This Plague of Souls by Mike McCormack

First published in Great Britain in 2023; published by ‎ Soho Press on January 2, 2024

John Nealon grew up with an understanding that farming “was a glutinous realm, throbbing with pain across cycles of death and renewal that were tinted with green shit and blood-veined mucus.” When his father died, Nealon sold the cattle and rented out the farmland, keeping the house as his residence when he’s not traveling. Nealon studied art, demonstrated serious potential, and squandered his talent by devoting his days to alcohol and weed.

In the east of Ireland, Nealon met Olewyn. He either rescued or kidnapped her as she was riding a heroin high. He brought her back to his village in the west of Ireland. They married and Olweyn became pregnant. Nealon built a studio, furnished it with paints and canvasses, then watched his dreams die. “In the neatness and order of his new studio, Nealon recognized not a new beginning but an end, a memorial to everything he had already done and a lament to all those things his imagination now refused to reach for.” He spent the following years working as a carpenter.

Then Nealon was arrested and remanded to prison to await trial. After a ten-month detention in prison, Nealon’s trial was “set at naught by bad grammar and poor spelling.” The prosecution’s case collapsed and Nealon returned home to find an empty house. Nealon’s backstory is revealed in “separate strands and lurching incidents” as Nealon contemplates his life and lonely home.

As the novel begins, Nealon has no idea where his wife and child have gone. Instead of being greeted by his family, he is greeted by his ringing phone. A series of conversations with a stranger follow. The stranger seems to know everything about Nealon, including the precise moment Nealon enters his home and the location of his electrical main. The stranger wants to meet. The stranger hints that he knows the location of Nealon’s wife and child, so Nealon agrees to meet him.

Nealon conducts a paranoid search of his body and clothing for a transmitter, without result. How does the stranger seem to know his every move? An undefined threat, perhaps related to terrorism, has Ireland on high alert. Soldiers patrol the streets and set up checkpoints on local roads. Is the stranger related to the national threat? Nealon worries about his wife and son in this frightening historical moment. But perhaps it is not the moment that frightens them. Perhaps Nealon is the threat. Nealon comes to understand that they “should not be within psychic distance of him for fear the black radiance of his accumulated circumstances may shrivel and waste them.”

The story comes together during Nealon’s meeting with the stranger. Small observational details that seemed unimportant to the narrative suddenly gain new meaning. It takes some time to learn what Nealon might or might not have done that prompts the meeting. Nealon is accused of extraordinary crimes, improbably committed for altruistic purposes. Could the accusations be true? Is the terrorist threat a real thing? Mike McCormack leaves the reader with the stranger’s opinions but no clear answers.

At the meeting’s conclusion, Nealon has an epiphany. McCormack does not spell out Nealon’s conclusions or the reasoning that brings Nealon to a new understanding of his life. The stranger gives Nealon a choice, but the choice and its consequences are just as unclear as the stranger’s identity. Perhaps the choice involves a return to, or renunciation of, the past. Readers who like to discuss ambiguous literature will find enough material in This Plague of Souls to fuel a lengthy debate.

Despite (or because of) its puzzling and frustrating plot, This Plague of Souls is a joy to read, if only for the sharpness of McCormack’s prose and the depth of Nealon’s isolated existence. Perhaps a second reading would help my comprehension of the novel’s ending and the point that McCormack wanted to make. I will leave it to more scholarly minds to undertake that analysis. I’m happy to have experienced the story and its telling.

RECOMMENDED

Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen

First published in Great Britain in 2022; published by Algonquin Books on November 29, 2022

Factory Girls takes place in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The background of religious and political division balances the novel’s humor. The story is also infused with biting commentary on the role of gender and class in the UK. While those serious themes evolve until they give weight to a simple story, the bright and opinionated protagonist assures the reader of a serious laugh on nearly every page.

Maeve Murray is a Catholic who grew up with the Troubles. She isn’t as affected by bombings and deaths as members of her parents’ generation; they seem a normal part of her life. But when news reports exaggerate the harm caused by an IRA bomb that a local had dismantled before the bomb squad arrived to set it off, Maeve decides to become a journalist. She’s tired of slanted media coverage and wants to bring a perspective of truth to the news — not that she expects to be assigned to serious news coverage, given her gender.

Maeve has taken her A-levels and has been accepted into University College in London if the results meet the university’s standards. She won’t know until mid-August. To earn some money and pass the time, she spends the summer working at the local shirt factory with her two best friends, Caroline and Aoife. Her job is to iron shirts.

Initially, the plot follows Maeve as she drinks with her friends after work and lusts after the few attractive men in her life. She writes off most of the men she sees in the pub because they have entered their thirties and are “fat and filthy.” Although she despises the man, she feels a pleasant physical response whenever she sees the factory owner, Andy Strawbridge. Andy drives a Jag and has a reputation for giving lifts home to factory girls so he can “park up some lonely lane” and get blown by his girl of choice.

Strawbridge has taken a development grant after promising to employ both Protestants and Catholics. His factory is non-union and his pay is predictably substandard, for which he blames cheap labor in less developed countries. Some of the factory workers, including Maeve, decide to investigate Strawbridge’s business operation. They don’t like what they find.

Maeve is also suspicious of the factory’s ability to unify a divided city. By the novel’s end, Maeve is disgusted with attempts to bring unity that are nothing but showmanship. Catholics and Protestants on the same quiz team need to be driven to the quiz by armed British escorts. Armed guards also transport a choir that sings songs of peace. Maeve comes to believe that covering the divisions with pretty wallpaper won’t end the bombings. She wants to get religion out of schools, to integrate schools and neighborhoods and the police, but effective solutions are more difficult than singing “Imagine” to students who have been raised to hate practitioners of a religion they do not share.

Maeve’s suspicion that Strawbridge is not to be trusted underlies the plot. Most of the story, however, is devoted to Maeve’s observations of life and interactions with her two friends. Aoife’s parents are more affluent than the other families Maeve knows, and Aoife is grateful that Maeve doesn’t hold her social class against her. Caroline is nearly as bright as Maeve and Aoife but less ambitious. She doesn’t know whether she wants to leave a hometown that will only prove to be a dead end if she stays.

Maeve has been reading Dale Carnegie to learn how to get along with co-workers but being artificial isn’t in her nature. Her feisty personality accounts for most of the novel’s humor. Maeve’s Northern Irish voice is wonderful. Here she describes a recently opened coffee shop: “McHugh’s Brews was bunged with wee women murmuring over an iced bun and tearing the arse out of a pot of tea.” On Aoife’s innocence: “If Aoife fell into a barrel of cocks she’d come out sucking her own thumb.” On generational differences: “Her mam’s generation had been mad for civil rights and the marching before the TV mast had boosted its signal and the improved reception settled their heads.”

Maeve is astonished to discover that the religious differences between Catholics and Protestants are slight (a couple of words in a prayer, slightly different church rituals) yet the differences lead to segregation, unequal opportunities, and violence. Maeve marvels that Protestant and Catholic women alike are treated as insignificant servants by the men who make all the decisions, even when all their decisions are wrong. She wonders at the national condemnation of abortion when everyone knows that women who can raise the money go to England and return relieved of their pregnancies while the men who knocked them up pretend that nothing ever happened.

The ending resolves the main plot threads and offers some clues as to what the future might hold for the three girls. Of course, the Troubles won’t be (partially) resolved for a few more years, while the cultural issues that depress Maeve will not likely be resolved in her generation. The novel’s ending is nevertheless as happy as it can be while remaining honest. If Michelle Gallen decides to check in on Maeve ten years from now, I’d stand in line to pick up the book.

RECOMMENDED

Foster by Claire Keegan

Published by Grove Press on November 1, 2022

The mother in a large family is about to have another baby. The parents can barely feed the children they already have. They ask a childless couple to take one of their daughters until her mother gives birth. Only after the girl has lived with the Kinsellas for part of the summer does a neighboring gossip reveal why the couple is childless.

The girl is initially ambivalent about staying with strangers. She doesn’t know how long she will stay with the Kinsellas or whether her parents will want her back. Her father doesn’t say goodbye to her when he drops her off. Like the other adult men she has observed, her father says little of consequence. He talks about the weather, exaggerates the size of his crop of hay when he talks to John Kinsella. “He is given to lying about things that would be nice, if they were true.”

Like the girl’s parents, the Kinsellas are farmers. Unlike her parents, they are making a go of it. John and Edna welcome the girl into their lives. Edna gives the girl a hot bath, cleans her nails, digs wax out of her ears, does all the things her mother is too busy to do. John helps her with her reading and corrects her when she substitutes “yeah” for “yes.” When the girl’s complexion begins to improve, Edna says “All you need is minding.” Every child needs minding if they are to stay safe and reach their full potential. Edna has become protective with no child of her own to mind, which might explain her failure to understand how the girl’s parents could leave her with strangers.

Edna would like to give the girl’s mother some money, but the girl knows that her proud father would object. Her father drinks. He lost their red heifer gambling. Her parents have given little thought to educating her. Her clothes are hand-me-downs. She isn’t the victim of abuse, but to some extent, she has been neglected.

Visiting the Kinsellas opens a new world for the girl, a world where reading is valued, where she can wear clothing that fits. John challenges her to run to the mailbox every day and is proud when she becomes faster. Having adults pay attention to her, to encourage her, makes the summer away from her family pass quickly. In the Kinsella home, she has “room and time to think.” She would rather stay than return home.

As Colm Tóibín has done in his fiction, Claire Keegan emphasizes the malicious gossip that characterizes life in rural Ireland (and for that matter, in much of small-town America). When a neighbor has a chance to talk to the girl alone, she pries into the details of the Kinsellas’ life and tells her the secret John and Edna have kept to themselves. The girl wonders at the neighbor’s smug, self-satisfied laughter when she reveals a family tragedy that is none of the girl’s business, nor the neighbor’s. The Kinsellas keep their grief to themselves, but they have not let it overwhelm their ability to live or to care about others.

Foster is a spare story. Much in the novella is left unsaid. The relationship of the Kinsellas to the girl’s parents is unclear. We learn little about the girl’s siblings. We don’t even know the girl’s name. She has no reason to tell us those things. She instead narrates her thoughts, fears, and discoveries. She describes unfamiliar events (John is asked to dig a grave for a neighbor; she sees her first dead body at the wake). She learns that people are different from each other. Edna differs from the gossipy neighbor because, as John explains it, Edna “wants to find the good in others, and her way of finding that is to trust them, hoping she’ll not be disappointed, but she sometimes is.”

From John, the girl learns that there are times when it is better to practice silence. “Many’s the man lost much just because he missed the perfect opportunity to say nothing.” The girl makes good use of that advice when she next sees her parents.

The novella’s ending, like life, leaves the reader wondering what will happen next. It doesn’t seem likely to be good, at least in the next few minutes that will follow the story’s end. On the other hand, the girl’s life has likely been changed, set on a path of undreamt possibilities, because strangers were kind to her. Perhaps she has a sense of what her life could be. John tells her that women are good with “eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before men even get a whiff of it.”

The eventualities are left for the reader to ponder. Everything that comes before the reader’s imagination takes over is told in a young, gentle voice. The girl senses the importance of events. She overlooks nothing but understands less than the adult reader. This is a coming of age story told by a girl who isn’t prepared to understand what might come next. The girl will need to think about what she has learned before it all makes sense to her. The joy of Foster is that the same is true for the reader.

RECOMMENDED

Northern Heist by Richard O'Rawe

First published in Ireland in 2018; published by Melville House on April 6, 2021

Northern Heist begins with the planning and execution of a bank robbery and ends with two trials. James “Ructions” O’Hare faces a criminal trial for masterminding the bank robbery. Tiny Murdoch faces an IRA court martial for misusing his position. From the robbery through the trials and at all points in between, Richard O’Rawe tells an absorbing and convincing crime story.

The robbery is conceived by Ructions and his uncle, Johnny “Panzer” O’Hare. The plan requires Ructions to have an affair with Eleanor Proctor, whose husband Frank is a Belfast banker. Ructions has a girlfriend named Maria but won’t let that stand in the way of the robbery. As Panzer notes with pride, Ructions has “a flair for handling the women.” From Eleanor, Ructions will obtain a schedule of staff rotations. Then their hired guns will kidnap two trusted bank employees who are scheduled to work together and will hold their families hostage while the employees give them access to the vault. One empty vault later and the O’Hares will be wealthy men.

The plan calls for Eleanor to be killed when she’s no longer useful, as she’s the only loose end who can identify Ructions. The plan takes a detour when Ructions falls in love with Eleanor. Another glitch arises when Murdoch suspects that Panzer is up to something. Murdoch taxes crimes on behalf of the IRA and he’s convinced that Panzer has committed crimes without paying the tax. Murdoch has long wanted to make trouble for Panzer’s son Finbarr, a suspected pedophile, and has long wanted to acquire Panzer’s farm. Using the IRA as a smokescreen, Murdoch launches a scheme to accomplish his goals.

Character motivations and dialog have an authentic feel. The crime’s intersection with the IRA gives the plot a unique twist. In contrast to most modern American crime novels, the crime that O’Rawe develops is simple and credible. The story’s credibility isn’t surprising. As a former IRA bank robber, O’Rawe understands his subject matter. At the same time, the plot unfolds with sufficient complexity to keep the reader guessing at what might happen next. This is O’Rawe’s debut novel, but it is executed with the sure hand of a master craftsman.

RECOMMENDED

That Old Country Music by Kevin Barry

First published in the UK in 2020; publsished by Doubleday on January 12, 2021

Most of the nine stories collected in That Old Country Music are set in western Ireland. They are sweet and sad, funny and tragic. Many are stories are of people in transition surrounded by an unchanging landscape. When a Roma child who speaks no English runs away from Dublin, she loses her fear after meeting an aging hermit in the Ox Mountains and adopts his contemplative life of books and solitude.

Many of the characters are ungrounded. One narrator tells us: “Sometimes I’m not sure what century I’ve mistaken this one for and I wonder would I be better off elsewhere and in other times.” Others, like the hermit, know exactly where they belong.

One story tells of a song that the narrator hears an old man sing in a nursing home — a song of heartbreak and meanness that tells a story of “erotic wickedness and greed.” Another offers a bartender’s perspective on an overheard conversation between an elderly woman and her aging son — the latest iteration of the same conversation that they have been having for years, until it comes to a bad end.

It is difficult to pick a favorite from this variety of gems, but here are a few that are memorable:

A girl of seventeen (“She was almost eighteen and aching to have a fuck before it”) seduces an English junkie who has gone “astray in the head.” Despite the fierceness of her father’s judgment when word of the scandal leaks, she feels empowered by the knowledge that the man was made to leave the town and will think of her when he “seeks again the needle’s tip and solace.”

A garda, three weeks from retirement, fears that a young nemesis who has been spreading babies across the Ox mountains, not always with the consent of the women he impregnated, will feel no constraints after being diagnosed with a cancerous tumor. The garda senses that a killing is imminent, but who will the victim be?

A man in Limerick is a “connoisseur of death,” reporting the news of every local who dies, lamenting them all as his city disappears around him. He chats about celebrity deaths, points out potentially fatal hazards, causes people who do not want to confront the inevitable to cross the street when they see him. He is “impressed by death” and by the knowledge that the only death he will be unable to report to others is his own.

The most darkly amusing story is “Roethke in the Bughouse,” set in 1960 when the American poet Theodore Roethke was committed to a psychiatric hospital in western Ireland. Roethke was troubled by the “bits of sheep everywhere” on the island where he stayed, a “mutton necropolis.” The poet was tormented by long nights filled with occult music, but perhaps he was tormented most of all by the words that demanded escape from his body.

As is often true of Irish writers, Kevin Barry has a gift for language. His sentences are those of a skilled artisan. “He had the misfortune in life to be fastidious and to own a delicacy of feelings.” “To experience a feeling as deep as this raised only a specter of losing it.” “He had the hunted look of rural poverty.” “Anxiety folds away its arbitrary music.” A wandering man tells his life story to an unkempt dog, “a dog that has seen some weather.”

I loved Barry’s novel Night Boat to Tangier. I suspect he labors long over each sentence he creates. He may not be the most prolific Irish writer, but he’s among the most exquisite prose stylists.

RECOMMENDED