SCOTLAND on SUNDAY

Sunday, 26th August 2001. Edinburgh, Scotland.
by S B Kelly (“the new Stallone”)

It is curious when a debut novel arrives with so much puff and hype. According to the press pack, the agent says it’s comparable with James Joyce and Flann O’Brien, the publisher maintains it’s “not simply special, but extraordinary” and there’s even a dinky pamphlet lauding a “stunning new literary novel”.

Perhaps the turgid pun of the title will alert people. This is not a novel in the tradition of O’Brien’s masterful At Swim-Two-Birds. And if it’s the next Ulysses, then I’m the next Sylvester Stallone.

Turning to the novel itself, rather than the welter of marketing: well, it’s competent enough. Set against the Easter 1916 uprising, it predominantly deals with the tentative steps towards love between two boys; Jim Mack – a studious academic with a petit-bourgeois father – and Doyler, who is a dung-shovelling socialist with a drunk father. Their relationship is to be consummated after an epic swim around Muglins lighthouse, fortuitously pencilled-in for Easter 1916. Hence title. If you can imagine the offspring of Angela’s Ashes and The Swimming Pool Library, then it’s close enough. The relationship between the boys is, at times, tenderly sketched; however, the novel’s ending effectively precludes any investigation into the lives of homosexuals in the early part of the last century. They are perma-fixed as glorious adolescents, epicenes languishing on a memorial.

Given the linguistic fireworks of Joyce or O’Brien, one would have expected more of an engagement with language. The dialogue is replete with Oirishry – there is barely a page without “hookum”, “gongoozling”, “ballyhooly” or a “Mary and Joseph!” Instead of letting the characters speak with a natural lilt, they are stuffed with tics. The stereotyping is not confined to language. There is not a priest in the book who is not a paedophile or terrorist, and the Celtic Twilight aristocrat is a sheer parody. Lack of subtlety is rampant: in one passage, the maid-servant seduced by Jim’s brother turns up and manages to drop three hints to her pregnancy on one page – a craving for gherkins, morning sickness and a rosy glow.

There are slight hints that O’Neill may develop into a more capable novelist. The most interesting character in the book is MacMorrough, the nephew of the local aristocrat. The reader learns that he too is gay and has served time for the supposed crime in England. We are allowed inside his head, where other voices are all competing for attention, but unfortunately, this device is dropped and we are left with the unpalatable depiction of a predatory coward, who toys with the idea of “coming out” only through mentioning Oscar Wilde in every other sentence. There could have been a good novel which paralleled the oppression of sexualities with the nationalist insurgency: this novel chooses a contrary path, and lauds the individual epiphany over the political struggle. War is nothing that a good fumble can’t make up for.

So little sparks, enchants, or happens over this long book that I am at a loss to explain its hype. Joyce and O’Brien expanded what the novel could do: this expands only the hyperbole of its promoters.