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With this book, Hugo Hamilton has accomplished a fine balance between a story and a critique of contemporary society. The main character Coyne, inhabits a world that is going through significant social change and as the 'back door of Dublin', Dun Laoghaire is a hot bed of conflicting ideologies and values. The dockland setting cleverly provides Hamilton with a suitable arena for a story of intensity and high jinx. Our hero Pat Coyne is a bleak and initially distasteful character He lurches from misunderstanding to discord and ricochets around his inner demons. Annoyed and confused with the way things are, his confusion is accompanied at times by a childish helplessness that reeks of dependency. He can swing unsteadily into actual confrontation, or smoulder in silent fury. Messily trying to piece together the fragments of life, Coyne curses all innovation and looks back fondly to a time when Ireland was a real and solid place. Somewhere he recognised. The trouble is, the only sure thing about memory is its unreliability. But reliance on memory is not the least of Coyne's problems. If we consider the three corner-stones of life as; home, love and work then out hero is in serious trouble. Misreading almost every situation he finds himself in, Coyne is so out of step with the pulse of the new reality, your heart goes out to him. He hasn't even learned how to shop in Marks and Spencer's for the lonely meals he endures as an exile from his wife and family.
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As a member of the Gardaí, Coyne is outwardly conformist in his choice of profession. But a recent accident has left him torn between being a rebel who rejects the society that his wife lives in, and her avid pursuer; as an incredibly isolated man living in what he perceives to be a hostile world, Hamilton presents us with a repository for all our confusion about the world and its workings. The he starts to play with our perceptions of reality by focusing on Coyne's distressing inability to tally even a vague resemblance between appearance and reality. The effect of this is a trigger to question the accuracy of our own perceptions. In a world gone mad, our hero is a receptacle for the expression of differing views as he argues for and against different value systems. Things are not what they seem, and elements such as Coyne's living arrangements magnify his place in the hinterland of society. He is away from his kids, his job, his wife and what he considers to be his real home. In him, Hugo Hamilton offers society a damaged individual that may or not be correct in his assessments, but is still evaluating and awake enough to care. The strength of the novel is its author's ability to create a profound commentary and glaze it with a story of murder, money and mayhem. A delicious tension is created in the last pages of the book as the action strains to climax. We don't know if expectations built up throughout will be satisfied, and although the events thus far are at times daft, they sufficiently indicate a certain solution to Coyne's dilemma. This book aggravates the mental inclination to respond when being jabbed with a sharp stick.
Sarah Baber |
