Irish Emigrant Book Review, No.69 (Apr 2001)

THE SIMURGH AND THE NIGHTINGALE by Roger Derham
- The front cover of Roger Derham’s first book includes the information that it is a novel, a necessary distinction since for much of its length this account of 17th century Mediterranean life could be classed as history. Arising from the discovery of two letters in Istanbul during academic research, one from an Irishwoman, Mr Derham has woven a story of sultans and pirates, of Biblical scrolls and secret societies which holds up a mirror to life as it was experienced in the early years of the 17th century. A pirate ship arrived off the coast of Cork and captured a number of people from Baltimore, including the woman surgeon Catherine Cullen. It is in following her fate that the novel has evolved, a novel which ranges from Ireland to North Africa and through many European countries. The rivalry of opposing guilds, including the Knights of Sant’Iago and the Angelicks who were both seeking custody of sacred scrolls believed to refer to the death of Christ, forms the basis for much of the story, as does the tussle for control of the holy places in Jerusalem. Through it all Catherine continues her calling as a surgeon, at the same time beginning a spiritual journey that sees her acceptance into the Lodge of the Khorram-Dinan. By this time she has become romantically involved with one of the Knights of Sant’Iago, Djivo Slavujovic, himself imprisoned after attempting to stop what he saw as extreme cruelty by a sea captain, and it is when she is torn between her spiritual journey and her love for Djivo that we learn the significance of the title. A wise keeper of a library shows her two illustrations from one of his books, one showing the Simurgh, a supernatural bird which represents the ascent of the human spirit to Heaven, and the other the nightingale, representing human love in the form of Djivo. Their first meeting was born of violence, just as violence dogs their lives whether together or apart, but they each have a part to play in the quest for the elusive Biblical scrolls. The use of many unfamiliar words, some of which are explained in a glossary, and the inclusion of much historical detail, provide a challenge for the reader, but a challenge which will, on the whole, repay those who take it up. The ending is as spectacular and as violent as many of the instances of summary justice chronicled in this meticulously researched first novel.

THE GUARDS by Ken Bruen
- Ken Bruen’s tenth novel is populated by guards past and present, and on the move. From Superintendent Clancy in Galway to disgraced former guard Jack Taylor, the hero of the piece, to guards doing nixers in security, the story also takes in Brendan Flood, a guard who has belatedly found God. Reading in part rather more like a film script than a novel, the narrative deals with the hiring of the alcohol-dependent Jack Taylor by Ann Henderson, whose sixteen-year-old daughter has become the latest in a series of suicides. Using his contacts in the guards, a friendly barman and a number of down-and-outs, Jack sets out to found out why and, more importantly, who, as Ann does not believe her daughter killed herself. Enter Jack’s artist friend Sutton, who also offers his help, and it is here that the novel takes on a darker hue. The violence escalates, Jack’s relationship with both Ann and alcohol is on a see-saw, and the narrative is interwoven with the anguish of his earlier relationship with his parents. Death follows on death and, with the help of Garda Brendan Flood, the truth gradually becomes clear to Jack, a truth upon which he feels he must act. The story here is leading inevitably to its conclusion, a conclusion which would have been more satisfactory to this reader if the final two pages of the story had been omitted. The scene is admirably set, the characters are in place and the imagination would supply the rest. Set entirely in Galway, there is an added interest for the local reader in recognizing not only locations but many of the citizens who are mentioned by name. Though not without humour “The Guards” is essentially a dark tale of perversion, evil and violence.

THE DRAWBRIDGE by Marie McGann
- Brid Finucane, whose husband has deserted herself and her young son without a word of explanation, feels the need for a drawbridge to protect herself from life’s problems, a way of blocking them out which she effectively does with the help of an increasing dependency on alcohol. As a woman on her own she is drawn into the local Polish community in her North London home by Adam Barowski, a restaurateur whose attentions begin a questioning process in Brid which is only resolved in the final chapter. Their part of London is populated by a cross-section of nationalities, from a Polish government in exile to a couple from the Caribbean with a son, the precocious Disraeli, into whose mouth are put the words that many would like to say but don’t. Most involved in her life is Zofia, the widow whose teenage daughter has rebelled against her strict upbringing and announces an unplanned pregnancy. A sudden summons from Stanley Finucane to join him in Africa, but no invitation for their son Malachy, throws Brid into confusion, a confusion only slightly lessened by a visit to the Sudan where Stanley is working in a hospital. It is following this visit that her drinking escalates to the point where help is both needed and sought, and it is during this period that she attempts to understand the cold and distant woman who was her mother, and to come to terms with the death of her brother Shane at the age of nine. Though there is a little too much emphasis on the detail of the alcoholic recovery programme undertaken by Brid, a reflection of the author’s own counselling experiences perhaps, this first novel is well constructed and the author has a facility for the well-turned simile - I particularly liked her description of saying goodbye to her dinner party hosts as they stood at the gate “Like aunts in country houses long ago”.

PADDY BOGSIDE by Paddy Doherty
- Derryman Paddy Doherty takes us through the early days of the civil rights unrest in the North, focused on Derry, where he was a major figure in the Derry Citizens’ Defence Association, along with IRA man Sean Keenan. Doherty came to be known as Paddy Bogside from the commanding position he held during the Battle of the Bogside, the period when the residents declared their area of the city “Free Derry”, and built barricades to keep out the army and members of the security forces. After a brief biography he sets out the development of the movement, the rise of John Hume from a prominent position in the credit union movement to his election as a Nationalist MP and the ways in which the various holders of power interacted with each other. We see sides of John Hume and Bernadette Devlin perhaps not encountered before, and we are also forcefully shown the contortions which Doherty himself had to go through to keep the peace between those who advocated only moderate violence and the hardliners who wanted to resort to arms. A number of interesting stories unfold, the lists of sick, deceased or absent citizens whose votes did not go unrecorded during the election of John Hume and Ivan Cooper, the telephone call from Charles Haughey offering IR5,000 to the Defence Committee, and the enrolment of a group of Derrymen into the FCA in Donegal in order that they might be trained in armaments. The description of the Battle of the Bogside, the devastating effects of CS gas and the Bogsiders’ response to it, make riveting reading, as does the account of Doherty’s visit to Leinster House with Sean Keenan to meet senior members of the Irish government. This latter is particularly interesting in light of the latest revelations about the Arms Trial. It was not all earnest and humourless, however, and two events combine to lighten the narrative. One has already appeared in Bishop Edward Daly’s memoir when he describes the blazing ice-cream van careering down the hill from the cathedral, though in Paddy Doherty’s version the music blaring forth has changed from “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” to Sandie Shaw’s “Puppet on a String”. The other event has an almost surreal quality to it, involving as it does the exchange of a new bus for an old one to be used as a barricade in Rosemount, the subsequent hijacking of a jeep and the provision of further barricade material by the British Army. Paddy Doherty himself emerges as a manwho devoted his life to community action and rose to the occasion when that action needed to be escalated. He suffered from what many would perceive as the particularly Irish trait of remembering and resenting wrongs done to his people hundreds of years ago but he comes across as a practical man whose level-headedness brought the citizens of Derry back from the brink of violence on more than one occasion.

SOLDIER OF THE QUEEN by Bernard O’Mahoney With Mick McGovern
- The sentiments underlying the song echoed in this title are far from those expressed by the author in this account of his four-month tour of duty in the North as a member of the British Army. O’Mahoney’s early life was characterized by deprivation and violence, and he seems to have been unable to settle into any sort of a normal civilian routine. His reasons for joining up were not uncommon, it was either the army or prison, and he selected an Irish regiment on the grounds that such regiments were not required to serve in the North. However soon after he passed out as a serving member of the 5th Royal Irish Inniskilling Dragoon Guards it was announced that his regiment was to be sent to a base in Fermanagh for four months. Thus the confusion of identity he already felt as the English-reared son of Irish parents was confounded by his now being faced with the possibility of killing his own countrymen. However one emotion came to his rescue, that of fear, and the descriptions of the almost constant state of alert practised by the soldiers is one of the most telling aspects of this book, explaining though not excusing the often barbaric treatment meted out to the nationalist community in the Lisnaskea area. The feeling of being always in the sights of a sniper, the belief that every friendly face masked a potential attacker, meant that nerves were always stretched taut and over-reaction was almost inevitable. O’Mahoney’s time in Fermanagh coincided with the deaths of the hunger strikers, and the way in which he and his colleagues dealt with this is a good illustration of how irreverence and cold bloodedness were used to disguise the underlying fear. A book was kept in the barracks on how long each hunger striker would take to die, and mocking posters were put up, but they were all aware that the deaths would make their own positions that much more dangerous. It is hard to credit that one section of this narrative, and one dealing with a badly injured colleague of the author, had me laughing out loud as I read it, but the description of the transportation of Edward to the rescue helicopter, which included the four stretcher bearers running towards the helicopter with an empty stretcher at one stage, could have come straight from a “Carry On” film. This was one of the few light moments, however, in a catalogue of violence, fear and prejudice which gives a somewhat different picture of a soldier’s life in Northern Ireland than that drawn by the Army.

AFTER KAFRA - Martin Malone
- Military experience and its effect on the individual soldier is also the subject of this fictional account of a member of the UN peacekeeping force in the Lebanon, who finds he cannot leave behind him the memory of his experiences when he returns to his base in the Curragh. Sergeant Harry Kyle is a member of the Military Police and during the course of his duties witnesses the aftermath of an attack on a village. The remains of the dead soldier and the young girl, the marauding cats who are never far away, give him nightmares which find little sympathy with his already estranged wife. Rejecting the advice to seek help, from whatever corner it comes, Harry sees both his marriage and his career collapsing and is sustained only by the love he feels for his sons. Forced at last to confront his own potential for violence, and gently encouraged by his ailing father, he recognises the need for professional help if his life is to be rebuilt. There is a note of authenticity to this novel testifying to the author’s own experiences while on peacekeeping duty, and a sharp and telling contrast is drawn between the heat and dust of the Lebanon and the reality of the icy winds blowing across the Curragh.

DOUBLETIME by Micky Donnelly
- An artist and member of Aosdana, Micky Donnelly has branched out into the written world and produced a dark and at times confusing novel set in Belfast. Myles becomes embroiled with a female photographer who is pursuing a theme of twins in her work. Unnervingly he meets his own double in her apartment and a glorious case of mistaken identity both comes to his aid and plunges him further into disaster as he tries to escape from the twin dangers of his wife and two heavies sent by his erstwhile landlord. A further mirror image is achieved in his relationship with McNabb, who also succeeded in his career by a kind of duplication, and the events that bind them form mirror images at beginning and end of this curious first novel.

JEREMY’S BABY by Jennifer Chapman
- The eponymous baby in Jennifer Chapman’s study of relationships is the result of an impulsive partner-swapping evening among a group of friends whose relationships are already somewhat tangled. Paul and Jeremy have been friends since school although their roles seem to have reversed in adulthood, with the clumsy and picked-upon Jeremy having emerged as the more successful of the pair in both love and life. He it is who has won over and married Paul’s girlfriend, Angel, while Paul eventually settles down with American singer Marsha, many years his senior. The discord engendered by the announcement of Marsha’s pregnancy provides further shifts in already vulnerable relationships, shifts compounded by Marsha’s protracted illness. The different degrees of responsibility become a kind of dance executed by Paul, Jeremy and Angel, a dance which eventually reaches a finale acceptable to all three, though with the possibility of a reprise in the not too distant future.

THE STORY OF YEW by Guido Mina Di Sospiro
- This enchanting book by a South American-born Italian now living in Florida is based on the famous yew at Muckross Abbey in Killarney, an area which encompasses what is believed to be the oldest stand of yew trees in the world. The author has purposely chosen the title to refer both to the tree and to ourselves, underlining as his book does the relationship between man and nature in general and man and trees in particular. The two-thousand-year-old yew tells her own story of growth and dormancy, of rebirth and survival, and in the process not only gives us glimpses into history but more importantly gently educates the reader in botany and ecology. The Druids give way to the Christians, the Irish kings give way to conquerors from across the sea, and the author permits himself a number of digressions into mystery and folklore. Thus he explains the disappearance of the Roman IX Hispana Legion which vanished from recorded history after spending some time in Britain. Similarly we are treated to a view that Robin Hood served his apprenticeship in Ireland, basing his future success on a longbow made from a branch of the Muckross yew. Each chapter encompasses a lesson to be learnt by the reader and, should we be in any doubt of its import, he has included a detailed appendix annotating each chapter.

THE HERO, HOME by John F. Deane
- A tree telling of its experiences is also a major theme in this collection by John F. Deane, with his interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon poem “The Dream of the Rood”. In this slim volume Deane also presents his versions of another Anglo-Saxon composition, “Seafarer” and an eighth century Latin poem in which a father urges his son to return to Ireland, “that loveliest of shores”, even though he himself will never see his home again. He reflects upon the contrasting values of Ireland past and present in “Knock” when “an ancient people....learned to scoff at all such drollery”. “The Hero, Home” is the fourth in the Icarus series.

HOW THE GAA SURVIVED THE TROUBLES by Desmond Fahy
- Desmond Fahy, in chronicling the number of ways in which the strife in Northern Ireland has impinged on the GAA, has examined the politicisation of that body over the last thirty years. By the use of a series of first-hand accounts of death and injury caused to members of the GAA, we are given an insight both into the sense of identity engendered by membership of the organisation and the almost automatic and adverse reaction known membership drew from members of the security forces. This is in addition to the suspicion and antagonism apparent between the GAA and members of the loyalist community, which brings its own violence. Fahy’s book reads like an overview of news from the North over the past three decades, with names like Aidan McAnespie, Gerry Devlin and Brenda Logue sounding immediate chords. A particular interesting chapter deals with the abrupt end of the GAA career experienced by Sean McNulty, a Catholic from Warrenpoint who joined the RUC and came up against Rule 21, which effectively cut him off from what would almost certainly have been an All-Ireland medal. What shines through in this book is the dedication of the hundreds of people who give up their spare time to encourage in children and young people a love of sport, and who persevere against extraordinary odds to maintain the ideals of the GAA.

GUIDE TO NATIONAL & HISTORIC MONUMENTS OF IRELAND by Peter Harbison
- Dr Peter Harbison’s comprehensive guide was first published thirty years ago and this latest edition was prompted by the necessity to update the information, since many more monuments have been investigated and catalogued. Two major changes will be apparent to those familiar with the first and second (1975) editions, the inclusion of monuments in Northern Ireland and the use of 18th and 19th century illustrations. With an introductory glance at the different types of monuments to be found in Ireland, the guide works alphabetically through the thirty-two counties listing sites of interest. An index and a set of detailed maps completes a work which will prove invaluable to anyone travelling in search of the archaeological treasures of Ireland.

GUIDE TO IRISH GARDENS by Shirley Lanigan
- Where Dr Peter Harbison guides us around our historic and national monuments, Shirley Lanigan’s beautifully illustrated book takes much the same route to show us the best of gardens and gardeners in Ireland. Each province has its own section, opening with a map of the area which is followed by a description of all the gardens chosen by the author with details of opening times, directions and any special features. Interspersed in the directory are a number of useful snippets of information, for example a short biography of Capability Brown, a description of the Cork Garden Trails and tips on the best way to take rose cuttings. It is noticeable that Connaught is sadly lacking in noteable gardens, rating only nineteen when the other three provinces have more than three hundred between them, but I took personal pleasure in the inclusion of Lorna McMahon’s garden at Oranswell in Ms Lanigan’s ten favourite gardens.

FEMALE ACTIVISTS ed. Mary Cullen And Maria Luddy
- The lives of seven Irishwomen are here examined in the light of their contribution to political and feminist action in the first half of the last century. Journalist Medb Ruane considers the life of Kathleen Lynn, perhaps best known as the founder of St Ultan’s Hospital in Dublin and a pioneer in the fight against tuberculosis, who also worked for women’s suffrage as a board member of the women’s Social and Political Union. One of the better-known names in this collection is that of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, whose work towards gender equality has been examined by Margaret Ward. Ireland’s first full-time female trade union official, Belfast’s Mary Galway, is the subject of the contribution from Theresa Moriarty of the Irish Labour History Museum in Dublin and also included in this collection are essays on Louie Bennett, Margaret Cousins, Helena Molony and Rosamond Jacob.

SWAN SONG by William King
- The dwindling number of vocations to religious orders of nuns, the shedding of large old buildings and the gradual freedom allowed following the Second Vatican Council are the subjects of this novel by William King, himself a priest. The gradual widening of the gap between the older and younger nuns, the lengths to which some of the nuns go to assert the new freedom and the soul-searching experienced by others in reconciling what they were taught with what is now accepted, provide us with an insight into the troubled world of the religious as we enter the 21st century. The death of her closest friend in the community, Ita, has led Deirdre Logan to question her own commitment to her religious vows, and her inner debate is played out against a backdrop of power struggles, property deals and the revelations about the order’s founder revealed in an old set of diaries. The author has drawn a disturbing picture of a community in crisis which I suspect reflects with a certain degree of accuracy the present state of religious teaching communities in Ireland.

CELTIC WISDOM FOR BUSINESS by Michael Scott
- Based on the premise that the Celts have been traders since before the birth of Christ, Michael Scott has compiled a collection of sayings relating to the topic, presumably to help those who are part of the Celtic Tiger to carry on the tradition. Among the more succinct are “There is much to be heard from a closed mouth” and “Discipline brings its own luck”. Sections are devoted to honour, money and common sense and among those which I found particularly interesting was “In business one needs only the gifts of the fox: a good eye and a sharp ear, and the ability to pounce”.