RIP Seamus Heaney

Digging
by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

‘Seamus Heaney, Irish poet of soil and strife, dies at 74’ – New York Times

RIP Elmore Leonard

I was away last week when the news of Elmore Leonard’s death broke. Desperately sad news it was, too. I’ve been fan of Elmore Leonard’s for about two decades now (he’s the only writer who gets an entire shelf to himself in my room), and it felt like I’d lost a favourite uncle, the guy you don’t see that often but who turns up maybe once a year with all these terrific stories about the people he’s met and the places he’s seen. It’s still a little hard to believe that he’s gone, to be honest. I was supposed to interview him last year, before the Cleveland Bouchercon, but personal circumstance got in the way and I didn’t get to make the trip. Some things just aren’t mean to happen, I suppose.
  Anyway, I’d just like to add my voice to all those acclaiming Elmore Leonard as one of the greats. The first book of his I read was FREAKY DEAKY, and I’ve read pretty much all of his crime novels since. I’m partial to GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, THE BIG BOUNCE, THE SWITCH and 52 PICK-UP, although for some reason PRONTO is the one I love the best.
  What I love about Elmore Leonard’s books is that they sound so natural, the way language and character and story all come together in such a seamless way. If it takes a hell of a lot of hard work to make something look effortless, Elmore Leonard was the hardest working writer in the game.
  My favourite example is the opening to STICK, which goes like this:

Stick said he wasn’t going if they had to pick up anything. Rainy said no, there wasn’t any product in the deal; all they had to do was drop a bag. Stick said, “And the guy’s giving you five grand?”

  That’s beautiful.

Review: HOME FIRES by Elizabeth Day

Northern Ireland-born author and journalist Elizabeth Day won the 2012 Betty Trask Award for her debut novel, SCISSORS, PAPER, STONE. Her new offering, HOME FIRES, opens in 1920, with young Elsa unable to understand why her mother has brought her to a Westminster Abbey commemoration of the men who died during WW1. Her father, Horace, who fought in France, has not attended the event.
  When Elsa and her mother return home, Elsa is sent to her father’s study to ask if he would like some tea. From his violent reaction to her, we quickly understand that Elsa’s father is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
  Day then introduces a contemporary character, Caroline, who appears to be suffering from depression and taking large quantities of anti-depressants to cope with a tragedy. Her thinking is fuzzy, unclear. Despite the best efforts of her husband, Andrew, Caroline lacks the will or inclination to get out of bed.
  Caroline drifts off into memory, and we are told about the first time – some thirty years previously – Andrew brought Caroline home to meet his parents. Caroline, who was neglected as a child growing up in a working-class household, feels intimidated by Andrew’s comfortably middle-class home, and particularly his mother, Elsa. The competition between the two women for Andrew’s affections – and later Caroline’s son Max – will define the relationship between the women for the rest of their lives.
  Elsa, who we now meet as a widowed and senile old woman, is unable to remember the most basic of details, such as her son Andrew’s name. Curiously, the memories of her childhood grow stronger: thus we discover the physical abuse Elsa suffered at her father’s hands after he returned, a damaged man, from the war. We discover that Elsa’s father wasn’t simply suffering from shell-shock, or a variation of PTSD. He had been invalided out of the war as a coward, and declared unfit to serve; in his shame, he takes his frustrations out on the young Elsa, in the process marking her – and shaping her relationship to men and power – for the rest of her life.
  Meanwhile, we also discover the root of Caroline’s depression, and her dependence on anti-depressants: her only son, Max has been killed in South Sudan after stepping on an IED while on manoeuvres.
  Thus the story becomes the interlinked tale of two women who have been brutalised by war. Their immediate connection is Andrew, Caroline’s husband and Elsa’s son; but their experiences of an increasing inability to cope with reality – Caroline wilfully taking anti-depressants in order to fend it off; Elsa suffering memory loss as a result of age and senility – also offers a common bond, especially when the helpless Elsa comes to live with Caroline and Andrew, and Caroline is roused from her catatonic state to help with Elsa.
  At this point we might expect the story to become one of a burden shared by Elsa and Caroline, as they help one another to deal with their pain. It’s to Elizabeth Day’s credit, however, that she turns her back on the easy and conventional narrative option to explore the unsettlingly realistic consequences of war and violence on the women who, as is claimed in the song to which the novel’s title alludes, keep the home fires burning.
  Indeed, Day makes a point of choosing the tough option at every turn, with the result that the novel becomes a powerful and at times heartbreaking account of Caroline and Elsa’s inability to deal with their respective crises. The prose is crisp and forthright, particularly when Day is describing the variations on violence that crop up throughout, although she has a piercing eye for a telling phrase or a poetic flourish – Caroline’s depression, for example, is “the encroaching shadow, the slow puddle that spreads across her consciousness like spilt ink.”
  HOME FIRES is a powerful and haunting tale, a thought-provoking testimony to the fortitude of those women and children who must somehow learn to cope as best they can with the devastating repercussions of war. – Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Examiner.

Review: RED OR DEAD by David Peace

‘Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.’ The first three words of David Peace’s RED OR DEAD (Faber & Faber) are key to unlocking not only the 700-plus pages of the novel, but also the philosophy upon which legendary manager Bill Shankly built the fortunes of England’s most successful football club, Liverpool FC.
  Shankly arrived at Liverpool in 1959, when the club was mired in Second Division mediocrity. As a player Shankly had captained Scotland and won the FA Cup with Preston North End, but his managerial career at Carlisle, Grimsby Town and Huddersfield Town was unremarkable prior to joining Liverpool. A life-long socialist, Shankly blended his philosophy in life with the financial resources of Liverpool Football Club and tapped into the dormant passion of the club’s supporters. By the time of his shock retirement in 1974, Liverpool FC had won three First Division Championships, two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup. In place were the fundamentals that would yield, by the time of his death in 1981, a further four Championships, three European Cups, a League Cup, a UEFA Cup and a UEFA Super Cup.
  It’s those fundamentals that concern David Peace. The author made his reputation as the author of the ‘Red Riding Quartet’, crime novels set against the backdrop of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper which featured a distinctively clipped, telegraphic style. He arrived in the mainstream as the author of THE DAMNED UTD, an account of Brian Clough’s ill-fated 44-day tenure as the manager of Leeds United in 1974.
  Peace combines a unique style with a football story in RED OR DEAD, those repetitions (“Bill stared out at the line. In the garden, in the rain. The pouring rain. The empty, hanging line. Redundant in the rain.”) emphasising Bill Shankly’s approach to football, which focused on reducing the game to its most basic tenets and repeating them over and over again. Initially irritating, the repetitive style soon takes on a hypnotic quality, a lulling rhythm of everyday routines irregularly punctuated by triumph and failure.
  The style also incorporates Shankly’s attention to detail, and his famed use of psychology. To ensure a daily and intimate identification with the club, for example, the Liverpool players changed at Anfield and then took the bus to their training ground at Melwood, rather than togging out at the training ground, as most football clubs did.
  If the style is the book’s most notable feature on first encounter, however, it’s very much a novel on the theme of substance. Shankly, who believed himself a born socialist, and who worked down a coalmine before becoming a professional footballer, had a vision of how a football club should interact not only with its supporters (‘the People’, as Shankly called them), but also the club’s heartland. Despite all Liverpool’s success, Shankly never lost sight of the importance of the imperishable bond between the players on the pitch and ‘the People’ on the Kop.
  It’s a hagiography, of course, and David Peace makes little attempt to hide his admiration for Shankly and the way he went about his work. It’s a hagiography in the mediaeval style, however, in which a man is praised not for who he is, but according to the stark testimony of his deeds. Even more than Bill Shankly, however, it is the game of football itself, and its importance to its working-class constituency, which is the recipient of Peace’s love letter. Bill Shankly, for all his charisma and achievements, is simply the man who represents for Peace the incarnation of the game’s significance.
  There’s a caveat, of course: I’m a football fan, and I can’t say how a reader who isn’t a fan will cope with the minutiae of, say, training sessions that took place five decades ago. For this Liverpool fan the book is a joy, a powerful and moving tale of how, to paraphrase Bill Shankly, football isn’t simply a matter of life or death, but the stuff of life itself. – Declan Burke

David Peace will be appearing at Eason’s on O’Connell Street, Dublin, on Tuesday, August 20th, where he will be interviewed by Paul Howard. For all the details, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Frank McGrath

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?
FREAKY DEAKY (Elmore Leonard). The opening is so well done.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Jason Bourne.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
James Schuyler (NY poet), Billy Collins, Roger McGough … (“Time wounds all heels.”)

Most satisfying writing moment?
Having a poem published in the TLS - and getting paid £25 for it - in 1981!

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
CHRISTINE FALLS - Benjamin Black.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
CHRISTINE FALLS - Benjamin Black.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst - when you look back on a piece of work that seemed inspired when you wrote it, to discover it is dross. Best - when you look back on a piece of work that seemed rubbish when you wrote it, to discover it is quite good.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Meet Daniel Hennessy - artist, mental patient, sociopath. Released on compassionate grounds due to terminal illness, Danny has one last mission to perform,

Who are you reading right now?
Short Stories (Chekhov); THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (Jordan Belfort); THE REASON I JUMP (Naoki Higashida); CADILLAC JUKEBOX (James Lee Burke)

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Dark. Witty. Tight.

Frank McGrath’s THE CUT is published by Longboat Publishing.

Book Launch: ECHOLAND by Joe Joyce

For all the details on ECHOLAND, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Sheila Bugler

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?
So many! It’s an ever-increasing list. I am a huge fan of US author Megan Abbott and if I could have written even one of her novels I’d be pretty happy. I’ve just read a wonderful novel by Stephan Talty called BLACK IRISH, which I read and really wished I’d written. It’s bloody good.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Again, how do I choose just one? These questions are tough! Possibly Nick Carraway, the narrator in THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I never feel guilty about reading and I’ll read anything that takes my fancy. Obviously I read a huge amount of crime fiction. I also love so-called literary fiction (I’ve just finished James Salter’s LIGHT YEARS. Please, please read it if you haven’t already. It’s the most wonderful, moving book). And I’m a huge fan of Marian Keyes. Chick lit or whatever you call it, her writing rings all my bells.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Ooh, good question. And my answer is going to sound horribly pretentious. For me, the best moment - and I don’t think this will change - was the moment I found my ‘voice’ as a writer. Writers bang on about voice a bit and I’d be hard-pushed to define what it is, exactly. Except I know when it works, not just for me but I can see it in other writing too. I can remember - exactly - the moment I found my own voice. I knew, from that moment on, that I could do this.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
It would have to be THE GUARDS. I think with Jack Taylor, Ken Bruen invented a new type of Irish noir. What a bloody brilliant writer. I also adore the Max series he’s written with Jason Starr for Hard Case Crime. Demented and hilarious.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Joe Murphy’s wonderful novel DEAD DOGS would make a fantastic movie. I adore this book. What a talented writer.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: it’s so damn all-consuming and means you don’t do anything else properly. Best: it’s the best thing in the world and I can’t imagine that I’d ever want to do anything else.

The pitch for your next book is …?
It’s called WATCH OVER YOU. It’s a sequel to HUNTING SHADOWS and it’s a dark, twisted tale about dark, twisted females. My type of book.

Who are you reading right now?
Ah ... Philip Kerr’s amazing Berlin Noir trilogy. Perfect prose. Reading it is the greatest pleasure.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
The obvious answer is f*** off but you can’t print that, right? If I really had to choose, I’d have to ditch the writing. I couldn’t live without reading.

The three best words to describe your own writing are...?
Empathic, angry, matriarchic.

Sheila Bugler’s HUNTING SHADOWS is published by Brandon.

On Home Fires And Flamethrowers

Around about this time next week – August 16th, to be precise – I’ll be at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, hosting a conversation between award-winning authors Rachel Kushner and Elizabeth Day (right). I’m hugely looking forward to it: Elizabeth’s HOME FIRES is a terrific piece of work, and Rachel’s THE FLAMETHROWERS has been garnering all kinds of wonderful reviews. To wit:

This exciting double bill presents two young novelists whose new work builds on their award-winning debuts.
  Fidel Castro’s revolution provided the backdrop for Rachel Kushner’s TELEX FROM CUBA, a cinematic coming of age tale that won her the California Book Award. Her new novel, THE FLAMETHROWERS, tells the “brilliant and exhilarating” (Boston Globe) story of Reno, a young artist drawn into the seductive New York art world.
  Elizabeth Day burst onto the literary scene in 2011 with SCISSORS PAPER STONE, which won the Betty Trask Award. Her follow up, HOME FIRES, is an intense portrait of loss, focusing on the parents and grandmother of a young officer whose death on his first posting has devastating consequences.

  For all the details of how to book tickets, etc., clickety-click here …

The Wizard Of Oz

Hearty congratulations to Adrian McKinty, who has been shortlisted for Best Fiction in Australia’s Ned Kelly Awards for I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET (aka the second title in the ‘Troubles Trilogy’, following on from THE COLD COLD GROUND), and so becomes – although I’m open to correction here – the first Irish crime novelist to be nominated for a Ned Kelly. For all the details, and the full shortlist, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, the third in Adrian’s ‘Troubles Trilogy’, IN THE MORNING I’LL BE GONE, will be published early next year. Quoth the blurb elves:

It’s 1983 and Sean Duffy’s life has hit what looks like rock bottom. Humiliated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and stripped of his rank, with no social life, no one to love, he is wasting his time away. He has no plan and no desire to get one. While Sean has sunk so low, his school friend - and rival - Dermot McCann has risen up the ranks of the IRA before being fitted up by the RUC and sent to serve at Her Majesty’s pleasure at the notorious Maze prison. So, when Sean gets a late-night call to duty because Dermot and his comrades have made a daring escape, all their history comes back to him. And as Sean stands at a road-block in the pouring rain, on a country lane in the dark, he has plenty of time to think about Dermot McCann. And he knows, with the chilly certainty of a fairy story, that their paths will cross again.

  For regular updates on the ‘Troubles Trilogy’, and much more besides, clickety-click on Adrian’s blog …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Seth Lynch

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?
For the royalties: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson. But for the kudos: THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY by Patricia Highsmith.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I’m going to stretch fictional to include film and go for Mick Travis from If…

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
It’s not who but what – I read cycling books for guilty pleasure (although I don’t feel that guilty about it). Other books are normally somehow related to what I’m writing or intending to write. Cycling books are read for their own sake – and to help when I’m cycling through the rain on my way home from work.

Most satisfying writing moment?
My first novel has just come out and I guess it’s seeing it there on the Amazon page. Although I think being accepted by a publisher comes a close second as it represents vindication form someone outside my circle of friends and family.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
I have a strong taste for the surreal or strange and so I’ll go for THE THIRD POLICEMAN by Flann O’Brien. I’m never quite sure which parts of the book I read and which parts I dreamt after reading it.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
For a film I’d like to see something low budget, black-and-white and gritty, so I’ll flatter my host and choose EIGHTBALL BOOGIE.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best is being able to channel some of the angst that others have to express in road rage incidents. It’s also a way to help my thoughts find expression. The worst is the lack of genuine opportunities for success – I guess that’s true of all the arts.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Paris, 1930. A femme fatale. A missing man. A private detective plunged into the dark and ugly underbelly of the City of Light.

Who are you reading right now?
I’ve just finished a book by Alex Butterworth, THE WORLD THAT NEVER WAS. It’s a non-fiction piece on the early history of the anarchist movement in Europe. Next up is THE BONNOT GANG by Richard Parry. It’s also non-fiction. The Bonnet Gang were a bunch of criminals operating in France in the years before World War 1. They were also loosely associated to the French Anarchist moment. There’s a deliberate theme there.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
My answer to this one fluctuates but I’ve settled on read. I love writing but my girls have just reached the age where they like to hear Secret Seven books at bed time – I’ve had years of reading picture books about teddy bears and fairies. My eldest, aged 7, is also a keen writer and how would I explain that God won’t let me read her work? (I’d also have to explain what God is and I don’t think she’d buy that one).

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Dark, funny, fast.

Seth Lynch’s SALAZAR is published by Nemesis Publishing.

Always Be Closing

I won’t, alas; but if you’re likely to be in the vicinity of Galway this Thursday evening, August 8th, do yourself a favour and wander by that emporium of literary wonder, aka Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, where Seamus Scanlon’s collection of short stories AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER BE gets its long overdue Irish launch. The details:

What: Irish launch of crime fiction collection AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER BE by Seamus Scanlon
Where: Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Galway
When: Thursday, 8th August @ 6.30
What else: James Martyn Joyce & Alan McMonagle also reading from their books
What else: Tayto & Wine

  Tayto? Now that’s what I call a classy joint …
  If you can’t be in Galway on Thursday, but you’re fond of a well told short story, do yourself a different kind of favour and clickety-click here for reviews of AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER BE. I really can’t remember when I’ve seen so many impressive reviews for a debut title.
  And while we’re on the subject of book launches, Arlene Hunt will be doing the honours on behalf of Louise Phillips’ THE DOLL’S HOUSE at the Gutter Bookshop on Wednesday, August 7th, at 6.30pm. For all the details, clickety-click here …

The First Cut Is The Deepest

I’d imagine that CUT by Frank McGrath (Longboat Publishing) is a crime debut with a difference, given that Frank McGrath is a pseudonym for Alan Moore, a poet whose first collection, OPIA (1986) was a UK Poetry Book Society choice – not bad going for a first collection.
  As for CUT, which is set in Dublin, Hong Kong and Macau, the blurb runs like this:

A savage killing. A girl missing. A clock ticking.
  A cop who sees the world differently.
  Detective Jack Grogan investigates the disappearance of the Chinese Trade Minister’s 15-year-old daughter, following the brutal murder of her bodyguard.
  He soon discovers that Lynsey Tao is a pawn in a game where no one can be trusted and nothing is what it seems.

  For more, clickety-click here …

The Courage Of His Convictions

Another day, another debutant Irish crime writer. THE CONVICTIONS OF JOHN DELAHUNT (Doubleday) isn’t the first book that historian Andrew Hughes has published, but it is his first novel, and a fascinating tale it sounds too. Quoth the blurb elves:

On a cold December morning in 1841, a small boy is enticed away from his mother and his throat savagely cut. But when the people of Dublin learn why John Delahunt committed this vile crime, the outcry leaves no room for compassion. His fate is sealed, but this feckless Trinity College student and secret informer for the authorities in Dublin Castle seems neither to regret what he did nor fear his punishment. Sitting in Kilmainham Gaol in the days leading up to his execution, Delahunt tells his story in a final, deeply unsettling statement . . .
  Set in Dublin in the middle of the turbulent nineteenth century, with hints of rebellion against the Crown in the air, THE CONVICTIONS OF JOHN DELAHUNT presents a colourful assortment of characters: carousing Trinity students, unscrupulous lowlifes, dissectionists, phrenologists, blackmailers, and sinister agents of Dublin Castle who are operating according to their own twisted rules.
  Shot through with dark humour, THE CONVICTIONS OF JOHN DELAHUNT is a gripping portrait of one man’s duplicity, and is based on true events that convulsed Victorian Dublin and still seem shocking to us today.

Well Hello, Dollies

Louise Phillips launches her second novel, THE DOLL’S HOUSE (Hachette Books Ireland), next Wednesday, August 7th, at the Gutter Bookshop. Arlene Hunt will be doing the honours, and festivities kick off at 6.30pm.
  Louise’s debut, RED RIBBONS, was shortlisted for the Ireland AM Irish Crime Fiction Novel of the Year in 2012, and THE DOLL’S HOUSE sees the return that book’s heroine, criminal psychologist Dr Kate Pearson. Quoth the blurb elves:

People say that the truth can set you free. But what if the truth is not something you want to hear?
  Thirty-five years ago Adrian Hamilton drowned. At the time his death was reported as a tragic accident but the exact circumstances remained a mystery.
  Now his daughter Clodagh, trying to come to terms with her past, visits a hypnotherapist who unleashes disturbing childhood memories of her father’s death. And as Clodagh delves deeper into her subconscious, memories of another tragedy come to light - the death of her baby sister.
  Meanwhile criminal psychologist Dr Kate Pearson is called in to help in the investigation of a murder after a body is found in a Dublin canal. When Kate digs beneath the surface of the killing, she discovers a sinister connection to the Hamilton family.
  What terrible events took place in the Hamilton house all those years ago? And what connects them to the recent murder?
  Time is running out for Clodagh and Kate.
  And the killer has already chosen his next victim . . .