it, then declines to tell us what is inside.
In the second half of this novel, Toomey explores dark themes. And if the fallout from the disintegration of the relationship becomes a little hard to take at times, the underlying theme, that ‘when you got involved with the fucked up – eventually, they fucked you up too,’ is well followed through on.
Once Vic has become embroiled with Lali, a girl whose childhood was full of trauma, he can’t escape her influence. At the close of the novel he’s emerging from a state of drunken incoherence. Can he erase the worst of Lali’s legacy, and let the good memories in? This is an interesting novel from a writer who dares to be different.
© Sue Leonard. 2013
The Things We Know opens with a jolt. A mother, Ella, out sailing with her husband, feels sudden fear. Her happiness gone, her instinct tells her something is badly wrong. Trusting her intuition, her husband turns the boat for home.
Catherine Dunne handles this tragic opening with delicacy. It’s the husband, Patrick, narrating the story. As the couple rush for their car, the author changes from the past to the present tense, so increasing the pace. And by the time they find, to their horror, that Ella’s instinct was bang on, we feel we already know this family. We’ve had a glimpse of their lifestyle; we’re aware of their bond, and we share in their pain. It’s an extraordinary achievement, reminiscent of the epic opening of Ian McEwen’s Enduring Love.
Daniel; their adored only son, has hung himself. At fourteen, a talented musician and artist with every privilege, good friends, and a solid extended family, this seems unthinkable. What drove him to it? That’s the question.
This is Dunne’s ninth novel, and is, quite possibly, her most accomplished yet. She’s built up a loyal following since that first book, In The Beginning’ won instant acclaim. And she’s built on that, pushing her writing a little more, and experimenting with form and structure.
Patrick, now 74, tells his story, dipping back in time, talking of his first wife, Cecelia; of his love for her, and intense grief at her sudden death. Then, starting a confession, he admits his duplicity. There were affairs in that first marriage; lots of them, in the early days, but they stopped, he tells us, the moment his young daughter, seeing her mother upset, created a scene.
That daughter, Rebecca, takes up the story. Still furious with her father, she can’t accept his new love Ella. Or won’t. Her twin sisters are welcoming, relieved to see their father rise from his grief, but Rebecca doesn’t see it that way.
We can’t like Rebecca. Self centred in the extreme, she’s bitter, bitchy, difficult, but she’s human. When she says she can’t warm to Ella, a therapist, because of ‘her professional faux-empathy. All that eye contact, that kind attentiveness to your words, her goddam reasonableness of the way she looked at the world,’ I could understand her feelings totally.
Moving back to the time of Daniel’s death, more voices emerge. We hear from the twins, Frances, and the gentle Sophie; from Daniel’s friends, Edward and Sylvia; from Ella’s friend Maryam, and from Daniel, himself, until all the pieces of the jigsaw are complete.
I felt that, perhaps, the author had overdone this; it would have been nice to have been left with a few questions unanswered. Had she left out Daniel’s voice, we’d still have reached the denouement.
It’s a small gripe. I liked the way each character spoke with their own, distinctive voice. Patrick’s is dry; precise; a little pedantic; almost certainly unreliable. Central to the book, is his guilt. Should he have known what was wrong? Did he know? Was he hiding from the truth because he was so intent on having the perfect son?
I won’t give any spoilers, but suffice it to say, The Things we Know Now, is, truly, a novel for our time. It’s important, shedding light on an issue that is hugely relevant to teenagers, and to their parents.
In Dunne’s book, Patrick is rendered helpless with depression after the death of his first wife. The writer, playwright, and columnist, Michael Harding recently suffered depression, though not through grief. And he’s made his physical and mental breakdown the pivotal event for his memoir, Staring at Lakes.
The book opens with Harding in bed in Leitrim, waiting for his wife, the sculptor Cathy Carmen to bring him porridge. He describes his sense of despair, before delving through his life, from his early childhood, marred by the emotional neglect of his mother; through his time as a priest, and despair when Pope John Paul 11 turned back the clock of Catholicism, to his meeting, whilst still a priest, with his dark haired wife.
This happened at Annaghmakerrig, when she had a family elsewhere, and he was still a priest. I adored this section. One gets a true sense of Harding’s unease with life. He doesn’t realise that he is, and probably always was, mildly depressed; thinking that he is simply searching for life’s meaning. He was convinced ‘love’ was the answer.
‘Because if there was one thing that made me feel alive, it was being in love.’
Yet, in spite of wonderfully happy times together, it takes Harding years to commit to the woman he loves. And later, when their daughter decides she must go to school in Mullingar, he wastes no time in agreeing to live there with her; in fact he can’t wait to escape domesticity.
Is this melancholia all down to childhood? Certainly Harding thinks it is. He keeps harking back to a Father Fingers, who, terrifying his pupils with his sarcasm, constantly tells the young Harding that he is an Ass. The adult Harding believes this. Why else is he a failed priest, failed writer and failed family man?
Harding describes the start of Ireland’s recession. His fear as the worst news struck, and his shock at learning his savings – all in bank shares – had evaporated overnight is wonderfully told. In fact, it’s the most realistic account of boom to bust Ireland I’ve read anywhere. Describing the day he discovered his money had gone, he holds it together, until his IPod ceases to work, so denying him Bob Dylan. Ringing India for help, he says,
‘I wanted to tell her that the budget in Ireland had exhausted me, that sorrow comes with age.’
His real decline began in 2010. He gives us a frank, full, and physically explicit disclosure of his two years of physical decay and depression. Spending his days in bed, weeping, he somehow finds the strength to tour Ireland with a one man show. It’s a searingly honest account, which many who have been through depression will surely recognise.
He has, of course, now returned to health. But the book didn’t end here. It meandered on, flitting backwards and forwards in time, and from monastery to Buddhist retreat, as Harding continues to investigate magical thinking. Dipping back to childhood traumas, he goes through ‘re-birthing.’ Other writers make random appearances, but by this stage, I was starting to tire.
I wondered if, maybe, the publishers had demanded a hefty word count, or whether the author was determined to use up all his spare material. Whichever, it was a pity. I reviewed Harding’s most recent novel, The Bird in the Snow on these pages, and was in awe of the economy of his writing.
I’m aware that Harding planned his memoir to be episodic, and at the start this method it works to perfection. Indeed, there is much to be in awe of in this memoir; but as it moves on, there isn’t that same consistency of tone.
John Toomey is nothing, if not economic with words. His second novel. Huddlestone Road fairly rattles along.
The minute Vic meets Lali, he’s smitten. But she doesn’t repay the compliment.
‘Sorry, but I don’t do freckles,’ she says. But when the two meet again, by chance, Lali seduces Vic. She takes full charge of their lovemaking, but the following morning, seems indifferent.
And so begins this tortured love story, set in London, between the cafe owner, and the English teacher from Dublin. It’s obvious, from the start, that this won’t be a straightforward love story. And in fact the author tells us so.
‘Her body, burnt umber against her brilliant white underwear, and the anticipation, imprinted itself on his psyche, and remained there through all the years and discolouring experiences that followed.’
In these days of long, wordy books, this second novel stands apart. At 182 pages it’s succinct to the point of brevity. There isn’t a lot of dialogue, the tone is one of telling, rather than showing, and the text is stripped so bare, that years can pass in a page.
One would think this would be an irritant, and indeed, it goes against perceived writing wisdom, but in this case it works well. And that’s down to the author’s assurance with words. His prose flows, and some of his descriptive scenes are brilliant; so good, that they could compete with those of John Banville.
Toomey’s characterisation is spot on too. Lali might be unlikeable; she’s mean and manipulative, but it’s easy to understand why Vic might become obsessed with her; she takes a hold on the reader, too. The secondary characters are also well drawn, from Vic’s bemused parents back in Dublin, to his friend and fellow teacher James, who had tried, hard, to warn his friend off Lali.
There are times I felt the narrative had been cut down a little too far. There’s one instance where Vic hands Lali a present, and urges her to open it, then declines to tell us what is inside.
In the second half of this novel, Toomey explores dark themes. And if the fallout from the disintegration of the relationship becomes a little hard to take at times, the underlying theme, that ‘when you got involved with the fucked up – eventually, they fucked you up too,’ is well followed through on.
Once Vic has become embroiled with Lali, a girl whose childhood was full of trauma, he can’t escape her influence. At the close of the novel he’s emerging from a state of drunken incoherence. Can he erase the worst of Lali’s legacy, and let the good memories in? This is an interesting novel from a writer who dares to be different.
© Sue Leonard. 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
Review. Mutton. India Knight
http://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/books/is-it-possible-to-still-look-hot-at-46-without-a-facelift-222836.html
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Review. Tana French and Sean Moncrieff
February Review.
Tana French and Sean Moncrieff.
Published in Books Ireland. February, 2013.
Imagine if you’d bought a house on a ghost estate? A move that you felt was essential, to get on the property ladder. Suppose you then lost your job, and felt stuck there, penniless, and isolated from your friends and family?
Prize winning author Tana French has used that scenario in her fourth psychological thriller. She’s taken The Spains, a happy young family living in a creepy, half built, deserted estate in a onetime coastal resort called Broken Harbour. They struggle to remain upbeat, in spite of their scumbag neighbours, whilst around them, feral teenagers roam.
When Murder Detective Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy is called in, he finds the Spain children dead; smothered in their beds. Their father, Patrick Spain, has met a rather more bloody end. His wife Jenny, with similar stab wounds, is still alive, and may survive to tell her story.
Kennedy expects a simple, open and shut case, but there are some puzzling aspects. Jenny’s sister says the couple were idyllically happy, though the recession has hit them hard. But what about the intruder who may, or may not have been in Jenny’s imagination?
Why do the Spains have so many baby monitors dotted around, and what’s the story with all the holes in their walls? When the detectives find a stalker; and one who admits the crime, it seems their job is done. But further investigation muddies the waters. There are dozens of plot twists before we, finally, learn the truth.
This thriller isn’t as frightening as French’s earlier books; yet I couldn’t stop reading it. That’s because a book by Tana French is always about more than crime. She’s created as much of a story around her narrator, Mick Kennedy; who appeared as a minor character in her last novel Faithful Place, as she has in the murder itself.
Proud of his record ‘solve’ rate, Kennedy loves control. And murders, he tells his young rookie Richie, always follow certain rules. Rule number seven, for example, is that ‘everyone always lies. Killers, witnesses, bystanders, victims. Everyone.’
Kennedy has happy memories of Broken Harbour; it was a place where his mother was always happy. He hides from the reader, and himself, that it was also the place where the most traumatic incident in his life occurred.
It’s the unfolding of his past; and the reasons for his failed marriage, and lack of ease in any relationship that makes this 500 pager so compulsive. We meet his mad sister early on. But it’s only later that we realise why she worries so much about her big brother.
Jenny Spain tries to bury her troubles, too. Like Kennedy, she keeps harking back to a summer when everything was rosy. Her biggest fear is that others will discover the truth of the present. In this, she resembles the narrator.
This novel shows French at her best. It’s a serious look at the heartrending consequences of the boom, and of what the recession can do to a family. It also examines what can happen to the psyche of someone who refuses to confront the bad in their lives. It’s a tour de force.
The characters in Sean Moncrieff’s new novel hark back to their teenage years too. And that’s not the only parallel between Moncrieff’s book and French’s. Both deal with the wreckage wrought by the recession; both involve a suspected murder; and in both it’s the ‘why’, rather than the ‘who’ that grabs the reader’s attention.
Set during the election campaign, Moncrieff focuses on the hopelessness, distrust, and lack of belief in anyone and anything that pervades recession Ireland. The novel opens with the death of a girl. Manda Ferguson falls out of a Dublin apartment window to her death. Wearing a bridesmaid dress, she lands in a skip, and an election poster falls on top of her.
We learn of the events, and of the girl through various characters. There’s Baz, a reforming druggie, who possibly, pushed the girl to her death. There’s Maurice, the paranoid taxi driver who took a panicked Baz home that day. There’s Rachel, the election candidate whose poster’s fall indicates her own fall from grace, and there’s Michael, the priest who administered the last rites, and is now examining his conscience, and his growing disbelief.
The book juxtaposes all their stories, filling in their backgrounds, so that by the end of the book we have understanding, and empathy for them all. But central to the book, is a tabloid journalist who has lost her way.
Carol Murphy knew Manda Ferguson. On the strength of this, she’s given the story; but she doesn’t divulge that Manda was her cousin; and one she was once close to; enjoying her happiest times ever. That’s partly because she’s forgotten. She hasn’t seen Manda in years.
Carol is a mess. Drink, grief at her mother’s death, and the breakup with a charming, but volatile boyfriend, has caused demons to crowd in. And the necessary conversations with her Aunt, her cousin Conor, and with her absent father, have left her confused. So, whilst her investigation helps her confidence, along with her flagging career, it also causes the gaps in her memory to open. Can she turn her life around and be happy?
Meanwhile Rachel, dropped by her party, tries to go it alone. And it seems, just possible, that she might succeed, until her rich husband, caught off guard, leaves her open to ridicule. As for Baz, he reconciles with his mother, talking through the mess and misunderstandings of the past.
By this time, Manda Ferguson has become famous. There are ‘sighting’ of her throughout Ireland, as an angel of the street lamps. In their hysteria, people gather and turn to prayer. This freaks the priest Michael, and he takes drastic action, nearly killing himself in the process. Yet, it’s through him, that most of the characters enjoy a reconciliation.
I admire Moncrieff, enormously, as a broadcaster. His ease at interviewing makes his show utterly engaging. And this empathy for people is apparent in his writing. He makes the reader care what happens to everyone. And he shows amazing understanding for the things that go on in a woman’s head.
Rachel suffered four miscarriages. We really feel her grief and her pain. Moncrieff doesn’t neglect to show us that such loss can affect men too. Daniel, turning to spiritualism, seems in danger of losing the plot.
The Angel of the Street lamps is a charming, beautifully written page turner, full of substance in it, and food for thought. I loved it.
© Sue Leonard. 2013
Tana French and Sean Moncrieff.
Published in Books Ireland. February, 2013.
Imagine if you’d bought a house on a ghost estate? A move that you felt was essential, to get on the property ladder. Suppose you then lost your job, and felt stuck there, penniless, and isolated from your friends and family?
Prize winning author Tana French has used that scenario in her fourth psychological thriller. She’s taken The Spains, a happy young family living in a creepy, half built, deserted estate in a onetime coastal resort called Broken Harbour. They struggle to remain upbeat, in spite of their scumbag neighbours, whilst around them, feral teenagers roam.
When Murder Detective Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy is called in, he finds the Spain children dead; smothered in their beds. Their father, Patrick Spain, has met a rather more bloody end. His wife Jenny, with similar stab wounds, is still alive, and may survive to tell her story.
Kennedy expects a simple, open and shut case, but there are some puzzling aspects. Jenny’s sister says the couple were idyllically happy, though the recession has hit them hard. But what about the intruder who may, or may not have been in Jenny’s imagination?
Why do the Spains have so many baby monitors dotted around, and what’s the story with all the holes in their walls? When the detectives find a stalker; and one who admits the crime, it seems their job is done. But further investigation muddies the waters. There are dozens of plot twists before we, finally, learn the truth.
This thriller isn’t as frightening as French’s earlier books; yet I couldn’t stop reading it. That’s because a book by Tana French is always about more than crime. She’s created as much of a story around her narrator, Mick Kennedy; who appeared as a minor character in her last novel Faithful Place, as she has in the murder itself.
Proud of his record ‘solve’ rate, Kennedy loves control. And murders, he tells his young rookie Richie, always follow certain rules. Rule number seven, for example, is that ‘everyone always lies. Killers, witnesses, bystanders, victims. Everyone.’
Kennedy has happy memories of Broken Harbour; it was a place where his mother was always happy. He hides from the reader, and himself, that it was also the place where the most traumatic incident in his life occurred.
It’s the unfolding of his past; and the reasons for his failed marriage, and lack of ease in any relationship that makes this 500 pager so compulsive. We meet his mad sister early on. But it’s only later that we realise why she worries so much about her big brother.
Jenny Spain tries to bury her troubles, too. Like Kennedy, she keeps harking back to a summer when everything was rosy. Her biggest fear is that others will discover the truth of the present. In this, she resembles the narrator.
This novel shows French at her best. It’s a serious look at the heartrending consequences of the boom, and of what the recession can do to a family. It also examines what can happen to the psyche of someone who refuses to confront the bad in their lives. It’s a tour de force.
The characters in Sean Moncrieff’s new novel hark back to their teenage years too. And that’s not the only parallel between Moncrieff’s book and French’s. Both deal with the wreckage wrought by the recession; both involve a suspected murder; and in both it’s the ‘why’, rather than the ‘who’ that grabs the reader’s attention.
Set during the election campaign, Moncrieff focuses on the hopelessness, distrust, and lack of belief in anyone and anything that pervades recession Ireland. The novel opens with the death of a girl. Manda Ferguson falls out of a Dublin apartment window to her death. Wearing a bridesmaid dress, she lands in a skip, and an election poster falls on top of her.
We learn of the events, and of the girl through various characters. There’s Baz, a reforming druggie, who possibly, pushed the girl to her death. There’s Maurice, the paranoid taxi driver who took a panicked Baz home that day. There’s Rachel, the election candidate whose poster’s fall indicates her own fall from grace, and there’s Michael, the priest who administered the last rites, and is now examining his conscience, and his growing disbelief.
The book juxtaposes all their stories, filling in their backgrounds, so that by the end of the book we have understanding, and empathy for them all. But central to the book, is a tabloid journalist who has lost her way.
Carol Murphy knew Manda Ferguson. On the strength of this, she’s given the story; but she doesn’t divulge that Manda was her cousin; and one she was once close to; enjoying her happiest times ever. That’s partly because she’s forgotten. She hasn’t seen Manda in years.
Carol is a mess. Drink, grief at her mother’s death, and the breakup with a charming, but volatile boyfriend, has caused demons to crowd in. And the necessary conversations with her Aunt, her cousin Conor, and with her absent father, have left her confused. So, whilst her investigation helps her confidence, along with her flagging career, it also causes the gaps in her memory to open. Can she turn her life around and be happy?
Meanwhile Rachel, dropped by her party, tries to go it alone. And it seems, just possible, that she might succeed, until her rich husband, caught off guard, leaves her open to ridicule. As for Baz, he reconciles with his mother, talking through the mess and misunderstandings of the past.
By this time, Manda Ferguson has become famous. There are ‘sighting’ of her throughout Ireland, as an angel of the street lamps. In their hysteria, people gather and turn to prayer. This freaks the priest Michael, and he takes drastic action, nearly killing himself in the process. Yet, it’s through him, that most of the characters enjoy a reconciliation.
I admire Moncrieff, enormously, as a broadcaster. His ease at interviewing makes his show utterly engaging. And this empathy for people is apparent in his writing. He makes the reader care what happens to everyone. And he shows amazing understanding for the things that go on in a woman’s head.
Rachel suffered four miscarriages. We really feel her grief and her pain. Moncrieff doesn’t neglect to show us that such loss can affect men too. Daniel, turning to spiritualism, seems in danger of losing the plot.
The Angel of the Street lamps is a charming, beautifully written page turner, full of substance in it, and food for thought. I loved it.
© Sue Leonard. 2013
Friday, November 30, 2012
Books Ireland December Review. Short Stories. Joseph O'Connor and Mary Costello
Where Have you Been by Joseph O’Connor and
The China Factor by Mary Costello
By Sue Leonard.
Published in Books Ireland. December 2012.
THINGS NOT SAID
Short stories have been enjoying a renaissance of late. So much so, that collections from our foremost authors equal the number of novels on the shortlist of this year’s Best Novel category, at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. Joseph O’Connor joins Emma Donaghue and Kevin Barry, and all three have produced collections of an extraordinary calibre.
O’Connor’s stories exploring Ireland’s boom and recession, are large in scale and range, and are muscular and compelling. All life – and death is here. There’s cancer; depression; the death of a child; the dissecting of a miserable childhood, and the demise of many a marriage.
Dublin, in all its gore and glory is quite wonderfully evoked. In ‘A Little Cloud,’ in response to Joyce’s ‘Two Clouds,’ we trawl the trendy boom time bars along with the narrator, home from London for a weekend, and an acquaintance of old, Eddie Virago, who, now a property developer, says he’s separated and carefree. The twist comes as a bolt from the blue.
After a brief foray to nineteenth century New York, and eighties London, we’re back in Dublin with a story set in 2004. The boom, seen through Senan’s eyes, is a miserable dark place. I liked this remainder that, for many, it was a time of unease.
In the recession, though, they fare even worse. Male protagonists shamble through their lives, mired in misery. Fathers loom large, but children are rarely mentioned, and mothers are absent. They’ve either died, or are caught up in the hell of alcoholism or mental illness.
That’s not to say the stories lack humour; the dialogue fizzes with it; but the author is at his best when it’s the things not said that grab centre stage. In Death of a Civil Servant, this is exemplified beautifully.
‘Men of my father’s age are uncomfortable saying what they feel. They’re unaccustomed to being asked, lack the language to answer. It doesn’t mean that they’re insensible, only that they’re lost, with the inarticulacy of babies wanting to howl because they can do nothing else.’
If I admired the seven, substantial stories, and how could I not, when the language shines, and the landscape comes so wonderfully to life, I simply adored the novella that comes afterwards. At just over 100 pages, Where Have You Been tells of Cian Hanahoe, a banker who has suffered a nervous breakdown.
Back at work, he meets Catherine, a film production designer from London, who is filming in Wicklow. Their relationship ebbs and flows over a summer, but neither seem quite able to commit. She is taking a break from a long term lover, and he still carries the hurt from his broken marriage.
The relationship develops during the couples’ rambles through Wicklow. (I live in the County, and am keen to try the several walks, and many sights O’Connor describes, that have until now have eluded me.)
O’Connor peels away the layers of character with consummate ease. We realise, soon, that Cian is sensitive, and has a love for the arts and a spellbinding way with words, but we’re halfway through the novella before we realise quite how attractive he is to women.
The beautiful Catherine, so cool and confident at the start, has her own demons. But she’s better at hiding them than her beau. She covers over her insecurities with self deprecating humour until they are leaked, gradually, as the novella progresses.
Cian’s father – another victim of an unhappy marriage – has a small, but important walk on role. His voice adds humour, and poignancy. He brings a glimpse of the Ireland of Liveline, and Joe Duffy. He tapes the programme when he’s out.
I empathised so strongly with Cian; and was so engaged in the progress of his love affair, and his general state of mind, that I found myself in tears, before the satisfying ending arrived.
This tender novella reminded me of my favourite of O’Connor’s novels – his fourth, Inishowen, which is also a love story between two damaged people. It shares the prominence of landscape and the humour, that’s always there, under the surface, waiting to bubble through.
One of my daughters once worked in a factory making tin foil trays. She was nineteen, and needed cash for the start of the university year. She’d come home each night, exhausted, with cut fingers, and a headache from the fumes. None of her siblings would have lasted long in such a job, but she stuck at it, doggedly, until, by a cruel twist of fate she was fired, after a mass walkout.
I do remember, though, how hard it was for her, fitting in with workmates who had no better prospects. I remember her discomfiture, and, almost, a sense of guilt. And all this came flooding back to me, when I read The China Factory – the title story in Dublin woman Mary Costello’s debut collection.
The guilt was even worse for Costello’s protagonist. Taken on as bone fide employee, she was promoted ahead of her peers, and she agonised, at the knowledge that she’d be ‘escaping,’ to teacher training college.
This wonderful story centres on Gus, the quiet oddball who drives the young protagonist to and from work. That he’s sensitive, is clear from the start. The surprise is that he’s a hero, averting a potential crisis, and loss of life.
I was hugely impressed with this story, and was astonished when each subsequent offering proved just as accomplished, if not more so. These twelve stories, written over the past fifteen years are perfect gems. They call to mind Alice Munroe, because they explore ordinary lives, yet often encompass life’s extremes.
Costello looks at adoption; at the death of a child; at cancer; and at betrayal. She deals with all these subjects with such intricate delicacy. Her characters tend to suffer silently, as if they’re too frightened to meet life head on.
The writer is at ease writing from a male point of view, and from a child’s. There’s huge poignancy in you Fill Up my Senses, showing how a young child takes on her mother’s unhappiness. Its set on a farm, and Costello shows herself superb at exploring the cruelties that are a reality in that environment.
The author has a delightful ease with language. There are many lines here to linger over and cherish. In ‘Things I see,’ the narrator fears for the future of her marriage.
‘It is not the fact of growing old, but of growing different.’
The stories portray a bleak view of marriage. There’s a sense of love leaking over time. There’s a lack of communication between the couples portrayed; and of secrets held onto. The betrayed tend to hang on to love. In This Falling Sickness, Ruth’s first husband has died. He’d been unfaithful, but it becomes clear that her second marriage cannot hope to match that first one.
All these stories are worthy of being re-read time and again. They make you pause, reflect and admire. But my favourite, The Astral Plane is simply sublime. The protagonist, happily enough married, gets an email one day from an American saying he picked up a book of hers at a reading in Dublin. The literary correspondence soon means more to both of them, than their real lives with their partners.
What starts as a delightful email exchange, becomes a morality tale for our times. This story shows how destructive a relationship fostered on social media can be. And it’s told with a real understanding for the plight of all the characters.
As a bonus, it got me rushing to my bookshelves, to extract my copy of the book that started the correspondence. Gerard Donovan’s Julius Winsome gets a rave review from them both. This quiet collection has been feted too. It has been both shortlisted for best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards, and long listed for the Guardian First Book Award. It deserves to win both.
© Sue Leonard. 2012.
The China Factor by Mary Costello
By Sue Leonard.
Published in Books Ireland. December 2012.
THINGS NOT SAID
Short stories have been enjoying a renaissance of late. So much so, that collections from our foremost authors equal the number of novels on the shortlist of this year’s Best Novel category, at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. Joseph O’Connor joins Emma Donaghue and Kevin Barry, and all three have produced collections of an extraordinary calibre.
O’Connor’s stories exploring Ireland’s boom and recession, are large in scale and range, and are muscular and compelling. All life – and death is here. There’s cancer; depression; the death of a child; the dissecting of a miserable childhood, and the demise of many a marriage.
Dublin, in all its gore and glory is quite wonderfully evoked. In ‘A Little Cloud,’ in response to Joyce’s ‘Two Clouds,’ we trawl the trendy boom time bars along with the narrator, home from London for a weekend, and an acquaintance of old, Eddie Virago, who, now a property developer, says he’s separated and carefree. The twist comes as a bolt from the blue.
After a brief foray to nineteenth century New York, and eighties London, we’re back in Dublin with a story set in 2004. The boom, seen through Senan’s eyes, is a miserable dark place. I liked this remainder that, for many, it was a time of unease.
In the recession, though, they fare even worse. Male protagonists shamble through their lives, mired in misery. Fathers loom large, but children are rarely mentioned, and mothers are absent. They’ve either died, or are caught up in the hell of alcoholism or mental illness.
That’s not to say the stories lack humour; the dialogue fizzes with it; but the author is at his best when it’s the things not said that grab centre stage. In Death of a Civil Servant, this is exemplified beautifully.
‘Men of my father’s age are uncomfortable saying what they feel. They’re unaccustomed to being asked, lack the language to answer. It doesn’t mean that they’re insensible, only that they’re lost, with the inarticulacy of babies wanting to howl because they can do nothing else.’
If I admired the seven, substantial stories, and how could I not, when the language shines, and the landscape comes so wonderfully to life, I simply adored the novella that comes afterwards. At just over 100 pages, Where Have You Been tells of Cian Hanahoe, a banker who has suffered a nervous breakdown.
Back at work, he meets Catherine, a film production designer from London, who is filming in Wicklow. Their relationship ebbs and flows over a summer, but neither seem quite able to commit. She is taking a break from a long term lover, and he still carries the hurt from his broken marriage.
The relationship develops during the couples’ rambles through Wicklow. (I live in the County, and am keen to try the several walks, and many sights O’Connor describes, that have until now have eluded me.)
O’Connor peels away the layers of character with consummate ease. We realise, soon, that Cian is sensitive, and has a love for the arts and a spellbinding way with words, but we’re halfway through the novella before we realise quite how attractive he is to women.
The beautiful Catherine, so cool and confident at the start, has her own demons. But she’s better at hiding them than her beau. She covers over her insecurities with self deprecating humour until they are leaked, gradually, as the novella progresses.
Cian’s father – another victim of an unhappy marriage – has a small, but important walk on role. His voice adds humour, and poignancy. He brings a glimpse of the Ireland of Liveline, and Joe Duffy. He tapes the programme when he’s out.
I empathised so strongly with Cian; and was so engaged in the progress of his love affair, and his general state of mind, that I found myself in tears, before the satisfying ending arrived.
This tender novella reminded me of my favourite of O’Connor’s novels – his fourth, Inishowen, which is also a love story between two damaged people. It shares the prominence of landscape and the humour, that’s always there, under the surface, waiting to bubble through.
One of my daughters once worked in a factory making tin foil trays. She was nineteen, and needed cash for the start of the university year. She’d come home each night, exhausted, with cut fingers, and a headache from the fumes. None of her siblings would have lasted long in such a job, but she stuck at it, doggedly, until, by a cruel twist of fate she was fired, after a mass walkout.
I do remember, though, how hard it was for her, fitting in with workmates who had no better prospects. I remember her discomfiture, and, almost, a sense of guilt. And all this came flooding back to me, when I read The China Factory – the title story in Dublin woman Mary Costello’s debut collection.
The guilt was even worse for Costello’s protagonist. Taken on as bone fide employee, she was promoted ahead of her peers, and she agonised, at the knowledge that she’d be ‘escaping,’ to teacher training college.
This wonderful story centres on Gus, the quiet oddball who drives the young protagonist to and from work. That he’s sensitive, is clear from the start. The surprise is that he’s a hero, averting a potential crisis, and loss of life.
I was hugely impressed with this story, and was astonished when each subsequent offering proved just as accomplished, if not more so. These twelve stories, written over the past fifteen years are perfect gems. They call to mind Alice Munroe, because they explore ordinary lives, yet often encompass life’s extremes.
Costello looks at adoption; at the death of a child; at cancer; and at betrayal. She deals with all these subjects with such intricate delicacy. Her characters tend to suffer silently, as if they’re too frightened to meet life head on.
The writer is at ease writing from a male point of view, and from a child’s. There’s huge poignancy in you Fill Up my Senses, showing how a young child takes on her mother’s unhappiness. Its set on a farm, and Costello shows herself superb at exploring the cruelties that are a reality in that environment.
The author has a delightful ease with language. There are many lines here to linger over and cherish. In ‘Things I see,’ the narrator fears for the future of her marriage.
‘It is not the fact of growing old, but of growing different.’
The stories portray a bleak view of marriage. There’s a sense of love leaking over time. There’s a lack of communication between the couples portrayed; and of secrets held onto. The betrayed tend to hang on to love. In This Falling Sickness, Ruth’s first husband has died. He’d been unfaithful, but it becomes clear that her second marriage cannot hope to match that first one.
All these stories are worthy of being re-read time and again. They make you pause, reflect and admire. But my favourite, The Astral Plane is simply sublime. The protagonist, happily enough married, gets an email one day from an American saying he picked up a book of hers at a reading in Dublin. The literary correspondence soon means more to both of them, than their real lives with their partners.
What starts as a delightful email exchange, becomes a morality tale for our times. This story shows how destructive a relationship fostered on social media can be. And it’s told with a real understanding for the plight of all the characters.
As a bonus, it got me rushing to my bookshelves, to extract my copy of the book that started the correspondence. Gerard Donovan’s Julius Winsome gets a rave review from them both. This quiet collection has been feted too. It has been both shortlisted for best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards, and long listed for the Guardian First Book Award. It deserves to win both.
© Sue Leonard. 2012.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Trinity Tales. Trinity College Dublin in the Seventies
Edited by Kathy Gilfillan
Published by Lilliput at €20. Kindle: Not available.
Published in the Irish Examiner, 2011
I wasn’t at Trinity in the seventies, but reading the essays in Trinity Tales, I felt, almost, as if I had been. I’ve been regaled with many of the stories, at various parties over the years. I was in the Long Room Library on January 31st 1972, on my first visit to Ireland; as outside students gathered to storm the British Embassy after Bloody Sunday.
Some of the characters mentioned in the book used the flat I shared with other nurses, as their London doss house. Notably, Philip Bradley, who, the book recounts, ‘found’ a small bulldozer one night and drove it round the tennis courts, and down the slope to the Buttery.
Such tales are two a penny in this group memoir. Because in the early seventies, getting a degree came secondary, for most of the students, to partying and letting loose. Trinity was still a small university, with the reputation for the English, of being an alternative to Oxford or Cambridge. As the seventies drifted by, in a haze of booze and marihuana, and Archbishop McQuaid’s ban on Catholics attending Trinity was lifted, all this changed. And this is reflected in these pages.
There are 38 essays in all; many of them by people who have since made their name. There’s Paul McGuiness, husband of the editor; there’s Michael Colgan; Paulo Tullio; Dilly Keane and Roger Greene. Their stories centre largely on Players, with the accounts of productions such as ‘We’ve all Maid Marion,’ overlapping.
The lectures made less of an impression, though David Norris and Brendan Kennelly seem to pop up in many of these accounts. In some of the essays memories are a little hazy. Arthur Deeny, who graduated in 1978, says that he might be wrong about everything. His brother, Godfrey, remembering better, says he slept with six girls at Trinity, but only had sex with three of them.
If the first half of this book reads something like J.P Donleavy, the final section shows a new earnestness entering Trinity. Mary Harney’s account, 1972- 1976, is centred round debates at the Hist. Carol Coulter’s around the union. And even the glamorous Liz O’Donnell, as a mature student starting out in 1977, seems more focused on work than partying.
Dilly Keane’s vibrant chapter, contains a colourful memoir of a much loved friend, Mandy Walker, who drowned, tragically when still young. Robert O’Byrne dedicated his entire account to Alannah MacLachan, his adored friend, who died in 1982, the year after he graduated. This is a superbly written testimony that would touch anyone’s heart.
It’s interesting to see these characters develop from schoolchildren into a germ of what they have become today. Harney’s single mindedness, Colgan’s flair for the theatre, and Dilly Keane’s sense of comedy are all evident. Paul McGuiness signed up his first band at Trinity. ‘Spud,’ featuring Don Knox headed many successful gigs.
Trinity Tales will, of course, appeal mainly to those who attended the university, in the seventies, or more recently, but it has a wide general appeal. It highlights a time when students started off in suburban digs, taking the bus into town each day. A time when parties could last several days, and enjoyment was taken as a right.
©Sue Leonard 2011
Edited by Kathy Gilfillan
Published by Lilliput at €20. Kindle: Not available.
Published in the Irish Examiner, 2011
I wasn’t at Trinity in the seventies, but reading the essays in Trinity Tales, I felt, almost, as if I had been. I’ve been regaled with many of the stories, at various parties over the years. I was in the Long Room Library on January 31st 1972, on my first visit to Ireland; as outside students gathered to storm the British Embassy after Bloody Sunday.
Some of the characters mentioned in the book used the flat I shared with other nurses, as their London doss house. Notably, Philip Bradley, who, the book recounts, ‘found’ a small bulldozer one night and drove it round the tennis courts, and down the slope to the Buttery.
Such tales are two a penny in this group memoir. Because in the early seventies, getting a degree came secondary, for most of the students, to partying and letting loose. Trinity was still a small university, with the reputation for the English, of being an alternative to Oxford or Cambridge. As the seventies drifted by, in a haze of booze and marihuana, and Archbishop McQuaid’s ban on Catholics attending Trinity was lifted, all this changed. And this is reflected in these pages.
There are 38 essays in all; many of them by people who have since made their name. There’s Paul McGuiness, husband of the editor; there’s Michael Colgan; Paulo Tullio; Dilly Keane and Roger Greene. Their stories centre largely on Players, with the accounts of productions such as ‘We’ve all Maid Marion,’ overlapping.
The lectures made less of an impression, though David Norris and Brendan Kennelly seem to pop up in many of these accounts. In some of the essays memories are a little hazy. Arthur Deeny, who graduated in 1978, says that he might be wrong about everything. His brother, Godfrey, remembering better, says he slept with six girls at Trinity, but only had sex with three of them.
If the first half of this book reads something like J.P Donleavy, the final section shows a new earnestness entering Trinity. Mary Harney’s account, 1972- 1976, is centred round debates at the Hist. Carol Coulter’s around the union. And even the glamorous Liz O’Donnell, as a mature student starting out in 1977, seems more focused on work than partying.
Dilly Keane’s vibrant chapter, contains a colourful memoir of a much loved friend, Mandy Walker, who drowned, tragically when still young. Robert O’Byrne dedicated his entire account to Alannah MacLachan, his adored friend, who died in 1982, the year after he graduated. This is a superbly written testimony that would touch anyone’s heart.
It’s interesting to see these characters develop from schoolchildren into a germ of what they have become today. Harney’s single mindedness, Colgan’s flair for the theatre, and Dilly Keane’s sense of comedy are all evident. Paul McGuiness signed up his first band at Trinity. ‘Spud,’ featuring Don Knox headed many successful gigs.
Trinity Tales will, of course, appeal mainly to those who attended the university, in the seventies, or more recently, but it has a wide general appeal. It highlights a time when students started off in suburban digs, taking the bus into town each day. A time when parties could last several days, and enjoyment was taken as a right.
©Sue Leonard 2011
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Jammy Dodger by Kevin Smith, and The Hijacking of Cassie Peters
Jammy Dodger by Kevin Smith
The Hijacking of Cassie Peters
Published in Books Ireland, October 2012.
By Sue Leonard
It’s Belfast in 1988, and Arty Conville is fresh from university. He’s Passionate about poetry. It’s an addiction. At least, it’s more than that. He lives it. He breaths it and is consumed by it. And he has the good luck to work at it, co-editing Lyre, a Belfast based poetry magazine.
Artie spends his days lounging around the office with the his co-editor, Oliver, discussing biscuits, drinking tea, and, occasionally firing off a letter to an established poet. It’s an easy life, but there’s a problem. The magazine depends on an Arts Council grant, and The Hawk, and his sidekick Stanford Winks are demanding more action. They don’t just want an assurance that the next edition will appear soon; they want new names, and poems that reflect the troubled times.
That’s not easy to produce , when the gigantean slush pile contains nothing of merit. As pressure mounts, and the arts council threaten to find editors who were ‘facilitators of more focused abilities,’ Artie comes up with a cunning plan. His initial act of deceit is so successful, that soon the duo are unwittingly involved in a scam of mammoth proportions. Will they get away with it?
Through all this, Artie is pursuing the beautiful Rosie McCann, but she’s starting to wonder what Artie actually does. As for Oliver, he is consuming milk by the gallon, collecting coupons, and composing slogans about the Sunnyland farm Bunny, in his effort to win a world trip. That’s when he’s not carousing with the middle-aged Iris, wife of a police officer.
There’s a lot of drinking, and partying, with a soupcons of substance abuse, and in lesser hands this could have become a tad tedious. But, after a rather sluggish start, the characters take a hold on the reader, and the humour explodes through the pages.
Smith satirises the artistic life of Belfast with apparent knowledge. The book launches seemed utterly authentic, and as for the scene set in the BBC, where Artie’s poetry review is in effect hijacked by the presenter; that had me squirming in recognition.
The troubles act as a backdrop to this escapade. They are mentioned in passing, but poetry immunises Arty from engaging too fully. Except that is, when a gunmen bursts into the office. His appearance, though, has nothing to do with religion or loyalty. ‘Mad Dog’ is a poet whose efforts have been ignored by the editing duo.
Arty escapes the marching season by visiting his parents, a conventionally materialistic couple who are bemused by their dreamy son.
‘I caught my mother looking at me in the same way as she might regard a plant whose flowers had turned out a different colour to the one advertised on the seed packet,’ muses Arty.
Once I got hooked into this debut, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. A journalist who spent time as a correspondent in Eastern Europe, Smith has a great way with words, and a distinctive style. With so much genre fiction around, it was a delight to read a novel that dares to defy categorisation.
Mary Stanley is another writer to forge an individualistic path. Known for family sagas with a touch of mystery, her writing is far from chick lit. She first burst onto the scene in 2004, with Retreat, and she followed this with Missing, then Revenge; and her strength has always been the dynamic of the family.
This seventh novel opens in the summer of 1972, and the Peters sisters are carefree. They spend their days on the beach near their South Dublin home, and their nights listening to the waves. Then their mother, Miriam, absconds. How will the family manage without her?
Karl Peters is an academic. He teaches classics at Trinity College, and revels in telling his daughters stories from Greek mythology. But without Miriam he feels powerless, and it falls to sixteen year old Ali to provide care and stability for the sensitive Mer, and precocious Cassie.
In reality, Ali is used to this role. Miriam was never the most caring of mothers. She employed an Au pair to provide that role, but the surly Elsa rarely lifted a finger. But its tough being her father’s confidant, expected to provide stability.
The family uproot to Germany to make a new life. It’s not easy. When Ali leaves for College, she rarely gives her family a backward glance. And when she marries, the gulf widens. Mer copes somehow, but Cassie feels the loss of her mother, and at 18 runs off to find her. And that’s when the trouble really starts.
I don’t like giving spoilers, but the title rather gives this one away. And in fact, Stanley opens the book with the hijacking of Cassie. Her spiralling thoughts are interspersed throughout the narrative, in a staccato way. This device adds both drama and poignancy. What, though will become of Cassie? Will she survive the trauma of the hijacking?
Stanley doesn’t go in for one dimensional characters. We mightn’t like Miriam. As readers we deplore her actions, and are frustrated with her passivity, but we have a little sympathy too. It becomes clear that Karl was the dominant one; and that, victim of a broken home, Miriam never understood how to create a fully functioning family.
Stanley didn’t make Karl a classicist by accident; the children’s full names are Alycone, Merope, and Cassiopeia after the stars. And the tales of these, along with those of Achilles, Pegasus and others, pepper the pages, and show how myths can be used to make sense of modern life.
And if this makes the novel sound worthy, it’s anything but. There’s a dreamy quality about it and a sense of otherworldliness. I became so deeply immersed in the lives of Stanley’s characters, that I felt shut off, for a while, from the real world.
This is an unusual novel, and is hard to classify. I loved it for its measured, many layered writing, for its mesmerising characters, but mostly for its thoughtful wisdom. This shows Stanley at her very best.
© Sue Leonard. 2012.
The Hijacking of Cassie Peters
Published in Books Ireland, October 2012.
By Sue Leonard
It’s Belfast in 1988, and Arty Conville is fresh from university. He’s Passionate about poetry. It’s an addiction. At least, it’s more than that. He lives it. He breaths it and is consumed by it. And he has the good luck to work at it, co-editing Lyre, a Belfast based poetry magazine.
Artie spends his days lounging around the office with the his co-editor, Oliver, discussing biscuits, drinking tea, and, occasionally firing off a letter to an established poet. It’s an easy life, but there’s a problem. The magazine depends on an Arts Council grant, and The Hawk, and his sidekick Stanford Winks are demanding more action. They don’t just want an assurance that the next edition will appear soon; they want new names, and poems that reflect the troubled times.
That’s not easy to produce , when the gigantean slush pile contains nothing of merit. As pressure mounts, and the arts council threaten to find editors who were ‘facilitators of more focused abilities,’ Artie comes up with a cunning plan. His initial act of deceit is so successful, that soon the duo are unwittingly involved in a scam of mammoth proportions. Will they get away with it?
Through all this, Artie is pursuing the beautiful Rosie McCann, but she’s starting to wonder what Artie actually does. As for Oliver, he is consuming milk by the gallon, collecting coupons, and composing slogans about the Sunnyland farm Bunny, in his effort to win a world trip. That’s when he’s not carousing with the middle-aged Iris, wife of a police officer.
There’s a lot of drinking, and partying, with a soupcons of substance abuse, and in lesser hands this could have become a tad tedious. But, after a rather sluggish start, the characters take a hold on the reader, and the humour explodes through the pages.
Smith satirises the artistic life of Belfast with apparent knowledge. The book launches seemed utterly authentic, and as for the scene set in the BBC, where Artie’s poetry review is in effect hijacked by the presenter; that had me squirming in recognition.
The troubles act as a backdrop to this escapade. They are mentioned in passing, but poetry immunises Arty from engaging too fully. Except that is, when a gunmen bursts into the office. His appearance, though, has nothing to do with religion or loyalty. ‘Mad Dog’ is a poet whose efforts have been ignored by the editing duo.
Arty escapes the marching season by visiting his parents, a conventionally materialistic couple who are bemused by their dreamy son.
‘I caught my mother looking at me in the same way as she might regard a plant whose flowers had turned out a different colour to the one advertised on the seed packet,’ muses Arty.
Once I got hooked into this debut, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. A journalist who spent time as a correspondent in Eastern Europe, Smith has a great way with words, and a distinctive style. With so much genre fiction around, it was a delight to read a novel that dares to defy categorisation.
Mary Stanley is another writer to forge an individualistic path. Known for family sagas with a touch of mystery, her writing is far from chick lit. She first burst onto the scene in 2004, with Retreat, and she followed this with Missing, then Revenge; and her strength has always been the dynamic of the family.
This seventh novel opens in the summer of 1972, and the Peters sisters are carefree. They spend their days on the beach near their South Dublin home, and their nights listening to the waves. Then their mother, Miriam, absconds. How will the family manage without her?
Karl Peters is an academic. He teaches classics at Trinity College, and revels in telling his daughters stories from Greek mythology. But without Miriam he feels powerless, and it falls to sixteen year old Ali to provide care and stability for the sensitive Mer, and precocious Cassie.
In reality, Ali is used to this role. Miriam was never the most caring of mothers. She employed an Au pair to provide that role, but the surly Elsa rarely lifted a finger. But its tough being her father’s confidant, expected to provide stability.
The family uproot to Germany to make a new life. It’s not easy. When Ali leaves for College, she rarely gives her family a backward glance. And when she marries, the gulf widens. Mer copes somehow, but Cassie feels the loss of her mother, and at 18 runs off to find her. And that’s when the trouble really starts.
I don’t like giving spoilers, but the title rather gives this one away. And in fact, Stanley opens the book with the hijacking of Cassie. Her spiralling thoughts are interspersed throughout the narrative, in a staccato way. This device adds both drama and poignancy. What, though will become of Cassie? Will she survive the trauma of the hijacking?
Stanley doesn’t go in for one dimensional characters. We mightn’t like Miriam. As readers we deplore her actions, and are frustrated with her passivity, but we have a little sympathy too. It becomes clear that Karl was the dominant one; and that, victim of a broken home, Miriam never understood how to create a fully functioning family.
Stanley didn’t make Karl a classicist by accident; the children’s full names are Alycone, Merope, and Cassiopeia after the stars. And the tales of these, along with those of Achilles, Pegasus and others, pepper the pages, and show how myths can be used to make sense of modern life.
And if this makes the novel sound worthy, it’s anything but. There’s a dreamy quality about it and a sense of otherworldliness. I became so deeply immersed in the lives of Stanley’s characters, that I felt shut off, for a while, from the real world.
This is an unusual novel, and is hard to classify. I loved it for its measured, many layered writing, for its mesmerising characters, but mostly for its thoughtful wisdom. This shows Stanley at her very best.
© Sue Leonard. 2012.
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