Home »
Brady writes of a new world
Book Review
By Derryll White
Brady, John (2002). The Going Rate
It takes a little bit to sort this story out, not being Irish and never having been to Dublin. It is worth the initial work though because Brady is a very good storyteller with an exquisite sense of place. He brings Ireland, and Dublin, right into the reader’s private sense of self, of what is acceptable and what is not – and then he begins to work on stretching the boundaries.
The reader gets the sense that Dublin is changing. Old neighbourhoods are being gentrified and the city is bustling. Along with that crime is becoming more international as thugs from Eastern Europe expand their enterprises. Brady becomes visceral when describing a commercial dogfight, occasioning this reader to wonder just what base instincts such an event appeals to.
Inspector Minogue is caught up in the change touching Ireland. A straight-ahead country man with a predilection toward good poetry and celebrating the old Irish language, he is challenged by political correctness and USB memory sticks.
Brady is masterful with his sub-plot. Demott Fanning, researching a movie script on Dublin’s criminal under-culture, gets pulled in deeper than he planned. But in doing so he reveals the mirror to Inspector Minogue’s life in the Irish Gardia.
Brady writes of a new world, a world most of us don’t even recognize. Thirteen-year-old girls involved in casual sex and violence. Girls hardened enough by life to repulse the interviewing efforts of the Irish police, for a time at least. And Brady asks the question many of us ask today – where did it go wrong? We have so much more than our parents and grandparents, and our families are struggling, landing on hard times and falling apart. His analysis made sense to me. I would suggest that you give this one a try.
Excerpts from the novel
CULTURE – It was long an open secret that funerals still put Irish people in quiet good humour.
MOROCCO – A land of simple, harsh choices, stark in its beauty, with burning sands leading south to the empty Sahara. This was where the world outside the city was medieval.
DUBLIN – It was a new Dublin, a new Ireland, roaring and heaving all around them.
YOUNG TEENS – The kewpie-doll hank of hair tied up on the right side of her head disturbed Minogue. Child or vamp, was the message he was receiving from it.
Her father had a glazed look in his eye and was breathing hard right from the start. He was after given to staring at her.
– 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.
