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Dated but a must read for thinking people
Book Review
By Derryll White
Rankin, Ian (1994). Mortal Causes.
Ian Rankin digs into the Catholic/Protestant schism right from the start. Whether it’s ‘The Troubles’ or a declension of football teams and which church backs them, the readers get the sense that religious separation is at issue here.
Canadians in large part fail to realize that Northern Ireland’s troubles came to the shore in Scotland, never mind Canada. Rankin’s main character DI Rebus makes it clear that the troubles, carried forward by Irish immigration, has spread everywhere.
The Irish are a clannish folk, almost tribal. Look in almost any large North American city and one will locate an Irish enclosure, a neighbourhood. Rebus points out that the inclinations, the fundraising and publications, always points towards home, the Emerald Isle.
Ian Rankin is politically aware of society’s shifting desires. He draws value from small things which, although of Scottish focus, are universal. A case-in-point is the way Rankin rails at a Conservative’ government’s uncaring dumping of the mentally ill back on the streets. In B.C. we still feel the effects of similar unspeakable cost-cutting decisions.
‘Mortal Causes’ will make the reader consider the wider world and the narrowness, for some, of the religious path. Dated maybe, but this is a must read for thinking people.
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Excerpts from the novel:
POLITICAL REALITY: There were a lot of people out there like him, shiftless until someone (usually the police) shifted them. They’d been ‘returned to the community’ – a euphemism for dumped – thanks to a tightening of the government’s heart and purse-strings. Some of them couldn’t tighten their shoe laces without bursting into tears. It was a crying shame.
BELFAST – “See , here we are,” Yates was saying, “we’re coming into Protestant territory now.” More gable-ends, now painted with ten-foot-high William of Orange riding twenty-foot-high white horses. And then the cheaper displays, the graffiti, exhorting the locals to ‘fuck the Pope and the IRA.’ The letters FTP were everywhere. Five minutes before they had been FKB: Fuck King Billy. They were just routine, a reflex.
PREJUDICE – “People like you terrify me,” Rebus said coolly. He meant it, too. Dod Soutar, hacking cough and all, was a more horrifying prospect than a dozen Caffertys. You couldn’t change him, couldn’t argue with him, couldn’t touch his mind in any way. He was a closed shop, and the management had all gone home.
SCOTS – They had breakfast together, talking around things, their conversation that of acquaintances rather than lovers. Neither spoke his or her thoughts. We Scots, Rebus thought, we’re not very good at going public. We store up our true feelings like fuel for long winter nights of whisky and recrimination. So little of us ever reaches the surface, it’s a wonder we exist at all.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
