Blowing away the cobwebs
J. F. Cronin
INISHOWEN by Joseph O'Connor Seeker, £10, pp. 473 With the possible exceptions of Kuwait after it struck oil, or East Germany after the wall came down, no country in modern times has changed as much and as rapidly as has Ireland over the last ten years. And now Joseph O'Connor has written a novel which not only encapsu- lates the startling, often traumatic changes Which have occurred to what was once a conservative, insular, theocratic society, but Which is also a love story, a realistic thriller, and an account of grief and loss, home- coming, exile and belonging. It is also extremely funny. And the different ele- ments are drawn together in a way that is at once disconcerting and moving. In Martin Aitken, the disillusioned, bereaved, alcoholic policeman, O'Connor has created a character to stand alongside the creations of Wambaugh or Simenon. A policeman's lot is rarely a happy one. An Irish Special Branch man's is more problematic than most. And Ellen Amery, the returning exile who will discover things about her heritage Which she could never have expected, is a Complex, tragic and wholly convincing fig- ure who in the hands of a lesser writer might have been little more than a type.
The new godless Ireland of BMWs, refugees, software companies, Sikh doctors, drug addicts, bank robbers, cappuccino bars and million-pound houses is evoked with great skill and perception, as is the collapsing moral authority of the Church, the pervasive influence of Anglo-American pop culture, sitting uneasily with the Celtic mists, and the complexity of the history of the place: 'a society at war with its past, or at least with conflicting versions of its sev- eral pasts,' as one of the characters puts it. And the old Ireland still exists, in places like Belturbet and Ballyjamesduff, where the tourists are never heard of, and never venture.
O'Connor has a good ear. He manages to capture the speech patterns and humour of the Dubs at least as well as Roddy Doyle. 'I'd eat a nun's arse through a con- vent gate' is one way to convey hunger pangs. A woman with a drinking problem 'would suck it out of a dishcloth if she was let'.
The naivety and credulity of the Irish- American tourist is dealt with acerbically, though not unkindly, as in the sense of shock that the New York barstool republi- can senses when he finds out that the Ire- land of The Quiet Man no longer exists, indeed never did. The psychic shocks of previous centuries' scatterings still resonate in the 21st century, as do ancient enmities and the still recent memories of grinding poverty.
This is a tremendous book, affecting, intelligent, ironic, humane and utterly con- vincing. If a 25th-century historian wishes his students to have a picture of New York in the mid-Eighties, he will tell them to study Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Inishowen will suffice to tell them what Ireland was like at the turn of the 21st century.
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