Lloyd, an English artist, takes a boat (not the kind with a motor – a currach, which I had to look up because I was unfamiliar with traditional Irish boats) to a remote Irish island at the edge of Europe in 1979. The artist intends to paint a masterpiece there – all while being a huge pain in the ass to the island inhabitants, which are few in number but mighty in personality. There’s four generations of a family living on the island, but mostly it’s a teenage boy (James – not Seamus), his mother Mairead, grandmother Mrs. O’Neill and great-grandmother. Three women and a teenage boy, living among the rough water and the rocks. The family suffered a terrible tragedy in which James’ father, uncle and grandfather drowned in a fishing accident, not long after James was born. Since then, he has two uncles who visit the island often to bring supplies, and who try to bring in money by renting out cottages on the island (hence Lloyd, the artist). His father’s brother, Francis, lusts after his mother, while his mother’s brother Michael lusts after a better life off the island. And the women, as usual, maintain the home as best they can – they keep on, despite the many challenges.
Lloyd is not the only visitor to the island in the summer of 1979. A Frenchman, Masson, has been regularly visiting the island for a few years, conducting a linguistic study of the inhabitants. He’s quite close with the great-grandmother, but mostly he’s devoted to the Irish language itself. More specifically, the preservation of the language. On his arrival the island, he’s greeted warmly by the elder members of the family, but is frustrated by the presence of an English speaker on the island – he worries this will more quickly erode the language. The younger generations are less concerned – whether it’s money or companionship they long for, they prefer the company of the painter – or are at least much more willing to tolerate him.
This atmospheric story is told amidst brief asides that deliver factual descriptions of murders that occurred in Ireland that summer, one of many years of conflict between Protestants and Catholics (for a more thorough depiction of this time, I highly recommend Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, I have seen some other really great reviews of that book on Cannonball and I highly agree, it was quite informative and still accessible). Initially, as we are introduced to the characters, the stories seem to come out of left field – gradually, they are integrated into the story, as characters hear about the violence in their minimal interactions with life outside of the island. The family is decidedly Catholic – but as the violence continues unabated, and the women on the island sense how close that violence lurks in their own loved ones, we see the women take a broader view of the conflict.
This book was a slow burn for me. It was quite readable – but there were small stylistic issues (lack of quotation marks, a tendency of the author to lapse into digressions full of phrases rather than complete sentences, ever shifting points of view) that put me a bit at odds with the book at first. And then, slowly, the emotion of the book turned up a bit – it was quite subtle, but by the end I was invested, devastated, and satisfied. Over time, each character is revealed to be far more complex than they are initially presented to be – full of more desires, more motivation, more talent than we could have guessed in the initial pages. They manage to surprise us, even as they do exactly as we assumed they would.