Down These Green Streets: Niamh O’Connor on John Banville and Pat McCabe

Being the latest in Crime Always Pay’s erratic series to celebrate the publication of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, in which contributors to the collection nominate their favourite Irish crime novel. This week, it’s Niamh O’Connor:

“For me, it comes down to the choice between Pat McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY and John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE. Both were shortlisted for the Booker because both voices are so strong, reading either is like being in a vacuum. Both achieve that Holden Caulfield effect of managing to slightly warp the readers’ own view of the world. To pick one over the other, I had to ask myself who is more terrifying? Francie - a troubled boy with a suicidal mother, and an alcoholic father; or Freddie - a scientist, husband, and father who in the cold light of day makes a clinical confession that is as logical as it is conscience free. Who poses the greater threat to society? Frankie is a victim of his circumstances, intent on wreaking his revenge. Freddie is beyond hope of redemption, a man who has managed to master the maze of his own mind. Ultimately I think the answers, combined with the fact that THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE is based on the chilling true crime case of double murderer, Malcolm McArthur, the same case which prompted Charlie Haughey to coin the GUBU (Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, Unprecedented) phrase, gives the Banville book the edge.” - Niamh O’Connor

  Niamh O’Connor’s TAKEN is published by Transworld Ireland.

Mind THE GAP

As all Three Regular Readers will know, I have a particular weakness for novels which aren’t crime novels per se, but which beg, borrow or steal from the crime genre. On first appearances, one such novel is Paul Soye’s THE BOY IN THE GAP, recently published by Liberties Press, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

Paul Soye’s debut novel, THE BOY IN THE GAP, is an atmospheric coming-of-age novel. It is full of mysterious local and familial secrets, capturing the claustrophobia of small town life and its petty judgements. An angry mob assembles outside a town courthouse; something terrible has happened. Jack Sammon is the local man accused of the crime in his village, and has become a figure of universal hate in the community. THE BOY IN THE GAP charts Jack’s childhood and family experiences, and it is through these episodes poignant, funny and heart-wrenching that the novel attempts to explain, or at least suggest, why Jack may have committed the crime. He befriends a local eccentric, Irene, who reveals to him secrets about his family. These revelations that act as the catalyst for Jack’s violent actions, for which he now stands trial. Reminiscent of Pat McCabe in its dark humour and McGahern in its detailed evocation of small town dynamics, THE BOY IN THE GAP is a striking debut.

  I’ve read the first few pages, by the way, and already it’s shaping up to be a cracker.
  Meanwhile, if anyone wants to share their personal favourites vis-à-vis novels that weren’t written as crime novels, but could well be if you squinted at them, the comment box is open. My starter for ten is THE BUTCHER BOY by Pat McCabe.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Julie Parsons

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?
There are actually three – A FATAL INVERSION by Ruth Rendell / Barbara Vine – amazing plot and wonderful atmosphere; THE SHINING by Stephen King, not so much a plot more a way of death; and THE BUTCHER BOY by Patrick McCabe, which doesn’t usually figure in crime fiction lists, but does it for me in horror, sadness and a meditation on loss and pain.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
When I was a kid I was crazy about the books by the American writer, Mary O’Hara. So I would have loved to have been Ken McLaughlin, who grew up on a horse ranch in the Rocky Mountains, in Wyoming.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. For pleasure I read anything by Martin Amis, Nadine Gordimer, Philip Roth and J.M Coetzee.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Writing the synopsis for my first book, MARY, MARY, and knowing, even before I sent it to Treasa Coady of TownHouse, that I had a winner.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
You know, I don’t read crime novels since I started writing them … terrified I’d be so put off by their brilliance and never write another word. Best Irish novel? THE BUTCHER BOY [by Patrick McCabe] for the above reasons.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
For the above reason, I can’t really say, but three of my books – MARY, MARY, THE COURTSHIP GIFT and EAGER TO PLEASE – have all been optioned for film and TV and I think they’d all be great - with the right writer, director, cast of course.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best is being on your own in complete control of your own world, and the worst is pretty much the same.
The pitch for your next book is …?
The next book is a high-concept, international DAY OF THE JACKAL-type thriller – the inhabitants of an island off the southwest coast of Ireland discover when the last ferry of the day has left, that they are NOT on their own.
Who are you reading right now?
I’m reading HUMAN SMOKE by Nicholson Baker, which tells in extracts from newspapers, letters and biographies of the build-up in the late 1930s and early 1940s to the Final Solution. Stunning and terrifying.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I don’t believe in God, but if I did the God I would believe in would never make such a demand. Because that God would know that to be a writer, you have to be a reader …
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Powerful, vivid, unforgettable.

Julie Parsons’ I SAW YOU has just been published in paperback by Pan Books

The Jury Remains Out: THE BUTCHER BOY

Acclaimed as literary novels, they are steeped in crime – but is it kosher to call them Irish crime fiction novels? YOU (via the comment box, natch) decide! This week: Patrick McCabe’s Booker Prize-nominated THE BUTCHER BOY.

“When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent.” Thus begins Patrick McCabe’s shattering novel THE BUTCHER BOY, a powerful and unrelenting journey into the heart of darkness. The bleak, eerie voice belongs to Francie Brady, the “pig boy,” the only child of an alcoholic father and a mother driven mad by despair. Growing up in a soul-stifling Irish town, Francie is bright, love-starved and unhinged, his speech filled with street talk, his heart filled with pain ... his actions perfectly monstrous. Held up for scorn by Mrs. Nugent, a paragon of middle-class values, and dropped by his best friend, Joe, in favour of her mamby-pamby son, Francie finally has a target for his rage – and a focus for his twisted, horrific plan. Dark, haunting, often screamingly funny, THE BUTCHER BOY chronicles the pig boy’s ominous loss of innocence and chilling descent into madness. No writer since James Joyce has had such marvellous control of rhythm and language ... and no novel since THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS has stunned us with such a macabre, dangerous mind. – Powell’s Books

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: CONFESSIONS OF A FALLEN ANGEL by Ronan O’Brien

Skating on the Surface of Celtic Tiger Ireland

Playing with his friends as a kid, Charlie nearly dies and from the moment of this early brush with mortality he is condemned, not to see dead people, but to dream their deaths. And so, with this unwanted capacity for premonition unifying his story and his life, Charlie’s tale unfolds.
  As can be imagined, Ronan O’Brien – a solicitor who specialises in criminal law – in this, his first novel, is not overly concerned with rendering a gritty Irish realism, rather he is content to flit between the comic and the serious, the extraordinary and the mundane, flirting with the fantastic along the way.
  Appropriately enough in the circumstances, there are three or four novels haunting this one particular novel: at times it is a kind of supernatural thriller, then a love story, with an ultra violent “gangster” element also thrown in for good measure.
  In keeping with the constantly shifting register, the novel moves at a fairly rapid pace. Apart from in the love story which is positioned mid-way through, in which Charlie allows himself the luxury of dwelling on his most positive relationship with the love of his life, Aisling, the novel’s plot offers numerous twists and turns.
  Charlie’s dilemma is one of trying to cheat destiny in his efforts to save those who die in his dreams. But, as is the way with fate (as the Greek tragedians knew), the outcome is always maddeningly fixed. Everything else in this world, however, is manifestly chaotic and unanticipated. It’s an odd juxtaposition that O’Brien presents, and he just about pulls it off.
  O’Brien’s achievement – and it is an achievement – is to keep all these constituent parts from becoming a cumbersome and unpalatable pudding. Charlie’s penchant for on-the-button one-liners, his wry perspective on the collection of oddball characters that people the fictional Northside Dublin village of Rathgorman keeps the reader’s attention and interest focused. The adult voice is the more convincing and consistent: the younger self as filtered through the grown-up Charlie appears awkward in comparison.
  In many ways, his hero is reminiscent of Patrick McCabe’s masterful creation Francie Brady, and O’Brien even nods his acknowledgement to this precursor by having Charlie read THE BUTCHER BOY. In a sense though, this book is “Butcher Boy-lite”, mainly owing to the deliberate way CONFESSIONS OF A FALLEN ANGEL avoids concentrating on any one aspect or element of the plot or character. The singularly absurdist vision of McCabe’s macabre fiction is absent here and so too is the dynamic edge that the truly unexpected provides.
  Despite the moments of heightened emotion surrounding the death of Aisling, the whirlwind of events surrounding Charlie’s life forces the reader to remain steadfastly engaged with the surface of this character instead of plumbing his depths. It is the way of the modern world, and the presence of a criminal element in the novel would seem to prove it.
  As with other narratives in which Irish gangland appears – be it journalism, film, the novel – their world of violence and blunt action becomes a means for the characters, and the audience, to get in touch with feeling, to be momentarily real. So deadening can modern life be that only extreme situations, and extreme violence particularly, can produce a reaction. It has become the cliché of modernity: certainly of Irish modernity.
  The reader, of course, should not take any of this too seriously. This novel is not a moral treatise on the vicissitudes of contemporary Irish life, nor is it meant to be. It is, nevertheless, a reflection of our relentless need for movement and distraction, there is no time here for stillness or quiet rumination: everything in this world is in flux.
  Is CONFESSIONS OF A FALLEN ANGEL a commentary on Celtic Tiger Ireland? Unintentionally perhaps. Is it a diverting read? Most definitely. – Derek Hand

Derek Hand is a lecturer in the English department in St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. He is presently writing A HISTORY OF THE IRISH NOVEL for the Cambridge University Press.

This review first appeared in the Irish Times

Flick Lit # 164: The Butcher Boy

“Part Huck Finn, part Holden Caulfield, part Hannibal Lecter… a haunting narrative, lyrical and disturbing, horrific and hilarious.” So ran The New York Times’ verdict on Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy. The Washington Post concurred, calling The Butcher Boy, “A masterpiece of literary ventriloquism – a Beckett monologue with a plot by Hitchcock.” McCabe’s novel – his third, following Music on Clinton Street and Carn – deserved all these plaudits and more; 15 years on, it remains one of the must-read novels of the last decade of the 20th Century. Told in flashback by a middle-aged inhabitant of a mental institution, the tale appears deceptively straightforward: the decline and fall of young Francie Brady, wannabe cowboy and self-styled Pig Boy. The childish exuberance that sustains Francie’s imagination (“Death to all dogs who enter here, we said. Except us of course.”) curdles into the nasty delinquency of adolescence as a direct result of the way his native rural town reacts to the incipient madness and subsequent suicide of his mother. With his father, a failed trumpeter, the laughing stock of the town and an alcoholic to boot, Francie’s petulant fight-back against valley upon valley of squinting windows evolves into full-blown psychosis, complete with voices in his head, split personality and a paranoia that almost inevitably concludes with murderous violence. Few critics, however, made reference to the literary sensation of the previous year. Patrick Bateman, the eponymous anti-hero of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, was a slick, charming killer seemingly deranged by the vacuity of his fin de siécle existence. McCabe’s is by far the warmer, more human tale; he manages to evoke and then sustain empathy for his central character that – perversely – grew stronger even as Francie’s internal monologue descended into pitch-black farce. Perhaps it is Francie’s indomitable optimism in the face of overwhelming odds, and his unswerving, naïve belief in the good inherent in the human race that binds us to him. Few books, when you finally lay them to one side, prompt you to cheer through the tears. Despite the obvious dangers inherent in pandering to conventional notions of stage-Irish buffoonery (the novel’s author appears in cameo as the town drunk, playing the part with barely restrained relish and spoofing the cliché of drink-sodden Oirishness in the process), Neil Jordan’s (below right) film remains faithful to the novel’s sense of time and place, that of Co. Monaghan during the ’50s and ’60s, but refuses to indulge the insecurities that attend insularity. Francie’s existence is one of self-sufficient resistance to an impervious society and the mounting horror that stalks his gauche attempts to break into the world, but his consciousness is informed by superhero comics, the burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll revolution, and the long, cold shadow cast by the Cuban crisis. It is tempting to draw parallels between The Butcher Boy and The Company of Wolves, Jordan’s dark vision of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale. Both films concern themselves with a vivid interior reality and a surreal interpretation of an ostensibly benign exterior world. But if comparisons must be made, it is perhaps truer to suggest that The Butcher Boy – in its inventive wordplay, chilling logic and murderous adolescent angst – is a rural Irish Clockwork Orange made for a generation uncomfortable with a celluloid history of begorrahs, shillelaghs and sticks with which to beat the pretty lady. John Ford might not have recognised it as such, but someone finally got around to making The Unquiet Man.- Michael McGowan