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Irish Emigrant Book Review, No.66 (Jan 2001)
A STAR CALLED
HENRY by Roddy Doyle
- Roddy Doyle’s latest best-selling novel follows his previous work in
being set in Dublin, but in a Dublin very different from “The Snapper”
and “The Van”. For Henry Smart is born into turn-of-the-century Dublin,
the Dublin of the poor and the merchant princes depicted in James Plunkett’s
“Strumpet City”, to which work Doyle acknowledges his debt. He is not
the first child in his family to be called Henry, and his mother points
to the star in the Dublin sky which she believes is her dead baby. With
an inadequate mother and a father who disappears, leaving only his wooden
leg as a reminder to his son, Henry Smart sets out on a life as a street
urchin, accompanied by his younger brother Victor. Their one foray into
the world of education is short-lived, but has a lasting effect on Henry’s
future life. Victor succumbs early to the deprivation of his childhood,
and his death emphasises how commonplace death had become in pre-Rising
Dublin; Henry genuinely mourns and misses his brother, but leaves his
body lying on a gravel path and moves on. The first chapters of “A Star
called Henry” recreate the atmosphere of Dublin in the opening years of
the twentieth century, and Henry’s involvement in the 1916 Rising brings
an immediacy to the scenes in the GPO that is not always evident in factual
accounts. The mixture of bravery and buffoonery, of nationalism and religious
belief, rings true, and Doyle has successfully interlaced fictional and
historical characters throughout the narrative. Henry’s relationship with
Michael Collins and his participation in the early morning killings of
Bloody Sunday are imaginatively dealt with, and the description of the
emergence of the new political hierarchy, in the character of Ivan Reynolds,
strikes a particularly modern chord. Doyle’s novel is the chronicle of
a boy drawn to violence as a kind of revenge for his own sense of loss,
who comes to the conclusion, when he is still only twenty years old, that
the killing has to stop. His future is unsure, he is unable to be with
his wife and child, but after his years of stealing, hiding and killing,
Henry Smart has gained a sense of self.
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NIGHTMUSIC by
Declan Varley
- This fifth novel from the Mayo writer once again has Galway as its setting
and is obviously the work of someone who is very familiar with the city
and its environs. Known as the party city of the west, Galway nevertheless
has its share of criminal activity and violence, and Varley looks beneath
the surface of the prosperous and bustling city at those who have been
left behind amidst the burgeoning economy and self-confident youth. The
winos spending their days and nights around Eyre Square and the docks
become drawn into the drama played out between the suburbs of the city
and the outlying districts. Garda Noel Fogarty, trying to save his career,
enlists the help of local journalist Davy Morley when he becomes suspicious
about a series of suicides in Galway. Running in tandem with their investigation
is the saga of Malachy Lee, obsessed with both Mozart and Sherlock Holmes,
who believes he has found the perfect way to revenge the wrong done to
him in his childhood. A dockworker and boat owner, he lives with his mother,
whom he has terrorised, and is known to the guards as a helpful man often
called out to remove bodies from the water. This reputation, the possession
of a derelict farm some miles outside the city, and his own innate cunning
ensure that Malachy is able to carry out his plan with a degree of success,
a plan which leaves a number of people dead, until Fogarty’s hunch points
inexorably in his direction. The unravelling of the mystery results in
further death and there is a satisfying element of surprise in the final
outcome. While obviously rooted in Galway, and enjoyed on a particular
level by those familiar with the geography and the people of the city,
“Nightmusic” stands on its own as a well-told tale of murder and mayhem
against the backdrop of any Irish town or city.
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AN UNSUNG HERO
by Michael Smith
- Subtitled “Tom Crean - Antarctic survivor”, Michael Smith’s book has
ensured that the Kerryman who took part in three of the four Antarctic
expeditions during what was known as the Heroic Age in Britain will no
longer be unsung. It is certainly an extraordinary tale of a time when
there were still places on the earth to conquer and men were inspired
to seek the glory of discovery, however ill-prepared. And what comes across
very strongly in the telling of Scott’s journey to plant the British flag
at the South Pole is the unpreparedness of his expedition. This is particularly
obvious when the preparations of the British expedition are compared with
those of the Norwegian, Amundsen, who was to win the race to the Pole.
While Amundsen made excellent use of both dogs for pulling equipment,
and skis for ease of travel, Scott believed that dogs could be of only
minimal use, and he had much the same attitude to the use of skis. The
fact that, as an Englishman, he would have had an inbuilt distaste for
slaughtering dogs for food was a further reason for his reliance on man-hauling.
Amundsen’s expedition was totally focused on reaching its goal, whereas
the large group accompanying Scott included scientists who went off at
tangents to follow their own interests
There is little doubt that the naval man from Anascaul, who ran away from
home as a fifteen-year-old, acquitted himself with honour on the two expeditions
he made with Scott and the one with fellow Irishman Shackleton. Indeed
he was one of the last to see Scott alive and was among the search party
who found the tent holding the bodies of three of the five men who had
reached the Pole. His courage, good humour and strength of purpose were
particularly apparent on the doomed expedition to cross the Antarctic
landmass on foot, led by Ernest Shackleton. After their ship, the Endurance,
was crushed by ice, Crean accompanied Shackleton and Wolsey on an 800-mile
sea journey through the Southern Ocean followed by the first-ever journey
through the interior of South Georgia to find help for the twenty-two
men left stranded on Elephant Island. This is a moving account of a man
who would appear to have been an unlikely hero, but who undoubtedly achieved
that status. This is obvious from the narrative, making the author’s many
references to the fact rather redundant. The degree of stoicism needed
by all the men on these expeditions was extraordinary and the descriptions
of their efforts to keep warm and dry, and to find food, are sometimes
harrowing. One passage, however, has left me somewhat puzzled. While they
were drifting helplessly on an ice floe and, as ever, on the look-out
for a potential food source, an Emperor penguin came into view and Crean
“...sank onto all fours and began making noises like a fish”. Surprisingly,
this was successful and the penguin provided their next meal.
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DEAD CAT BOUNCE
by Damien Owens
- My first impression of this debut novel, which opens with a group of
young men in a pub, was that it was a bit “laddish”, not my favourite
genre. I had to revise this opinion, however, by the time I reached page
21 and found myself laughing out loud at the author’s somewhat irreverent
description of a nun as “a grown woman who not only believes in Santa
Claus, but wants to be an elf”. Humour is one of the mainstays of Owens’
novel, and the importance of having and keeping a sense of humour becomes
more and more obvious to the protagonist, Joe Flood, as his life spirals
out of control in a welter of family catastrophe, disenchantment with
his job and an overwhelming sense of guilt. One thread, the impending
announcement of a multinational’s decision as to which of two plants to
close, the one in Ireland or the one in Scotland, had an eerie familiarity
to it. While the decision would have no direct effect on Joe’s own job,
it was to be the catalyst leading to a change of focus in his life. Much
of the narrative gives a fairly typical view of the life of young twenty-somethings
in Dublin, with a wonderful description of flat-hunting, surely from personal
experience. The action also moves to rural Ireland - Joe is known as the
culchie to his friends Norm, Go-Go and Stevie - where many of the more
interesting sections of the tale are set. In fact one criticism that can
be levelled against “Dead Cat Bounce” is that it is uneven, and the originality
of the storyline is not always compensation for the protracted spells
of introspection on Joe’s part. As always, I flinch at the constant use
of profanities, but this presumably is an accurate reflection of normal
conversation between young adults in 21st century Ireland. These two reservations
apart, Damien Owens’ novel is an enjoyable and revelatory account of how
young men function in a difficult world. And yes, there is an explanation
for the title contained within the book.
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MY DREAM OF
YOU by Nuala O’Faolain
- A blend of fact and fiction, and fact embellished to become fiction
make up the narrative of Nuala O’Faolain’s first novel. In Kathleen de
Burca’s search for grounding in her own life she parallels the life of
Marianne Talbot, the 19th century mistress of Mount Talbot House in Co.
Roscommon. While Kathleen feels her life has been forever blighted by
her lack of parental love, she excuses Marianne’s affair with a servant
as a cry from a neglected wife for love and affection. The author, whose
own voice is evident throughout, convincingly reflects the plight of women
in mid-20th century Ireland through the submission of her mother to her
somewhat autocratic father. She looks to the story of the Talbots in trying
to explain her own flight from her family and her country, her own casual
attitude to sex which leads her to take to her bed any man who shows the
least interest in her. Following the death of her friend and colleague
Jimmy, Kathleen moves from a jet-setting occupation with its London office
to the west of Ireland in search of the Talbot story. In doing so she
constantly comes up against her own failings and gradually, in a series
of flashbacks, we are given both the high and low points of her life.
Anger and guilt form a large part of her consciousness, anger at her loveless
childhood and her mother’s death, guilt over some ill-advised encounters
with men. She is also threatened by the passage of years and the knowledge
that her chances of finding a lifetime companion are diminishing. However
her journey to the west, her encounter with Bertie, Nan Leech and, above
all, Shay, bring her to a recognition of her own worth and the novel ends
on a note of optimism. “My Dream of You” is a complex and absorbing first
novel and one of its main attributes is the vividness with which the author
conjures up the ambience of the Famine years, against which the Mount
Talbot story is set. The hunger and the pain experienced by the ordinary
people, their forced emigration and the residual guilt of those who survived
it, are set against the feelings of despair, disappointment and betrayal
which were the parallel experience of the landlord class. All of these
emotions are repeated in the lives of Kathleen, her family and the wider
circle of her friends and acquaintances, emphasizing the link between
the historical tale and contemporary reality.
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TRIBES TO TIGERS
by Dr Kieran Woodman
- This history of Galway Chamber of Commerce and Industry threatened to
be a somewhat dry record of the proceedings of the aforementioned body
over a long period. However Dr Woodman has brought to life the concerns
of the merchants of this city over the past two centuries that will be
of particular interest to those who have lived for any length of time
in Galway, though it has a universal appeal to anyone interested in the
development of the Irish economy. Taking as his starting point the beginning
of the 19th century, Dr Woodman gives a vivid account of the city as it
then was, “uncleaned, unlit and unpaved”, with open fields from Abbeygate
Street to Eyre Street. He takes us from the Amicable Society of the late
18th-early 19th century through the establishment of the Royal Galway
Institution in 1839, to the setting up of the Galway Industrial Development
Association. This declined during the First World War but was re-established
in the early 1920s as the Galway Chamber of Commerce and one of its first
actions was to amalgamate with the old Royal Galway Institution. The consistency
of the topics for debate throughout the years is notable, with emphasis
on the need for improved infrastructure, decentralization, the development
of Salthill as a leisure area and the need for investment from within
the city. In later years the question of the airport crops up on a regular
basis, but not all of the minutes are given over to external issues. In
the 19th century there seems to have been a particular problem both with
members paying their dues and with finding a steward for the club who
could remain sober while carrying out his duties, while in the last century
much energy was expended on finding suitable premises. And it is not only
the concerns of the members that recur, it is interesting to note the
recurrence of family names who were, and remain to the fore in promoting
the city’s well-being. With an attention to detail leavened by humour,
the author has done more than justice to his subject.
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THE DIOCESE
OF ELPHIN ed. Francis Beirne
- Produced to mark the Jubilee Year of 2000, this history of the Diocese
of Elphin was initiated by Bishop Christopher Jones and is an amalgam
of work from many different sources. Fr Canice Mooney gives an overview
of the history of the diocese while another chapter is devoted to the
bishops of Elphin over the last 900 years from the year in which the diocese
was formally established. The contribution made by the various religious
orders who came to offer education, pastoral and medical care is also
acknowledged, but what will be of most interest to those from Roscommon
and Sligo are the series of parish histories. Though concise, each is
accompanied by a map and a list of townlands, and is complemented by well-executed
drawings of local ecclesiastical treasures. In the introduction, Bishop
Jones has expressed the hope that this history will be used in all the
schools of the diocese, not only fostering an interest in their locality
but also demonstrating to the students the extended Christian heritage
of which they are part
THE NIGHTINGALE
WATER by Macdara Woods
- The constantly changing relationship between a mother and son, the frailty
of the human body and the mind, helplessness in the face of death, all
these are present in this series of poems recording the poet’s thoughts
from the time of his mother’s stroke to her eventual death. He remembers
his own childhood and now sees their roles reversed, he the one who must
take care of her. A poignant note is struck in her plea to him: “Someone
is making me do things and I’m not able....... will you tell somebody
And tell them not to be at me” Outside events impinge on the poet’s conscience
through the meanderings of his mother’s mind - the killing of the Quinn
boys, the Omagh bombing and the increasing racism. He records his own
weariness with the bedside vigil, his mother wandering in and out of lucidity,
until “like swallows on the telegraph poles in Autumn”, she prepares to
take off into the unknown.
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MANAGING ACTIVISM
by Denise Deegan
- Public relations consultant Denise Deegan has here set out the ways
in which companies can best deal with activists and pressure groups, using
a number of well-documented cases to illustrate her guidelines. Foremost
among these are the actions taken against the McDonald’s chain of restaurants
and Greenpeace’s campaign against Shell, both of which are said to have
cost the companies involved millions of pounds. The author first examines
how activists work, before advising both the wrong and the right approach
to winning them over. The establishment of relationships with the activists,
the possibility of negotiating and of pre-empting a possible attack are
all discussed, as is the importance to a large company of fostering a
good relationship with the local community and dealing effectively with
the media. This guide is endorsed by the Institute of Public Relations
THE INCREDIBLE
SISTER BRIDGET by Declan Carville
- These two new offerings from Northern writer Declan Carville live up
to the promise of his first children’s book set at the Giant’s Causeway.
Valentine O’Byrne is a girl who loves to dance and finds her own route
to stardom when she fails an audition, while the rollerblading, somersaulting,
skateboarding Sister Bridget is unlike any nun we have ever known. In
“Valentine O’Byrne, Irish Dancer” Brendan Ellis has once again provided
the illustrations to Carville’s text, and Sister Bridget is admirably
brought to life by the drawings of Kieron Black.
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