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No Bones
By Anna Burns
Flamingo, £9.90 (pbk)
Always be kind to first novelists is a precept by which I've tried hard to abide, well-aware of the damage to morale that can be caused to a fledgling writer by a heartless, cruel or cynical reviewer.
However, I have to say I have very mixed feelings about this novel which is set in the republican hot-spot of Ardoyne in North Belfast between 1969 and 1994. Ardoyne, of course, is currently in the news because of the loyalist blockade of a Catholic school, a bit of reality which possibly prejudices my approach to this book, given its misanthropic portrayal of the nationalist people of that area.
You approach a book of allegory, fable or science fiction differently than you do a literary novel where you hope to find truths it may aspire to reveal about personality, psychology and life. But on another limb, politically, I would be concerned that a southern Irish or an English audience would read this novel believing the fictional context to be somewhat a faithful representation of reality, even if the story is completely blown by its surrealist affectations.
The novel is about the life of Amelia Lovett (aged seven when the story begins), her family and community, all of whom without exception are unhinged, are on drink or drugs or the drug of violence. It is unrelievedly depressing, sometimes though not always told in the first person, and while I can go along with distortion and misrepresentation in the interests of the greater good of the novel's aesthetic 'meaning', I found it all a bit of a moan, of the alienated, poor me type, not dissimilar to the extended moan that was 'Ripley Bogle' by Robert Mac Liam Wilson.
Let's look at Amelia's family. Her mother Mariah perpetually feuds with and tears lumps out of her sister Sadie Lavery. When Amelia is seven her brother Mick tries to throw her out the window. Years later, he is married to Mena. Both of them have sex in front of the family watching television, and then try to rape Amelia while their daughter Orla is hanging her dolls by the neck from the banister. Amelia's father, a violent man, is shot dead. Her sister, Lizzie, overdoses and kills herself. Mick is shot dead as a suspected informer. Her long-lost cousin, a British soldier, beats an old man to death while on patrol - a drunk, old man, need I add. Later, the soldier is stabbed to death by Mick's friend, Jat McDaide from Ardoyne, who owns his own freelance murder squad.
Then there are Amelia's school chums and neighbours. Amelia's schoolteacher is an alcoholic who wears no knickers, ever since she was jilted, I jest not. Bronagh, aged 13, shoots Grainne in front of the class for stealing her boyfriend. Aloysius Fallon, deputy treasurer of the Sinn Fein H-Block Sub-Committee who misappropriates over £6,000 for - surprise, surprise - drinking and gambling, hangs himself. Fifteen kids play Russian roulette with a revolver until one of them shoots himself in the head. Kids line up to be kneecapped by cerebrally-challenged IRA personnel.
Bronagh McCabe, an IRA woman, has kids called Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy, Kevin Barry, Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, and has to have "dominating and very fast sex" before she can kill. So, Amelia falls victim to her abuse as well. Anna Burns really pushes the body count. Amelia's friend Vincent Lyttle, a schizoid, talks to himself and other imagined characters ever since his father was tortured to death. Mary Dolan pushes a pram around Ardoyne with the remains of her aborted baby, dressed up resembling a bomb.
Mary gets pregnant again and Vincent asks her to take out the baby so that he can have a close look at it - which she does, on the end of her thumb, and it's the button for Amelia's brother Mick. She then puts the baby back inside her with the help of a Nambarrie tea-caddy.
Certainly, in fiction there is an honourable place for surrealism and hallucinations, nightmares and dreams, but in this novel it just doesn't work and comes across as desperate plotting, unless perhaps Flamingo's editors were all out on strike and no one advised Ms Burns.
And that is a pity. Because it is obvious from several passages that she can create mood and atmosphere and pathos. She describes the fate of two young men with whom Amelia comes into contact on the same night: two men who have to cross Belfast to get back to a nationalist haven. One of them makes it home safely, but the other is caught by a loyalist murder gang. And her descriptions of Amelia's anorexia are effective and very moving. With a bit more discipline, or a bit more guidance, Anna Burns will write a far superior second novel, even though she will dislike me for a long time.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison