First Chapter

By Anne Cunningham

This week there’s a memoir from a retired member of An Garda Síochána who worked in their technical bureau and forensics for most of his career. There’s also a love story with a difference, involving two middle-aged men. There’s a debut novel about consent, class and friendship and there’s a novel set in the dual timelines of the 1950s and the 1980s, about the care of the mentally ill in the former decade and the care of AIDS patients in the latter.

Identity, John Sweetman, Hachette, €17.99

Subtitled ‘Murder, Fraud and the Making of a Garda Forensic Expert’, this book is an inside look at the role of forensic science in police work, made all the more readable because it’s a personal testament of one retired policeman, devoid of any officiousness.

John Sweetman had no ambitions to be a garda and was, after art college, following a career in animation art, which he loved. But when the axe of redundancy swept through the animation world and he and his colleagues lost their contracts, he decided to answer the recruitment call of the gardaí.

After his initial few years, he was transferred to the Technical Bureau, where his expertise was put to good use in both handwriting analysis and fingerprints. He was to stay in the force for 30 years, but the job took its toll and he had spells of being dogged by depression, ultimately the reason he left while still only in his 50s.

He takes the reader through some high-profile cases, including the Mr Moonlight murder, and it’s fascinating. As part of his personal history, Sweetman highlights the huge burden of overwhelming bureaucracy that, he feels, hinders our policemen from doing their jobs more effectively.

And that’s besides the frustration of seeing obviously guilty criminals walk free from court, thanks to their expensive and unscrupulous legal teams. A revealing and humane account of what life is like behind the scenes in the force.

Hold Back the Night, Jessica Moor, Manilla Press, €17.99

This is an exquisitely written novel about the issue of care for the sick and the abuses of power within those ‘caring’ regimes. The story opens in April 2020 in the worst days of the Covid pandemic, with elderly Annie still insisting on walking in her London neighbourhood every day; there’s very little else that anyone can do.

A phone call tells her that her lifelong friend, Rita, has died. Rita’s husband is distraught that he was not allowed be with his wife in her final moments. She died while he waited, heartbroken, outside in the hospital car park because of Covid restrictions.

The story then rolls back to Annie and Rita’s days as student nurses in a large mental institution, where they had to assist in the ‘conversion therapy’ of gay men at a time when homosexuality was a crime. Despite their distinct reservations, and the horrors they witnessed (and were part of), Annie and Rita had to follow orders.

Time reels on to the early 80s, where Annie takes in a lodger, a young man suffering from AIDS. The epidemic is sweeping through the gay community in London and Annie, at this stage recently widowed and an ‘empty nester’, creates a little hostel in her own home for these young men, thrown out of their flats and sometimes even their family homes, simply because they were sick.

And now, in April 2020, the sensationalism of the media and other factors leave Covid sufferers dying alone, some in truly horrendous circumstances. Misinformation and the cruelty it generates are the themes of this intricate novel, as the concept of atonement is explored by a lonely, tired old woman, anxious to make right the transgressions of the past. An original, powerful and very moving work.

Exile, Aimée Walsh, John Murray, €14.99

A coming-of-age novel about consent, in the beginning of this story young Fiadh has her whole life ahead of her. She has good friends in her hometown of Belfast and like any young woman her age, she enjoys her nights out with the gang. She’s leaving Belfast for Liverpool soon, to study English, and she will sorely miss her friends, who are mostly going on to study in Queens. On one of these nights out the unthinkable happens and Fiadh is the victim of sexual assault, made worse by the fact that the perpetrator is a friend and part of her Belfast circle.

College in Liverpool suffers badly. She misses days and starts to party hard, picking up casual one-night stands and slowly coming apart. This incident has broken her and only Fiadh can bring herself back from the abyss; with a hefty dose of truth-telling. She knows there will be dire consequences. This is a close, interior look at the devastation caused to a young woman whose whole life has been blighted by the trauma of sexual assault and the terrible after-effects.

The In-Between, Christos Tsiolkas, Atlantic, €14.99

The story opens with two men in their 50s on a date. Perry and Ivan have both come out of long-term relationships, and both admit to being lonely. A relationship ensues between the two and Tsiolkas travels across time, dropping in on the lovers only on occasions. The premise is that any kind of relationship is made up of moments. For all of us, life goes on ‘in between’ those intense and intimate moments. And it must be said that the scenes of passion in this novel are not for the faint-hearted and might just kill the prudish stone dead.

But this novel faces head-on what it means to find new love in later life, what a relationship is allowed to be when both partners carry with them a whole lifetime of baggage. Is love even possible at all? This is the author’s eighth novel and Tsiolkas is one of a small number of Australian authors who have made a comfortable place for themselves on the international stage. It’s a story about reflection, growing old and looking back and about the hope for companionship in our later years.

Footnotes

The Kilkenny Arts Festival runs from August 8 to 18 and includes several concert and operatic premieres from Irish and international composers. See kilkennyarts.ie for details.

Cork on a Fork Festival runs from August 14 to 18 and is a five-day culinary extravaganza. See corkcity.ie for details.