Rating: 4/5
Review:
A fine novel, but not a flawless one
Edna O'Brien remains a very fine writer. This book has many excellent things about it,
but as a whole novel I do have my reservations about it.
Beginning in a small, isolated Irish town, a charismatic
mystic and healer arrives and mesmerises the people there with his spirituality
and depth. We find out quite soon,
though, that he is a wanted war criminal who has committed the most appalling
atrocities in the Balkans. To say that
he is a thinly disguised Radovan Karadzic would be to exaggerate the extent of
the disguise, but by making him a fictional character in a community that she
understands intimately, O'Brien can explore his character and the consequences
of his actions through fictional events and she paints a brilliant, disturbing
portrait of an egocentric, self-deluding psychopath.
She does this very well much of the time. Her wonderful ability to conjure place and
convincing characters remains undiminished, and her perceptiveness about the
people she writes about is remarkable.
In the second half the narrative moves with the main character to
refugee communities in London and
to The Hague, becoming a book about
the consequences of violence and prejudice and about the people who have been
crushed, displaced and made helpless by them.
Any violence is largely implied but occasionally graphic. Be warned that there is one truly horrifying
scene which will haunt me for a long time, and O'Brien is excellent at
portraying the appalling reality and consequences of the crimes she deals with.
There is also a vivid reminder that
victims may be treated in this way not just in war zones and lawless places,
but in settled societies like ours.
We get a lot (and I mean a lot) of different people telling
their stories of oppression, survival and displacement. Each one is very important and movingly told,
and each teller very well painted by O'Brien.
I did find, though, that as a whole novel it didn't quite hang together
at times as the narrative led to yet another round of storytelling by a group
of new characters. I don't mean to
diminish the importance of these stories one jot, but as a novel it felt rather
clunky and contrived at times – including the early scene in which we discover
the "healer's" past as it is recounted to him in a dream by a dead
colleague.
I don't want to be too critical because I did find much of
the book very engrossing and memorable.
Also, knowing all these stories meant that I was moved almost to tears
in the last page or two by the haunted and unhappy protagonist asking The
Mothers Of Srebrenica "What brings peace?
What brings certainty?"…
"They listened attentively and then one spoke - A bone
she said. To find the smallest piece of
bone of one of her children…" They
also gave immense impact to the final sentence of the book: "You would not believe how many words
there are for home and what savage music there can be wrung from them."
This book is wise, important, impassioned and readable and
has great emotional impact. I can recommend it warmly in spite of my
reservations.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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