Book Review: Music Love Drugs War

Music Love Drugs War, By Geraldine Quigley

Derry, Northern Ireland, 1981 -- It's a hard time in the history of The Troubles. Memories are long in this divided city.

Nine years have passed since 14 men were gunned down on the streets of the Bogside. IRA men are currently starving themselves in the H Blocks of the Maze Prison, Outside, during the wet spring and through the warm summer months, the angry youth are rioting to avenge the deaths and for the kicks.

Geraldine Quigley

"But the bin lids still rattled, of course, for the passing of another person dying for Ireland," Quigley writes in her authentic first novel. It's an audacious start for the Derry resident, and I hope to see more from her.

Quigley introduces us to a group of young friends and acquaintances in Derry, most in their late teens and on the cusp of adulthood, but unsure of their futures. They lived in tight-knit, often claustrophobic families. 

Derry is a city where jobs are scarce, the violence can be thick, and the hope can be slim. At the start of the '80s, their pleasures lie in drugs, music, and each other. Their fears -- and their realities -- lie in the violent struggle that has engulfed Ireland for 400 years.

Quigley defines Northern Ireland like the poet Seamus Heaney

"Yet for all this art and sedentary trace

"I am incapable. The famous

"Northern reticence. The tight gag of place

"And time: yes, yes. Of the 'wee six' I sing

"Where to be saved you only must save face

"And whatever you say, you say nothing."

But these friends have decisions to consider: University if they can, emigrating if they must, the IRA if they have to. Their decisions have consequences, and Quigley displays those outcomes, and whether they be positive, negative, or neutral, they are compelling.

Quigley tells their stories with commanding prose, brilliant dialogue, and deep background knowledge. Her characters are as familiar as an Irish mother, as charming as an Irish grandmother, and as exasperating as an Irish father. Her scenes and places are as intimate, euphoric, and sad as an Irish wake. Her story telling is enticingly, traditionally Irish.