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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Ireland’s Subterfuge and Fury

10/5/2017

8 Comments

 
Allow me to introduce you to two novels looking back on Ireland’s recent history through the eyes of a man whose life has been limited by secrets, subterfuge and hypocrisy.

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The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

We first meet Cyril Avery as a foetus in the womb of a sixteen-year-old girl exiled from her rural Cork community in a shocking opening scene in a Catholic church. She manages to save herself by finding work the parliament canteen while Cyril is adopted by a wealthy, but decidedly odd, couple whose main contribution to his emotional development is constant reminders he’s not a real Avery. But parental neglect is not Cyril’s only challenge as John Boyne plots his progress across seven decades in parallel with the changes in Catholic Ireland. Cyril is gay in a virtual theocracy that would deny his very existence (p209):

It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously requires a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature. I had never considered myself to be a dishonest person, hating the idea that I was capable of such mendacity and deceit, but the more I examined the architecture of my life, the more I realized how fraudulent were its foundations.

Cyril’s story is related with a gentle humour that occasionally veers off into farce. But there’s no doubt of the anger behind the tragedy of a man born in the wrong time and place. His Ireland is a culture of hypocrisy, violence and perverted morality and even New York, where Cyril lives with his Dutch partner for several years, is intolerant of homosexuality in the era of AIDS.

As with John Boyne’s
previous novel, A History of Loneliness, I found The Heart’s Invisible Furies both an absorbing read and a writing tutorial. Like Diana, in my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, Cyril’s need to keep an essential part of himself secret takes its toll not only on him but on those he cares about. It was particularly helpful to reflect on the parallels with my current WIP, and hopefully my third novel, currently known as High Hopes, where I’m tussling with the balance of tragedy and comedy as well as how to manage the series of chance encounters between two people who yearn to connect but continually fail to do so. When, in The Heart’s Invisible Furies, Cyril crosses paths with his biological mother it’s left to the reader to recognise the poignancy of the moment. On the other hand, much as I admired John Boyne’s capacity to bring more than a touch of humour to Cyril’s plight, I thought, especially as the novel moves into the twenty-first century, the comedy was occasionally overdone (with one scene in particular, where two sets of prospective grandparents meet up outside a maternity ward, almost slapstick in its representation of bigotry) and coincidence (although perhaps unavoidable in this type novel).

Nevertheless, this is a highly accomplished novel travelling through Irish and
LGBT history. Despite the humour, it’s a serious portrayal of the burden of a marginalised identity and timely warning about the politics of prejudice. Thanks to Doubleday for my proof copy.

Inch Levels by Neil Hegarty

Because this is how it is with secrets. So he realised now. They stay intact – it is an easy matter to keep a secret, in spite of what people say: but the price is a defamation of the soul; and eventually, the secret will create a hollow which the soul had once inhabited.

Terrible violence lurks behind the beautiful landscape of Ireland’s north coast. A father who takes a belt to his child; another child’s body washed up on the shore; the bombs of the Troubles; and the soldiers fighting the rest of Europe’s war. Then there’s the quiet violence of
a mother’s love withheld and the false selves and secrets that takes its place.

The novel focuses on two generations of one family, beginning with the violence of illness as Patrick, a thirtyish schoolteacher, lies in his hospital bed, dying of cancer. His visitors – especially his distant mother, Sarah, and his despised brother-in-law, Robert, but even his beloved sister, Margaret – are unwelcome, as his mind meanders through the past and he rages at a life stolen from him before it had really got going. Like Patrick’s unbridled thoughts, the novel circles through time and through the minds of the main characters, drawing ever closer towards the stories that cannot be shared.

With beautifully lyrical language, the structure works in the main, but I sometimes lost track of not only what I knew but what I was hoping to discover. For me, the reveal was a little too late but, nevertheless, Neil Hegarty’s debut novel is a compelling literary exploration of the geography and recent sociopolitical history of the North of Ireland, the impossibility of leaving home when one is
psychologically homeless and the sterility of family bonds when love is not equal to the truth. Thanks to Head of Zeus for my review copy.

With my own novel just over two weeks away from publication, look out for the blog tour which kicks off on Sunday.

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Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
8 Comments
Charli Mills
11/5/2017 06:54:22 pm

Good to see another novel from John Boyne. Your reflection on character secrets has me thinking about the one Sarah Shull resolves to go to her grave with, and yet her extended family, community and greater society believes she harbors a different one. It took me a long time to figure out when and where to write that reveal in the storyline. Makes me realize it's not easy for a writer to keep secrets! The subject matter of Boyne's book makes me worry for the young generation of American LGBT community who grew up in a more open and accepting society, but find it becoming closed again after the election. Hiding oneself when not accustom to could be even more difficult, yet the driver is fear. Our VP thinks homosexuality can be "converted." Who is truly morally corrupt? Why would anyone harm another in the name of "what's right"? Both books seem relevant, and thank you for adding the dimension of looking at how other authors deal with writing secrets.

Reply
Annecdotist
12/5/2017 06:42:35 pm

Having also written a novel with a secret central to the storyline, I’m very conscious of the difficulty of getting the timing right, and of course different readers will want different things – for me, I’m trying to work out what I like as a reader (which isn’t always obvious) and then try to write that way (though don’t necessarily manage).
I probably mentioned elsewhere that in Britain this year it’s the fiftieth anniversary of the sexual offences act when homosexuality was decriminalised – we seem to have come a long way in those fifty years and I shudder to think we might go back. And as you say, so difficult for young people who’ve grown up without that sense they have to hide who they are having to learn (or maybe failing to learn) afresh how to keep themselves safe. Similar issues for people of colour and women – those freedoms we think of as rights can be taken from us.

Reply
Charli Mills
22/5/2017 06:39:58 pm

It's difficult to think of reversals, and I'm curious to find examples in the historic record.

Annecdotist
23/5/2017 04:03:56 pm

There must be plenty, maybe we’ve rewritten history to block them out.

Charli Mills
23/5/2017 07:16:18 pm

I'm thinking there are examples, buried in historical records and personal accounts. I picked up a book by a female historian who compiled hundreds of women's diaries from the westward expansion in the US and she has noted important differences from how history recorded and downplayed women's experiences.

Annecdotist
24/5/2017 12:26:30 pm

Ha, isn’t it a definition of history that it downplays women’s contribution?

Norah Colvin link
18/5/2017 12:11:02 pm

I think there are probably secrets in most people's stories. Whether they are ever revealed, of that I can't be sure. It is probably more important for readers to know of a character's secrets, than it is for secrets to be known or shared in "real" life. Though as a psychologist you would have more understanding of those complexities than I. I think you got the reveal timing right in Sugar and Snails. Although I predicted the secret by reading information in the back of the book before reading (tut-tut), I was still interested to find out how you were going to share the knowledge - and to see if I was correct. I was happy with your timing.

Reply
Annecdotist
18/5/2017 12:36:21 pm

Thank you for that endorsement, Norah. Yes, I remember how you found out which was the difference between the print and e-book versions (I think) due to the latter having a table of contents. Interesting ideas about the difference between secrets in fiction and real life.

Reply



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