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The Garden of Eden All Over Again
By Jude Collins
Published by Pocket Books/TownHouse
Price, £6.99
Reviewed by Danny Morrison
Jude Collins might be better known for his incisive weekly political column in the 'Irish News' and for his regular contributions to Radio Ulster but he is also a very fine prose writer, with two books of short stories under his belt, and now, this, his debut novel.
It is a coming-of-age story, set in Omagh over a one-year period between 1959 and 1960, a first-person narrative told by Jim McGrath who has an ugly scar on his cheek from the time he was five. An uncle had jokingly told him that if he put his ear on top of the Aga, a wee Orangeman who lived inside the cooker would make a speech! Jim, who lives just outside the town, but spends all his spare time knocking around with the Huck Finn-ish, 'Presumer' Livingstone, is looking for love and lust but also thinks/worries that there are signs from God that he should go to Maynooth and train for the priesthood like his friend Francie Ryan. Jim is only seventeen and already he is obsessed with death (as a result of a missioner's sermon) and whether he will get into heaven.
But he also thinks: 'And God. I can see now from the amount of urges you've put in me, you want me to be a Catholic layman who's in the world and wears drainpipes and gets married.'
In fact, he's your normal, 1950s rural Irish Catholic boy: intimidated, guilt-ridden and hormonal (with too many to be a priest, he suspects), from a Rosary-praying patriarchal family. Jim is trying to work out who he is and where he is going, resisting pressure from his mother and Uncle Father John to join the priesthood, has difficulties getting on with his father (called Our Father), and hates his little sister Maeve. Inside his head he is spoken to by the velvety voice of film icon Debbie Reynolds who whispers temptations and deviant suggestions in his ear, including one about his complaining sister: "She'd be quiet if you stuck a knife in her chest."
Jim's bubbling hormones even effect his view of the world: seeing his sister's bike lying on top of his and wondering; or the night "full of noises, one riding on top of the next. At the bottom the wind - hissing up the trees' skirts, thrashing their limbs, shaking with excitement."
Collins certainly replicates the atmosphere of the period - when Catholics prayed for the people of China, Masses were packed, Michael O'Hehir was on the radio commenting on GAA matches, few homes had a television, cinema and the parochial hall were THE venues, Buddy Holly was Number One, shops seemed dark and fusty, all girls wore navy knickers, boys used Brylcreem and aspired to be Teddy Boys, and the Bishop and local Catholic councillor (member of the Knights of St Columbanus, collector for the St Vincent de Paul) determined the lives of their subjects and ruled unchallenged.
The foul-mouthed, rebellious Presumer Livingstone comes from a poor family. Jim's mother views him as a corner boy and in school Brother Dickey persecutes and discriminates against him. His mother, a widow, is employed as a cleaner in the local golf club by Councillor Neil Trainor, the well-off, unctuous town representative who controls everything that moves, including the career of rising star and singer, Mary O'Kane.
Presumer once won an expensive camera in a mouth-organ competition but Nugent cheated him and swapped it for a cheap Brownie. Presumer suspects that the sinister Nugent, who at the same time that he was entertaining in his house a passing circus performer known as The Great Collette, was responsible for the disappearance of his baby brother Sean for a few days and took photographs of the child which left him morose and speechless.
The privileged Trainor, for all his wealth, has an imbecilic son, Alphonsus 'Almighty' Trainor, renowned for telling lies. After a storm he tells Mrs McGrath: "A telephone pole landed on a house in Carrickore - man in bed never even woke up. Daddy says they'll only be able to tell who he is by his teeth. The electricity had the rest of him made into jelly. And a policeman in Beragh was electrocuted. He was working with an electric drill in the garage and the wind blew in out of his hand and it went into his eye."
Presumer recruits Jim and two others to join him in breaking into Trainor's big house, poisoning the dog and cutting up a dead cat (which the avaricious Trainor had also stolen when it was a kitten). The outcome of this adventure determines both the fate of Presumer and Jim.
This novel is an absolute scream with many comic gems, including a description of the school's auditioning for 'The Pirates of Penzance' when Presumer sings 'Davy Crockett' and is rejected by the brutal Brother Dickey. There is an hilarious description of Jim's confession to a priest about a hot water bottle and how he sleeps with Debbie Reynolds every night. Then he worries that the priests could actually be discussing what they heard that day over dinner: "So this young one - nice-looking bit of fluff too - said to me - pass the HP Sauce, Father - good man - she says…"
A comic yet a bittersweet story about a boy struggling for knowledge: looking for 'God. Somewhere in the centre of darkness'; and seeking love behind the hedge with Christy Wenton, a girl who talked about undressing people with her eyes.
Buy the book, then come and listen to Jude Collins read from it at Scribes At The Rock during August's Feile!
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison