Saturday, March 03, 2012
The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty
Dublin in the 1920’s. Post war of independence. Post civil war. A charismatic and ruthless leader of a left wing revolutionary organisation. Social disintegration. Vice and drug addiction. Idealism, and betrayal. Love and murder. Such are the components of Liam O’Flaherty’s The Informer.
The novel begins with gunman Francis Joseph McPhillip, returning to Dublin for the first time since murdering the leader of the Farmers Union the previous October during a farm labours strike. It is now mid March and McPhillip has spent the previous five months hiding out in the Wicklow Mountains. He returns to Dublin with a price on his head and suffering from consumption.
It is just before six in the evening and McPhillip seeks out his old comrade Gypo Nolan in the Dunboy Lodging House in Dublin. Gypo is an ex-policeman who accompanied McPhillip on many exploits. Together the two were known as The Devil’s Twins.
Gypo has fallen on hard times. After the murder of the president of the Farmers Union he was expelled from the Revolutionary Movement. He is homeless, penniless and but for the opium addicted Katie Fox, friendless.
Seeing that his old comrade is desperate to return to his family, Gypo sees an opportunity. He sets up McPhillip, telling him his all is well, his parents house is safe, the police have long ago given up keeping watch. They part and immediately afterward Gypo informs the Police of McPhillip’s arrival in Dublin and his subsequent location.
Armed with this information the authorities surround the McPhillip family home and Francis McPhillip is killed while attempting to escape. For providing information which leads to the death of his old comrade, Gypo Nolan receives the grand sum of £20, quite an amount in the Dublin of the time.
From here the man focus of the novel is Gypo, the informer. Gypo suddenly realises the full extent of his actions. He is outside society. He was dismissed from the police force, expelled from the Revolutionary Organisation and now has betrayed his friend. It would be no exaggeration to say that Gypo, through his actions, has found himself on the very margins of society.
One of the most fascinating characters in the novel is Commandant Dan Gallagher. Intelligent, brave, charismatic, ruthless, Gallagher will stop at nothing to bring about his goal which is the bringing the about of an armed revolution. But first Gallagher is more concerned with catching and dealing with the informer. When Gallagher and Gypo meet, their clash of personalities and subsequent outcome, is outstanding.
It soon becomes apparent that O’Flaherty knows the criminal underbelly of Dublin and the people who reside there. At times the descriptions of the city mirror the inner turmoil his characters endure. While his detailed retelling of a drunken Gypo’s time spent in a bordello is both colourful and memorable. So vivid and recognisable are its characters and descriptions of Dublin that reading The Informer now it is hard to appreciate that it was first published in 1925.
The Informer is not an easy read, but it is a memorable one and may best be described as being an expressionist novel. All the action takes place over twelve hours which may account for it’s relentless intensity. The Informer by Liam O’Flaherty without doubt deserves to be read by as wide an audience as possible.
Labels: The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty. A review.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
The Scar by China Mieville
Imagine a vast floating city. A place of legend ruled by a pair of enigmatic scarred lovers. It is a place where the past counts for nothing and the only things required of its citizens are secrecy and absolute loyalty. This city has travelled across oceans for hundreds of years using piracy as a means of maintaining its existence. Such a city exists it’s name is Armada and is the main setting for The Scar, the second in China Mieville’s series of New Crobuzon novels.
The novel opens with translator Bellis Coldwine sailing in The Terpsichoria, to Nova Esperium, New Crobuzon’s colony. Bellis is distant, cold and haughty. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly and with one exception refuses to fraternise with her fellow passengers.
As the journey progress The Terpsichoria receives new passengers in the form of prisoners who are on their way to a life of penal servitude in Nova Esperium. Numbered among the prisoners is Tanner Shack. Like most of the prisoners, who live in appalling conditions on the ship, Tanner Shack is remade. Meaning genetic limbs have been grafted onto his body.
The voyage for the most part takes place without incident until Bellis’s services as a translator are called upon. She must accompany The Terpsichoria’s captain as he journeys beneath to sea to carry out trade negotiations with the Cray people who reside there. Negotiations continue without incident until the Captain questions Cray officials about what suspiciously sounds like a mobile oil rig which has mysteriously vanished. Things take a further turn for the worse when the Cray people produce Silas Fennec a human carrying an official documentation from the New Crobuzon government giving him authorisation to commandeer any state registered vessel. The Terpsichoria’s captain agrees however reluctantly to obey the state’s ruling and Fennec orders him to sail back to New Crobuzon immediately.
As The Terpsichoria engages on its return journey it encounters pirates from the Armada. The captain and his officers are killed and passengers, prisoners and ordinary crewmembers are told that the past is over, everyone is equal so long as they show loyalty to their new rulers in Armada.
From here the novel could quite easily develop into A Pirates of the Caribbean style swashbuckling adventure on the high seas. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the novel progresses we learn that Armada is much more than a floating den of pirates. It contains a library, scientists, a thriving commercial sector amongst things. It is divided into a number of districts which are semi independent.
The most important district on Armada is Garwater which is ruled by the enigmatic couple known only as The Lovers who are the effective rulers of the ocean city. The Lovers have other plans other than marauding the high seas. These plans are only shockingly revealed as the novel progresses.
The real power behind The Lovers is the mysterious Uther Doul. Doul is perhaps the most interesting characters in the novel. He comes across as a merciless killer whose loyalty to Armada is absolute. Although Doul relates his personal history to Bellis it is what he leaves out which is intriguing.
Some chapters in the novel are genuinely frightening. At one point several members of the Armada land on an island solely inhabited by mosquito people. The scenes involving the Armadians fighting the islands mosquito women would grace any horror fiction.
Characters in the novel have a habit of meeting untimely and grizzly ends and l are dispatched in a merciless blood thirsty fashion. Fluffy loveable characters are notably absent in China Mieville’s world. One of the more memorable characters is The Brucolac, a vampire who contains all the characteristics of those fabled horrors.
There are subplots aplenty in this novel and I won’t spoil it for the reader and reveal them. Suffice to say that Silas Fennec is much more than he seems and really not to be trusted by anyone. Least of all Bellis Coldwine.
The Scar is not an easy read and I have to admit that this is my second attempt at this novel. But the rewards are many. The pallet on which Mieville paints his tale is gigantic in scope and intricate in detail. Mieville has a passionate love affair with the English language and creates whole terminology for his World. Sit back and enjoy the sheer inventiveness of most amazing voices currently working in genre fiction.
Labels: The Scar by China Mieville. A review
Friday, February 03, 2012
Korean artist Rimi Yang
The four paintings below are by Korean born artist Rimi Yang. Yang studied in both the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative and The Otis College of Art and Design. Later she also studied in Italy in the Florence Academy of Art.
Yang’s work is celebrated for its vibrant use of colour, and her paintings are said to be intuitive, instinctive balancing acts of contrasts. Yang is not afraid to borrow images from both Eastern and Western artistic masters. The influence of Japanese artist Eizan and the classical Ingres are paramount.
While drawing inspiration from the past Yang also looks to create her own individual voice by mixing various techniques from different styles. Her work is said to "Celebrate the creative duality that exists in life....she revels in the confusion mankind creates in its attempt to order the un-orderable and to explain the unexplainable".
The work of Rimi Yang exhibited last year in the Sol Art Gallery Dublin.
Orange Kimono
Queens Marriage
Memory of an Angel
Lady in a Blue Dress
Yang’s work is celebrated for its vibrant use of colour, and her paintings are said to be intuitive, instinctive balancing acts of contrasts. Yang is not afraid to borrow images from both Eastern and Western artistic masters. The influence of Japanese artist Eizan and the classical Ingres are paramount.
While drawing inspiration from the past Yang also looks to create her own individual voice by mixing various techniques from different styles. Her work is said to "Celebrate the creative duality that exists in life....she revels in the confusion mankind creates in its attempt to order the un-orderable and to explain the unexplainable".
The work of Rimi Yang exhibited last year in the Sol Art Gallery Dublin.
Orange Kimono
Queens Marriage
Memory of an Angel
Lady in a Blue DressLabels: Four by Rimi Yang
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The Passenger by Peter Wild
"To sleep: perchance to dream". What do you suppose would happen if you slept for fifteen years? What would you miss? What great events in the world would pass you by? What would happen to your coterie of friends? After all you wouldn’t be there to witness the many changes in their lives. How would your absence effect your family?
This is the premise for Peter Wild’s debut novel The Passenger, the story of Whitlow a man who falls asleep one night in Stockport city centre only to wake up fifteen years later to a world that has changed.
The Passenger begins with Whitlow waking up one morning surrounded by a bunch of teenagers one of whom throws a half eaten beef burger in his direction. He finds himself rescued by a woman, who unbeknownst to him, turns out to be his wife.
The woman, Ruth, with a baby in tow, bundles Whitlow into her car and takes him home where she feeds, washes and cares for him and re-introduces him once more to his family. She gives him a notebook, which is apparently written by Whitlow during periods when he was lucid and in the bosom of his family.
As he reads the notebook Whitlow learns that this is not the first time he has disappeared only to reappear disorientated and lost. Whitlow discovers that his disappearances began one night when he stormed out of the house he shared with his girlfriend Connie. In Stockport town centre he had an encounter with a bunch of drunken men and women one of whom flashed her breasts at Whitlow causing Whitlow to run in terror.
Council workers on a clean-up detail find him coiled up asleep beside a bridge. No matter how hard they try they are unable to wake him. A story about a sleeping man appears in the local newspaper about the sleeping man from where the story snowballs and endorsed by the local mayor Whitlow, for a while, become a tourist attraction.
Reading the notebook Whitlow discovers that he was part of a band called The Sleeping Men who, released three albums and were successful for a while. He discovers that he has a wife, children and a job at which he is successful.
One of the many strengths of The Passenger is that it is populated by believable characters. For example Stacy Shenanigan, she of the bared breasts, finds notoriety on the back of the story of Whitlow’s fame. She appears on page three, and later on for example, Celebrity Big Brother. Another character of note is Connie, Whitlow’s erstwhile girlfriend who launches a media career for herself and goes from regional reporter to presenter on just about every programme of note in America.
As the story unfolds Whitlow learns his history via the notebook and the novel is told in alternate chapters. We see Whitlow emerged from his most recent disappearance and in the following chapter the earlier Whitlow relating his story. This turns out to be a magical device and the reader can really relate to Whitlow as amidst his disorientation he slowly unearths his hidden story.
The Passenger by Peter Wild is flawless rock n roll of a novel, with references to The Smiths, The Fall and Talking Heads amongst others. Without doubt it will be the literary debut of the year.
Labels: The Passenger by Peter Wild. A review.
Friday, January 06, 2012
Grey Souls by Philippe Claudel
"Grey Souls" by Philippe Claudel opens in December 1917 with the discovery of the corpse of ten year old Belle de Jour just outside a small town in rural France. A swift investigation is undertaken resulting with the arrest and execution of two deserters from the French army. As far as everyone is concerned the perpetrators are caught and dealt with and the case is closed.
But nothing is as it seems, nothing is that cut and dry. The narrator of the story, a police investigator, who remains un-named relates the story of the murder from twenty years in the future when Europe is once more faced with conflict and death.
Slowly and subtly the story behind the murder and the characters involved is told. Central to the case is the Public Prosecutor Destinat. From the beginning the narrator suspects that Destinat is the murderer. The Public Prosecutor is a tragic figure. His wife Clelia died not long after their marriage, and widowed and without an heir he effectively withdrew from the world emerging only to go into the court or for Sunday mass. He is one of the many grey souls which populate the novel.
Lilia, the school teacher is another grey soul who wanders through the novel. She turned up in the town one afternoon without explanation and immediately took up the post of teacher. Lilia is charming and polite, smiling and sincere. But is also distant no one really comes close to her. Her life and subsequent death remain a mystery which is only solved at the conclusion.
It is the narrator himself who perhaps is the greatest mystery. At the start he comes across as being an innocent he is simply one of the crowd. Piece by piece his story is told till by the end the reader is perhaps less sympathetic than previously.
One of the novels strengths is the manner in which minor characters are vividly created. Characters such as Old Barbe, the caretaker who appear for only a few pages are given equal descriptive importance as Destinat and Lilia.
A melancholic atmosphere permeates through the novel, good turns to evil and daylight is driven from the land. Everything and everyone is cloaked in ambiguity. As the narrator is told,
"Nothing’s black or white. And it’s the same with souls. You’re a grey soul, like the rest of us."
Despite the bleak subject matter "Grey Souls" is a novel which is well told, lyrical and enjoyable. The twists at the end are totally unforeseen and will only add to, rather than detract from, its appeal.
Labels: Grey Souls by Philippe Claudel. A review.
