Books: daughter of murdered man tells her story
This week there’s an anthology of short stories from a new Irish writer. There’s an awkward wedding situation that leaves the bride’s divorced parents in a right state. There’s an ex-nun gone missing and another ex-nun gone looking for her. And there’s a daughter’s true account of her father’s murder and the consequences that brought for her and her brother.
Every One Still Here, Liadan Ní Chuinn, Stinging Fly, €12.99
There are many remarkable things about this anthology of six short stories, mostly set in Northern Ireland. The first is that this debut author was born in the year of the Good Friday Agreement. But the anthology is about everything that came before that agreement; the endless violence, the senseless loss of life and the treatment of Catholics by Her Majesty’s armed forces. It is a witness’s account of transgenerational trauma, and in Ní Chuinn’s hands, the Troubles are far from over. Or, as William Faulkner put it: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’
There’s a sparseness, a complete lack of adornment in the prose here, written in language even a child could understand. And there’s a haunted, hunted air about the characters and their lives, wherein the ghost of the Troubles looms almost everywhere. A medical student is horrified at her anatomy class’s dissection of nameless cadavers. A creative writing group has no support to proffer a member, spooked by a child on a bus. A man attempts to make sense of his experience through a psychic. And in the final story, there is a kind of List of the Dead, pulled together with admirable craftsmanship and hitting the reader right between the eyes. There is no comfort nor mercy in Ní Chuinn’s fictional world. A strong, shocking debut.
A Time for Truth, Sarah Corbett Lynch, Hachette, €16.99
Few of us can forget the murder of Irishman Jason Corbett in his home in North Carolina. Neither could we forget the ensuing events involving his killers, Molly Martens and her father Tom. They did everything they could to dodge justice, including depicting Corbett as a monster. Corbett’s daughter Sarah was just eight when it happened, and her life has been far from easy since, although she was finally settled with her father’s family in Limerick. She has campaigned tirelessly for children orphaned by violent crime since the age of 13 and now, still a very young woman, she holds a Garda Síochána award and a Limerick Young Person tribute for her campaigning in the area of victims’ rights.
Here she tells her story and it’s a sobering one. She believes in transcending one’s difficulties, however, and she continues to fight for victims and their families. A gripping story of lives shattered as the result of a brutal and sadistic murder, and the slow job of rebuilding hope.
Three Days in June, Anne Tyler, Vintage, €16.99
A new Tyler novel is always a delight and this one delivers brilliantly. The three days of the title are the day before Gail’s daughter’s wedding, the day of the ceremony itself and the day after. On the day before, Gail loses her job (or walks out of it, depending on your perspective). Her ex-husband drops by shortly afterwards, with a cat in tow. He had planned to stay with the daughter and bride-to-be Debbie, but husband-to-be is allergic to cats. So Gail finds herself putting him – avec le chat – up in the spare room of her tiny house. But that’s only the start. She discovers later that day that husband-to-be has cheated on her daughter, throwing both mother and father of the bride into panic. And grandma. And the bride. And the bride’s best friend, and… and… a partridge in a pear tree. How can Debbie possibly go ahead and marry this guy regardless?
Every single detail is minutely examined in these three short, fraught days and Gail has a reckoning of her own to contend with, regarding how she ended up divorced from her hapless, untidy but ultimately kind, loving and devoted husband. Full of profound universal truths, all emanating, with considerable wry humour, from a small nowhere Baltimore suburb. It’s Tyler at her glittering best.
Murder at Gulls Nest, Jess Kidd, Faber, €15.99
Like John Banville before her, novelist Jess Kidd has decided to leap from the literary novel form (at which she excelled) to a life of crime and if this, her first ‘Nora Breen Investigates’, is a sign of books to come, then we’ll be queueing up for the others. Nora Breen is actually a nun. Or she was until recently (this is 1950s England). She had been Sr Agnes, a nursing Carmelite nun for 30 years. Until she lost her faith and hankered after a different calling – that of private investigator. It doesn’t happen quite so neatly as that, though. A young sister from the convent, Sr Frieda, has gone missing. It’s most unlike the girl; she is devout despite her spirited nature. She was last seen in the Kent seaside town of Gore-on-Sea (get that for a placename!) and there’s been no trace of her since.
Nora packs her two shabby dresses, her heavy shoes, her tiny lump sum on leaving the convent, and books herself into the shabby boarding house of Gulls Nest, where she knows young Sr Frieda was staying before she disappeared. Nora can immediately gauge the sheer oddness of the lodgers in this godforsaken place, with its inedible food, inadequate heating, its permanently angry housekeeper-cum-cook and its opium-addicted landlady. Kidd captures post-war, poverty-stricken 1950s England with the same detail that Banville depicts 1950s Ireland, and she’s got just as good an eye for a puzzling murder mystery. What she’s also got is an acerbic wit and an ear poised for clever, fast and funny dialogue, making this wholly original whodunnit an absolute delight.
Footnotes
Wherever you live, there’s a celebration of St Patrick’s Day somewhere nearby, so if only for the smallies’ sake, do go along to the local parade or funfair or craft market, or whatever. Better to support local than the big, glitzy Dublin parade, which you can get a much better view of on the telly.