Book Review: Factory Girls

 By Michelle Gallen

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: The Strand, New York 

• Why I bought this book: I am always on the lookout for contemporary Irish fiction, especially focusing on Northern Ireland

*******

    Northern Ireland circa 1994, to lift a phrase from an English author of note, was the best of times and the worst of times.

    Serious discussions were taking place about possible talks that could lead to a ceasefire by the warring paramilitaries, the leaving of the British Army patrols, and true efforts at self government. But The Troubles went on, with the corruption, bombings, separations, discrimination, and revenge killings a daily fact of life for the two communities. In some ways, it intensified. As one character says,

 "a ceasefire has tae be in the works the way your lot are settling old scores before they have tae lay their guns down."

    Into this steps Maeve Murray, a brash, intelligent, yet insecure Catholic woman, waiting for the results of her GCSE tests, which will determine whether she goes to college in London for her desired journalism degree or gets stuck in the miserably small border town where she lives. For the summer though, she takes a job in a factory pressing shirts. It's a deliberately integrated working place -- meaning Catholics and Protestants work side-by-side -- with a government grant from Invest Northern Ireland and an English manager named Andy Sturbridge, who likes to get friendly with the girls working in his shop.

    Gallen uses to setting to explain The Troubles through Maeve and her friends, Caroline and Aoife, also with summer jobs in the factory while awaiting their test results. Maeve explains to an Englishman who claims Irish heritage about the dilemma of her living in a land that's both Irish and British, but not being accepted by the Republic of Ireland or Great  Britain.

What you don't get is I'm not even Irish -- not proper Irish. I just want tae be. But all I am to the Free Staters is a dirty Northerner. I'm as pathetic as the Prods trying to be British when your lot think they're just a pack of Paddies. You don't want them. Them down south don't want us. Everyone just wants us to crawl away and die some place dark where they don't have to listen to us squealing for attention.

    The language is stark and real. Maeve's voice is real. Caroline is the quintessential teenager trying to find herself. Fidelma, a long-suffering factory hand who takes shit from no one, provides the exasperated feminist voice. Aoife is the daughter of wealth and privilege  from Dublin, stuck in a world she doesn't understand.

    Others show the Protestant perspective, or the outsider looking to take advantage, and those who are hoping to change things.

    It's Northern Ireland as it was before peace. It cries out for a sequel.

Book Review: The Ghosts of Belfast

 By Stuart Neville

• Pub Date: 2009 in Great Britain; 2023 in the United States

• Where I bought this book: The Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Mo. 

• Why I bought this book: It is a rare find -- a contemporary novel about Northern Ireland

*******

 

  Gerry Fegan is a republican hero in Catholic West Belfast -- during The Troubles he was responsible for a dozen sectarian killings of cops, loyalist paramilitaries, British soldiers, and ordinary civilians. He quietly served 12 years in prison before being pardoned and released as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

    Now, a decade after that agreement was signed, he's seeing ghosts. 

    Literally.

    The spirits of the people he killed want him to kill again. He tries to drink them away, but they stick around. He tries to reason with them, but it does no good. He's beginning to gain a second reputation, as a drunk who talks to the wind.

    But the ghosts are clear in what they want -- the deaths of the men who ordered Fegan to kill, men who are now seen as players, politicians and peacemakers. But to the ghosts, they are cold, hard men who lived violently and killed without remorse. Their justification was Ireland's cause, and their petty power.

    So Fegan obeys them and does his duty, which he has always seen himself as doing. The hard men quickly figure out who's now killing them, and move to protect their new, respectable standings. 

    This was Neville's first book, and the native of County Armagh is now known as the "king of Belfast noir." But this is a violent, unsentimental book, full of bombings and shootings and beatings. It's sometimes hard to read, but it's well worth it.

    The Ghosts ... portray The Troubles as vicious time, and its volunteers and leaders mostly as criminal thugs who used "Ireland's Cause" as an excuse to torture and slaughter their enemies.

Book Review: Trespasses

 By Louise Kennedy

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio. 

• Why I bought this book: I found it after a long  search, because it's about Northern Ireland.

******  

    I liked the stories of life in Belfast as The Troubles were settling in for a long spell in the early 1970s. The romantic episodes, not so much.

    But that romance -- between a married Protestant lawyer who defends Republican activists and young Catholic teacher whose family owns the rare pub that welcomes both sides -- is integral to the overall tale.

    Cushla lives with her mother on the outskirts of  Belfast, and like the majority of her community, is just trying to find a life away from the violence that is 1970s Northern Ireland. She's taking care of her mother, who likes the drink a bit too much, helping her brother out at the family pub, and teaching her young charges at a Catholic primary school.

    While cleaning up at the bar one night, she meets Michael Agnew, and against her better judgment but seduced by his charm and caring nature, begins a not-so-secret affair. 

    Cushla is a middling and complicated character. She knows her duties -- to family, to Catholicism, to Ireland -- but her heart isn't in it. She knows her heart -- Michael, with his failings, treats her decently and lifts her up. She knows what she should do -- help out one of her students from a neighboring, mixed family who are trying to raise decent children amidst their poverty, but she also knows both communities look down on them.

    Cushla's complications are Northern Ireland's complications. In fits and starts, sometimes headed in the wrong direction, sometimes going against the grain, both her and her community mostly try to do the right things. But being pulled in all directions, neither are quite sure what the right thing really is.

    The ending is satisfying. And that's all I'll say about that.

Book Review: Big Girl Small Town

 

•  Author: Michelle Gallen

• Where I bought this book: Half Price Books, Florence, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: It was a novel about Northern Ireland that seemed intriguing 

****

    Majella O'Neill exists in an out-of-the-way border town in Northern Ireland. She works in a chip shop, and took up smoking so she had excuses to take breaks.

 

   Otherwise, she's a loner, an introvert, and an observer of people.

    She doesn't like her job -- it's a greasy dead end, but it's the best she can do on the Catholic side of Aghybogey. She doesn't really like people, her town, her customers, fashion, makeup -- oh, heck, she doesn't like a lot of things. So many, in fact, that she maintains a detailed, numerical list of such things.

    She does enjoy a few things: the TV show Dallas, which she watches on video every night. Her greasy free nightly meal from the chip shop. Sex. And drinking in the pub.

    The novel is mostly about Majella's observations of her town, its people, and her interactions with the customers. Gallen is exhaustive in reviewing her conversations, even when they are identical every night. She make this clear -- she has similar discussions with the same people every night, and not only does she reiterate them, she reminds you these are the same discussions she always has with the same people.

    Such is the flaw of an otherwise methodical novel that tries to give you the sense of  a small town in Northern Ireland after The Troubles. It does a middling job on the tedious daily life, but larger details -- such as Majella's relationship with her grandmother, Maggie, whose violent death is portrayed more as sort of a minor point -- are glossed over.

    Nonetheless, it's an interesting and surprisingly quick read.  

Book Review: The Elephant of Belfast

The Elephant of Belfast, by S. Kirk Walsh

    Amid the bombs and destruction of life during World War II, a young Northern Irish woman tries to preserve what she can.

    Her family is troubled; her few friends are floundering, and her job as a part-time zoo worker is underwhelming. So Hettie Quin tries to save a young elephant from suffering as mankind wreaks havoc.

    It's a fine book, with a decent if depressing story, but just a tad bit overwritten. Some of Walsh's passages go on far too long, with an amount detail that simply does not add to the tale. 

    But Walsh captures pre-war Belfast -- already an old industrial city split between its Protestant and Catholic citizens -- as it crumbles before our eyes. Hettie tries to save the city's soul partly by saving her small part of it.

    

    Her life is a mess. Her beloved older sister recently died in childbirth. Her mother has fallen in a deep depression; her father has abandoned the clan, and her brother-in-law is finding solace in joining the IRA. At 20, Hettie is thinking of her own future -- trying to escape the Irish pressure to get married and start a family. She wants a job, but also find herself attracted to a co-worker and her brother-in-law. A female co-worker urges her to live out her dreams, but also to spruce herself up to find a man.

    Meanwhile, the German bombs are falling on the ciy's docks and industrial center, near the zoo and Hettie's home. The Protestant half of the city curses the Germans, while many in the Catholic neighborhood see an opening in the English-German war to re-unite the long conflict for Irish freedom and unity. Hettie, again, is caught in the middle -- while she is Protestant, her sister married a Catholic, and thus her in-laws and her infant niece are Catholic.

    But her key struggle is to save the young elephant that recently came to the zoo, and is in danger. Neighbors who live near the zee fear the bombing might allow the animals to escape and threaten their lives.

    Walsh captures Hettie as a confused but kind woman, dealing with her own issues while her neighborhood contends with the ancient Irish Troubes and her city with its very survival. 

This Year in Books: 2019 Edition

My Best Books of 2019

I like to begin the year reading a favorite story about one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Roberto Clemente died New Year's Eve 1972 when he boarded a plane to take supplies to Nicaragua, which had been recently devastated by an earthquake. The plane crashed, killing the 38-year-old Clemente, the pilot, and three others.

Fifteen years later, writer W.P. Kinsella, working off the idea that Clemente's body had never been found, wrote "Searching for January," in which a tourist sees Clemente coming ashore in 1987. In a touch of magical realism, they discuss what happened and what might have been.

Ready for breakfast and the yearly reading of Kinsella's work.

OK, that's a long intro/aside to my first Year in Review blog post, featuring the best books I have read this year. According to my Goodreads profile, I read a book a week, which, according to one estimate I have seen, means I read about 50 pages a day. Sounds about right.

Anyway, of those, I have selected eight as my books of the year. Why eight, you ask? Why not, I respond.

So here were go.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Robinson. This novel, about a WPA project that paid women to ride mules into the hollers of Eastern Kentucky, became one of my favorite of all time. The writing is extraordinary, vivid, and sensitive. Richardson reaches perfection in her use of dialect -- just the right amount to give flavor to the speech of the people, but never too much. In addition to her keen ear, Richardson has a keen heart and mind in creating and letting her characters live their lives. Full review.

The Bees, by Laline Paull. Paull gives us a hive of honeybees that are feminist, pro-labor, and loyal, and presents them to tell a story of love, hope, and commitment. It's a book not about bees, but about us. It's about how we are locked into a caste at birth and struggle mightily to escape. Full review.

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan. With powerful and explosive writing, Edugyan tells the tale of George Washington Black, who begins life as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados in the 19th Century. From that beginning, she follows Wash through the United States, Canada, and England, as he tries to escape slavery and live the life of a freeman. But melancholy and a haunted, hunted existence follows him. Full review.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. This is today's story of what happens in the years of The Handmaid's Tale and its government of Gilead. It is told in various voices, from a top aunt in the organization to members of the resistance. They include children, who only know Gilead after the revolution, as they are taught little about the previous life. It's an inspiring tale from a top-notch writer. Full review.

Elevation, by Stephen King. This is an unusually short Stephen King book, but it's also the ultimate Stephen King book. It has great characters in a great story that's well written, with a little supernatural sprinkled in. It's a short novel packed with intensity and issues. Full review.

Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver melds past and present into a sentimental yet unsparing tale, exploring how our present determines our future and influences interpretations of the past. In her literate prose, with a gift for the narrative of empathy and understanding, Kingsolver touches on what moves us all -- our family, our homes, our beliefs, and our hopes for the futures. Full review

Night Boat to Tangier, by Kevin Barry. In the long, extraordinary history of great Irish writers, Barry is finding himself among the elite. Night Boat tells about  two old Irish drug dealers and wanderers, who have made it good, then lost most of it. As they wait in a Spanish port for one character's daughter, Barry tells their story in writing that is ravishingly beautiful. He makes every word count, and causes you to use your five senses to take it all in. Full review.

Music Love Drugs War, by Geraldine Quigley. Quigley introduces us to a group of young friends and acquaintances in Derry, Northern Ireland, at the start of the 1980s. Most of them are in their late teens and on the cusp of adulthood, but unsure of their futures. They live in a city where jobs are scarce, the violence can be thick, and the hope can be slim. Their pleasures lie in drugs, music, and each other. Their fears and realities lie in the violent struggle that has engulfed Ireland for 400 years. Full review.

Book Review: Say Nothing

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, 

by Patrick Radden Keefe

    The Irish keep a reputation for having a touch of the Blarney, but those from the North tend to be a wee bit more reticent. This is where "the tight gag of place" takes over, as the poet Seamus Heaney puts it.

Patrick Radden Keefe

Where to be saved you only must save face

And whatever you say, you say nothing

    Patrick Radden Keefe explores this phenomenon, along with the North's reputation for minimizing what they euphemistically call "The Troubles." This description held for more than 30 years, despite people being dragged from their homes and beaten or shot to death, and despite more than 3,000 casualties from the late 1960s into the 1990s.

    His book begins with a tale epitomizing this duality: The abduction of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10. As her children look on, she is taken from her Belfast flat in 1973, kidnapped and shot. Her body is buried, and is not found until 2003.

    We don't immediately know what happened to her.

    Keefe delves into the murder, its background, and the history and social order of the communities in which it took place. What comes out is a descriptive narrative of The Troubles, especially from the Catholic/Nationalist/Republican perspective.

    Keefe acknowledges his book is not a comprehensive account, because it omits the Protestant/Loyalist viewpoint, and focuses on IRA activity, violence, and politics. But this is OK, because Irish Republicanism and its fight for independence has always been the driving force behind the Irish civil rights movements, and the resulting violence from both sides.

    I know the history of The Troubles and have family and friends from Northern Ireland on both sides of the dispute. But this book hit home in presenting just how pervasive the violence was, and how instinctive the battle for Irish freedom is. Indeed, that is the heart of the book.

    Keefe investigates McConville's disappearance and murder by interviewing dozens of people involved in The Troubles, and reading about and piercing together their stories. He gets a jump start after learning of an oral history project, whose records were kept at Boston College. Originally, the project planners pledged to ensure those who participated  -- both IRA men and women and those from the Loyalist paramilitary organizations -- secrecy and anonymity until they were dead. But that idea fell apart when the Police Service of Northern Ireland got wind of the project and served warrants seeking information on the murders of McConville and similar people known as "the disappeared."

    I originally thought Keefe had used the oral interviews for his book. But no; most of them were subsequently destroyed. Keefe actually did the legwork and interviews himself, tracking down family members of the victims, including McConville's children, and those who volunteered for the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries.

    But one key figure refused to speak with Keefe: Gerry Adams, the longtime president of Sinn Fein, often described as the political wing of the IRA. For various reasons, Adams long has denied being a member of the IRA, a statement few actually believe.

    Keefe is harshly critical of Adams, blaming him for ordering the murder of McConville, claiming she was a British informant. Adams has denied having anything to do with her death.

    Keefe's also criticizes Adams for adamantly denying that he ever was a member of the IRA, whose volunteers were committed soldiers in a war, killing or sending men to die for love of country. Adams then turned around and negotiated a peace agreement that maintained the status quo, Keefe writes. Thus, he left those soldiers with neither the peace of mind of having their efforts validated, nor the comfort of acknowledging their commitment. In essence, Keefe suggests, Adams absolved his own behavior while betraying those who had volunteered to be soldiers for Ireland.

    As one former IRA volunteer said of the predicament of those who followed in their forefathers' footsteps and fought what they considered to be the good fight for a just and rightful cause:

Think of the armed struggle as the launch of a boat ... getting a hundred people to push the boat out. This boat is stuck in the sand, right, and get them to push the boat out and then the boat sailing off and leaving the hundred people behind, right. The boat is away, sailing on the high seas, with all the luxuries that it brings, and the poor people that launched the boat are left sitting in the muck and the dirt and the shit and the sand.

    But here, Keefe, ultimately if cautiously, defends Adams: "Whatever callous motivations Adams might have possessed, and whatever deceptive machinations he might have employed, he steered the IRA out of a bloody and intractable conflict and into a brittle but enduring peace."