Continued from Volume One -- Derry.
Seriously injured thanks to being caught in a horrific bombing, Brendan has collapsed into an Akinetic Catatonia, where he is only vaguely aware of what's going on around him. When he returns to reality, he finds that six months have passed. And while his body has healed, his mind is now torn by sudden flashes of memories of that day, mingled with confusing arguments between his mother and PIRA over what to do about him. There were some who wanted to let him die...or be killed and buried; they thought he'd gone to warn the targets about the bomb, and never mind he knew nothing about it.
Instead, he was brought to the US on a medical visa...but not as Brendan Kinsella. Immigration put him through as an Irish lad named Brennan McGabbhinn. The poor boy had witnessed his father dying in an accident, which brought on heart trouble, so he was being taken to a cousin's home, in Houston, to be treated by a specialist. That cousin? His mother's sister, Aunt Mari.
To help in this, the story circulating in Derry is that Brendan left town before the explosion. Their proof? The note he left his mother, the fact he got a UK passport and a job offer on a ship in Cork, and had bought a train ticket to Dublin. That he cannot now be located is not so unusual; he'll probably turn up, again, some day.
So now it is April 1973. Brendan is known only as Bren and has lived in an attic room out of sight of everyone except his Aunt Mari, Uncle Sean, and cousins -- Scott, who's 18 and without a care in the world; Brandi, who's 11 and sees Bren as her possession; and Brandi, who's 10 and tags along, mainly to annoy her sister. They know nothing of his past and think he's just a sick relative there for their amusement and gentle harassment.
In steps and stages, he comes to realize all ties to his former life have been severed, and he now has the opportunity to start anew. Like he'd wanted, before the bombing. Which both excites him and intensifies the guilt he feels that the rest of his family is still trapped in the horror of The Troubles. But he cannot return without bringing trouble to everyone. So he tries to navigate between these issues as he rebuilds his world.
He gets back to repairing things for the neighborhood maids and grounds keepers; finds an accidental compatriot in Jeremy Landau, Scott's best friend whose family lives just down the street; learns how to deal with the extreme heat and humidity of a Houston summer; and grows to believe he has found a place of safety in a city that is as promising, wealthy, modern and alive, as Houston.
But slowly he comes to see that appearances can be deceiving...and promises are not always kept.
Sullivan’s story covers just a few years of the 1970s, as Brendan begins to find his place, working at a bar and then as a mechanic, experimenting with sex, discovering love, and facing the harsh starkness of American racial and sexual binaries. Again, the narrative voice is intimately insistent, touched with music, frank about dark feelings and events. Even as Brendan finds much to love in his new home—friendships, family, romance, opportunity—the worst of his past bleeds through his consciousness, creating scenes of raw tension when offhand remarks from, say, his scene-stealing young cousins set him spiraling, fighting his own mind.
The ample dialogue and occasional sex are handled with electric vigor, as both author and narrator alike find transcendence in moments of urgent connection, as when Brendan and a girlfriend, who is Black, discuss the roots of hatred in their homelands, or when Brendan and a friend in Israel’s IDF commiserate over what it costs a person to have to kill. For all its density and heft, the novel often moves briskly, at a fierce emotional pitch.
Takeaway: Vigorous, fiercely emotional novel of an Irishman’s coming of age in Texas.
Comparable Titles: Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies, Sebastian Barry’s On Canaan’s Side.
Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: B
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A
