Book Review

By Derryll White

Brady, John (1993). All Souls.

To pick up a John Brady novel is to visit, or re-visit, Ireland. His descriptions of Dublin leave me reaching for my rain gear and travel ticket.

Inspector Matt Minogue imbibes freely, and frequently, of my favourite liquor – Jameson’s whiskey. So I find it suiting to come home, light the fire in the wood stove and pour a glass while sitting down with this novel. Brady roams west Clare, ‘the Burren,’ noting the decayed remnants of civilizations, the leftovers from the Famine. He is sharp enough to know that even the farms are now losing their value and their appeal to those who have inhabited them for generations.

John Brady is very good at describing the effects the land has on the Irish, how it roots them and mediates their soul. Kathleen, a Dubliner born and Minogue’s wife, stands apart from County Clare – ‘A different continent or something.” Meanwhile Minogue grows reflective, embracing a comfortable understanding of his place in the universe, one that he is alienated from with the hurly-burly of his day-to-day activities in the Dublin Murder Squad.

One of the things that surprised me was the sub-text of resentment to foreigners expressed in this novel. I know that EU countries are very much taken with the pressures of immigration now, but did not realize that the Irish already bore huge resentments in the early 1990s to German and Dutch purchases of the Irish countryside. Brady indicates the foreigners are attracted by ‘Irish culture.’

Another thing that Brady does with real skill is probe the residual feelings that the Irish Republican Army has left superimposed on the countryside. When Minogue is called a “black and tan” that reaches back more than 100 years to the occupation of southern Ireland by British forces. It’s not only the whiskey that runs deep and old in Ireland.

John Brady is a consummate and sensitive storyteller, and his Irish soul makes ‘All Souls’ come alive in the best possible way. This novel is worthy of your attention.

****

Excerpts from the novel:

GALWAY – Minogue liked Galway very much. He sensed that this City of the Tribes, this mecca for the travelling people of the West of Ireland, was infused with a vigour and abandon due to the immensity of the Atlantic at the ends of the streets. Its visitors were in keen and anticipatory transit, passing a little time here in this portal city.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – Images came to Minogue: a pile of rags in the ditch, what was left after a hit-and-run. And how could you kick a man in the face enough to kill him? Were parts of humanity exempt from evolution?

BALANCE – “Huh,” sighed Hoey. “I’m not much on the church and devotions this long time, I can tell you. Even with Aine and the lay missionary thing out beyond in Zimbabwe.”

He paused to take a drag on a fresh cigarette.

“We had rows about it. I asked her what the hell the Church could do for people in Africa. Christ, the damage we’ve done out there already. The white people, I mean. Not to speak of the famines and poverty. Do you want to hear her answer? This’ll give you an idea of how it went sour.”

Minogue said nothing.

“She said I have seen too much of the bad side of people. In the job. All I know is that I’m not about to be running up to hug the altar rails at this stage.”

IRISH WOMEN – “When you’re a man you have the power,” she went on. “Rich or poor, black or white. And when you’re a man that has money in his pocket, or when you have a uniform, the world is your oyster.”

IRISH – “That’s the Irish for you. When there’s trouble and famine, that’s where we go. We had it so bad ourselves with the Great Hunger, we’d never walk away from people in need. It’s in the genes, man. It’s the way we are – that’s what I say.”

– 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.

Article Share