Category: Bloomsbury Circus

2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, Author, Bloomsbury Circus, Book review, Fiction, literary fiction, Literary prizes, Louise Kennedy, Northern Ireland, Publisher, Setting

‘Trespasses’ by Louise Kennedy

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Fiction – Kindle edition; Bloomsbury Circus; 320 pages; 2022.

Winner of the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year 2022 and shortlisted for a slew of other awards, Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses is the tale of a doomed love affair set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.

Every second person in the world seems to have read it — and loved it. But as much as I enjoyed it on a superficial level, I found the storyline predictable and cliched.

At one point, Cushla Lavery, the main character, tells her lover: “This is going to end badly, isn’t it?” And I wondered why it had taken her so long to figure it out because when a young woman falls for an older married man it never really ends well.

Throw in the complexities of their religious divide — she’s Catholic, he’s Protestant — class differences and a bloody and violent sectarian war playing out around them, then the chance of a happy-ever-after seems particularly far-fetched. But maybe I’m being harsh — or too cynical.

A secret affair

The main story is about Cushla’s clandestine relationship with Michael Agnew, an older married man she meets in the “garrison town” pub owned by her family. She’s from working-class Catholic stock and teaches at the local primary school. He’s an Ulster protestant and works as a criminal barrister in Belfast.

But there are subsidiary storylines that showcase other aspects of Cushla’s life and go some way to explain why she’s embarked on a forbidden relationship.

These include looking after her widowed mother, Gina, who is an alcoholic and sometimes can’t even get out of bed she’s so drunk or hungover; working evenings in the pub run by her brother Eamonn and having to serve the clientele, some of which are British soldiers; and taking an outside interest in the care of one of her young students, seven-year-old Davy McGeown, whose father is the victim of a particularly vicious attack by paramilitaries. This all place demands on her time and her inner resources, so that there is little left for her; she’s too busy mothering everyone else.

Did Cushla fancy Michael because he was the only man she knew who didn’t talk incessantly about his mummy?

A friendship with a male teacher, Gerry Devlin, who many think is her boyfriend, acts as a convenient cover. But many of her rendezvous with Michael happen out in the open when he draws her into his sophisticated circle of friends by inviting her along to teach them the Irish language.

One-sided relationship

But right from the start the relationship is one-sided and we know next to nothing about Michael, except that he has had many affairs and he’s the one that calls the shots:

He would never give her more than this. For her there would just be liaisons arranged an hour or two in advance, couplings in lay-bys, evenings at his friends’ house under unconvincing pretexts. When her thoughts flitted – briefly – to his wife, the guilt at what she was doing to her did not take.

What makes their relationship seem even more reckless is the frisson of danger that infects the whole city in an “unspeakable war”. The threat of death, from bombs and guns, is on every page. Some chapters open with a series of news headlines — about deadly explosions and arrests and caches of weapons being found — to hammer home the point that this affair is happening in a war zone.

This death and violence are so normalised that the pair never discuss how Michael’s job paints him as a terrorist target…

As a story of a woman navigating multiple battlefields, Trespasses is an entertaining read.

It’s largely told as a series of vignettes, with the affair underpinning the narrative. But because I knew exactly where that narrative was headed, some of the vignettes felt like filler. That said, the denouement is suitably powerful and shocking and leaves a lasting impression.

I liked the book, I just didn’t love it.

If you liked this, you might also like:

‘Shadows on Our Skin’ by Jennifer Johnston: through the eyes of a young Derry schoolboy, this gently nuanced novel shows what it is like to grow up while The Troubles rage around you.

‘Lies of Silence’ by Brian Moore: A heart-hammering tale set during The Troubles in which the IRA orders a hotel manager to park a car in the hotel’s car park. If he refuses, his wife, who has been taken captive, will be murdered.

I read this book as part of Cathy’s #ReadingIrelandMonth23, which runs throughout March. I’m a little behind so that’s why this review is more than a week late. You can find out more about this annual blog event at Cathy’s blog 746 Books.

Update 1 May 2023: This book has been shortlisted for the 2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. I am attempting to read all the books on the shortlist before the winner is announced at the end of May. This qualifies as the first book read (out of a total of five).

2021 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, Author, Bloomsbury Circus, Book review, Fiction, literary fiction, Literary prizes, Publisher, Reading Projects, Rob Doyle, TBR 21

‘Threshold’ by Rob Doyle

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Fiction – paperback; Bloomsbury Circus; 316 pages; 2020. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Have you ever read a book and then been stumped about how to review it or how to explain it to others?

Rob Doyle’s new “novel” — I use the term lightly because I’m not sure if this is a novel or a memoir or reportage or a series of essays because it certainly feels like all of these things in places — is just like that.

I don’t know how to articulate what Threshold is about. There’s no plot, there are few characters and next to no dialogue. It’s probably best described as a novel of ideas.

I enjoyed reading it and I came away from it feeling as if my grey matter had been deeply stimulated because it got me thinking about all kinds of things, specifically how humans use art, literature, music, drugs and travel to escape themselves, to gain new experiences and to make sense of the world around them.

An ageing narrator

The book is narrated by someone called Rob, who may or may not be the actual author. He’s writing as a middle-aged Irishman looking back on his life, and each self-contained chapter explains a specific incident or time in his 20s and 30s framed around a certain issue.

For example, in the opening chapter headed Mushroom, Rob tells us about his use of magic mushrooms, collected in Dublin’s Phoenix Park where they grow wild, to get high; in Mediterranean, we follow him on his trip to the small Catalan beach town of Blanes to follow in the footsteps of Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, who lived and worked there for a large part of his life until his death in 2003; and in Nightclub he tells us about living in Berlin and being immersed in the hardcore techno club scene.

Sandwiched between each chapter is a one-page letter (or email) in which Rob writes to an unnamed friend, sharing an insight (usually about the writing process) or aphorism.

For as long as you are working, you have a why: when you reach the end of a project, the why dissolves. You are left alone with yourself, in all the pain from which the work had offered relief. But there is another perspective, more comforting and no less valid: with the completion of every book, it gets easier to disappear.

There’s no narrative arc because the stories aren’t necessarily told in chronological order. And yet, for all its breaking of normal “writerly” conventions, this is an imminently readable book. The prose is silky smooth, the voice understated. Occasionally it is shocking (there are many references to sex and drug use, for instance), but on the whole, I found myself swept up in the tales (and the ideas and the facts) revealed here.

It is deeply philosophical and introspective, but the mood is lightened by a playful sense of humour running throughout, although it’s not immediately obvious. You have to read closely to spot the clever “in” jokes and the sly little digs. In a book that is obsessed with recounting dreams, for instance, I couldn’t help but laugh at this line from Henry James, tucked away on page 189, that says: “Tell a dream, lose a reader.”

Nor could I withhold my chuckles when I came across this paragraph about suicide:

There was only one way I would have the balls to kill myself and that was by shooting myself in the skull. That seemed by far the best way of doing it: quick, loud, bloody and — hopefully — painless. All of this was fanciful, though. I could not shoot my skull because I didn’t live in a country where I could acquire a gun. The only country I knew where I’d be able to buy a gun was America, and I could never live there again: I would rather kill myself.

One man’s search for meaning

In essence, Threshold is one man’s search for meaning in a world often devoid of meaning. It’s a very male book, by which I mean it’s clear that Rob navigates a world that is made for him (without fear of falling pregnant, for instance, or being taken advantage of when drunk or high) and it’s sometimes hard to accept that his lack of clear direction in his life is anything other than his own making.

I loved the journey it took me on, including the meta aspects of it, and the cleverness of the writing and the ideas and philosophies presented. It’s a book to mull over, chew on, discuss with others. It’s one of the strangest books I’ve ever read, but it’s also one of the most engaging. Make of that what you will.

Threshold has been shortlisted for this year’s Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award. I still don’t know how to articulate what it is about.

If you liked this book, you might also like:

‘In a Strange Room’ by Damon Galgut: A lush, hypnotic novel that explores longing and desire through the prism of travel.

This is my 1st book for the 2021 Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award and my 10th for #TBR21 in which I’m planning to read 21 books from my TBR between 1 January and 31 May 2021. I was actually sent this book unsolicited by the Australian publisher last year not long after I posted my review of Doyle’s debut novel.

Author, Bloomsbury Circus, Book review, Fiction, literary fiction, Publisher, sarah crossan, Setting, UK

‘Here is the Beehive’ by Sarah Crossan

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Fiction – paperback; Bloomsbury Circus; 288 pages; 2020. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

‘Here is the beehive.
Where are the bees?
Hidden away where nobody sees.
Watch and you’ll see them
come out of the hive.
One, two, three, four, five!’

So goes the nursery rhyme that lends its title to Sarah Crossan’s debut novel, Here is the Beehive.

The bees hiding in their hive represent the narrator’s deeply secretive world, for this is a compelling story about one woman’s adulterous affair and the pain of hiding her grief when her lover unexpectedly dies.

I read it in two sittings, unable to tear myself away from it. It was akin to watching a car crash. And yet there was something strangely beautiful about the tale.

This is despite the fact that the narrator, Ana, isn’t a particularly nice person. She’s deceitful, self-centred and not exactly reliable. She uses her high-powered job as a lawyer specialising in wills and estates as a cover for staying away from her marital home for long periods so she can carry on her affair with Connor.

And then, when her lover dies after a three-year-long elicit relationship, she gets to meet his widow, Rebecca, because she is the executor of Connor’s will.

Yes, it’s a bit twisted. And that’s probably why the narrative works, for I was itching to find out what would happen next; what outrageous thing would Ana try? Would she ever confess her secret to Rebecca, share her grief or break down in front of her own family? Any wonder I couldn’t put it down.

Verse novel

One of the most interesting aspects of Here is the Beehive is the way that the book is laid out. I’ve seen it labelled a “verse novel” because the story is broken into stanzas. There are no large chunks of text. Each paragraph is surrounded by plenty of white space, another reason why it’s so easy to read.

And the prose is beautiful, filled with exquisite observations, achingly human sentiment — little jealousies, bitterness, misplaced compassion — and all-too authentic insights into marriage and family life.

And did I mention it’s written in the second person?

You kissed my face
on a bench in Coldfall Wood
and told me you were sorry
about the woman and her sick child,
and sorry I never had time to stop
and sorry you couldn’t take care of me
and sorry you were married
and sorry I was married
and sorry also for yourself.

Here is the Beehive is an intense, immersive read, the kind that gets under the skin. It’s a simple yet stunning piece of work. More, please.