Nobody Move, This Is A Review: HELLFIRE by Mia Gallagher

Mia Gallagher’s debut novel utilises two risky devices to embellish its narrative, but boy, do they work. Firstly, the protagonist, Lucy Dolan, is trying to make sense of a horrific, life-changing event of 13 years earlier and narrates the story partly from the first person, but mostly from the second; she’s addressing her childhood friend, Nayler, who is the missing piece of the puzzle that is her life. This switching between pronouns works beautifully and imbues an epic story, which spans four generations, with a life-force from the beginning – who is this Nayler and why is he so central to the plot? It doesn’t become fully apparent to the end, but that device drives the narrative in its jumping from the present, which is 2003, back to the ’30s,’40s and ’50s of inner city Dublin and from there to the ’60s, right up to the heroin epidemic that infected the city in the ’80s. Secondly, the entire story is relayed in vernacular Dublinese, which can be tricky to pull off; Roddy Doyle is one the only writers to have successfully done it thus far. But Gallagher’s faithful rendering of Dublin’s wackers, ganglords, messenger boys, tinkers, dealers, fortune tellers, pimps, junkies and brassers is more comparable in flavour to Irvine Welsh (which is intended as a high compliment). My only criticism is that the novel is perhaps overly long – somewhere three-quarters of the way through it seemed as though its cohesiveness had slipped a little; the time that Lucy spends in prison feels like it could be shortened and is slightly at odds with the rest of the novel. But, that small quibble aside, it redeems itself by the end and HELLFIRE is, overall, as addictive as Lucy’s beloved ‘gear.’- Claire Coughlan

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

So don’t you play with Mia / ’Cos you’re playin’ with fire. HELLFIRE, that is, Mia Gallagher’s cracking debut tale, three copies of which we have to give away courtesy of the lovely folk at Penguin Ireland. First, the blurb elves:

On a midsummer’s evening, a young Dublin woman, Lucy Dolan, prepares for a showdown that will help make sense of a heart-breaking and brutal atrocity that happened thirteen years earlier, changing her life forever. As she waits for the arrival of the charismatic figure who is the key to the mystery, she recounts her life story – a rich and extraordinary tale spanning two generations of storytellers and deal-makers, fortune-tellers and gamblers, businessmen and warlords, and the people that feared, served and betrayed them. With each twist of this tumultuous story, Lucy revisits her childhood and early adolescence – trying to get her head around the things people do in the name of love and hate, greed and desire – and she pieces together afresh the events that led to the night that still haunts her.

Oooh, spooky. To be in with a chance of winning a copy, just tell us if hellfire is:

(a) Quite warm;
(b) Really, really hot;
(c) Don’t be complete Herbert, the pope said there’s no such thing as hell anymore.

Answers to dbrodb(at)gmail.com before noon on Monday, November 26, putting ‘Don’t be a complete Herbert’ in the subject line. Und Glück, unsere Freunde …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 694: Mia Gallagher

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...
What crime novel would you most like to have written?
THE LONG GOODBYE by Raymond Chandler.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
John Connolly, John Grisham, Jonathan Kellerman, Lee Child, Patricia Cornwell, Minette Walters, The Preacher graphic novels, any graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, Robert Jordan (fantasy), Marian Keyes.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Reaching the end of a chapter when it’s finally right.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Tough question, there are so many good ones. I recently read Declan Hughes’ THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD and loved it. Very Ed McBain. Claire Kilroy’s TENDERWIRE is also brilliant; not strictly genre crime, but a wonderful tale of suspense and loss. And Cormac Millar’s AN IRISH SOLUTION featured a bad boy villain who I fell completely in love with.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I'd love to see Declan Hughes’ psychopath Podge in the flesh. The Irish actor Owen Roe would play him really well if he squeaked up his voice. If Hollywood did it they could cast Joe Pesci.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Not being able to write / writing.
The pitch for your next novel is …?
Still working on it. Something about war, guilt, shame and families.
Who are you reading right now?
A sci-fi writer called Stephen Baxter. His book EVOLUTION is a fictional journey through major evolutionary periods in the earth’s history. Incredible and surprisingly readable. Like a mixture of Meercat Manor and The Sopranos.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Playful. Visceral. Edgy.

Mia Gallagher’s HELLFIRE is available in all good bookshops.

“More Brimstone, Vicar?”

Mia Gallagher’s Hellfire, published by Penguin at the beginning of summer, somehow managed to slip under the Crime Always Pays radar, for which dereliction of duty a number of radar-manning elves (radar-elving elves?) have been slathered in honey and staked out over an anthill. For lo! T’would appear Ms Gallagher has written something of a modern Irish classic! A first-person narrative of junk addiction in a Dublin inner-city ghetto, delivered in the local argot, it’s been garnering the kind of raves that are but a hairsbreadth from rants, to wit: “The gamble Gallagher takes - to insist on the redemptive power of story through one restricted voice and over so many pages - pays off. That’s an extraordinary ambition. A grand achievement, too,” says Niall Griffiths at Guardian Unlimited, while the Irish Emigrant made it their Book of the Week: “Ms Gallagher’s debut novel is a tour de force, an immensely powerful story written with an honesty that is both shocking and deeply affecting.” And the resolutely restrained Sunday Business Post was particularly moved. Quoth Alex Meehan: “The hell of the addict’s existence is rendered normal through Lucy’s eyes and it is horrible to witness. That we care so much speaks highly of a character drawn well with a believable narrative. This book could have been about the ugliness of heroin but instead it’s about the beauty of hope.” Dare we finish this post with an exultant “Mama Mia!”? Lawks, we do!