My review of this new thriller is up, over at The Book Book.
(Technically, it’s only newish; it came out in the UK several months ago. However, it’s slated for publication here in the US on October 1, under the title The Ghosts of Belfast.)
Capsule review: an excellent story, told in what is — for another aspiring new author — an embarrassingly expert manner. I have no idea how much this book resembles the form in which he submitted it, but on its evidence Stuart Neville has a long successful career ahead of him.
The book’s setting: contemporary Northern Ireland. On the surface, the IRA is going through all the motions of becoming a respectable, merely political force. But this innocent exterior is threatened by certain old-line forces which long for the days when an opponent could simply be threatened or dispatched outright.
Into this mix comes one Gerry Fegan, a long-time IRA “hard man” — what we might think of here as a goodfella, of the particularly brutal sort — recently released from prison. He’s not really interested in returning to his old ways, and in fact has twelve very good reasons to put them behind: the ghosts of those he has killed, now demanding payment from Fegan. Blood payment — the blood of those who condemned the twelve to death…
I really liked The Twelve. The supernatural angle isn’t heavy-handed; these ghosts appear to no one but Fegan, and intervene in no way directly. No floating candlesticks, no banging doors. But Neville has made them real to Fegan — oh boy are they real to him.
And as a thriller it’s got everything I’d look for: not mere action (though there’s plenty of that) and not mere suspense (ditto), but plenty of heart as well.
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P.S. Stuart Neville is a blogger and sometime commenter on other popular writerly blogs, like Moonrat’s and Nathan Branford‘s places. Other long-time denizens of those places have known him for years, some even having read and/or critiqued early drafts of his book. I myself don’t “know” him in any way, although I have posted maybe two or three comments to his blog in the year since I encountered him as his online persona named “Conduit.”
DarcKnyt says
Sounds interesting. And if it’s as expertly told as you say, I can only imagine the feelings of inadequacy it will invoke for me.
:)
fg says
Interesting, I’ve notice Conduit’s comments many times. Argh pen names, who’d want to do without them – something I really enjoy about blogs.
Froog says
Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid – although I found the contemporary Belfast setting fascinating, and I could admire the skill of the execution, I found the cruelty and bleakness of the story just a bit too relentless (I discover my squeamishness is more moral than gore-averse).
However, I do predict our Stuart is on his way to fame and fortune, and will probably be collaborating with Neil Jordan on a film version within a year or so.
John says
Darc: You really need to start thinking of inspiration instead of inadequacy. Heh.
fg: I like that other people use pen names; at least, I like thinking about how they came up with them. A regular commenter here uses a pseudonym “mapelba” elsewhere. When I first read it, and for months after, I read it as something like “maple? bah!” Then I thought it was something vaguely Napoleonic: “map: Elba.” Of course the real explanation was much more mundane, equivalent to my calling myself “joedsim.”
Froog: Moral squeamishness is a trait greatly to be admired. On a former blog, I had a recurring theme of posts called “Guilty Pleasures” — movies, TV shows, books, and so on for which I held a sneaking admiration or flat-out love, despite their cruelty and bleakness. (Hence Pulp Fiction, for example, and The Sopranos.) The only way I could (can) handle such material is through what is by now an automatic habit: shutting off the censor, I guess you could say. Tabling my reservations.
Froog says
Well, it’s the relentlessness aspect that does for me, I think. And it’s probably much harder in a book – where the ‘period of consumption’ is both a) indefinite, and b) likely to be much longer than that for a movie or a TV programme. It’s difficult to shut the qualms away for a number of hours (perhaps spread over a number of days) in order to read a violent book. Snuggling up with Tony Soprano for an hour, or Jules Winnfield for two, is not so much of a challenge.
Also, those two examples are characterised by a lot of comic relief – they’re essentially black comedies. That was my problem getting through Stuart’s book: no laughs – just dark, darker, and oh-I-don’t-want-to-go-here.
Froog says
I’d be intrigued to know what some of your other ‘Guilty Pleasures’ were.
John says
Froog: my guilty pleasures tend(ed) to be things which seem to betray noble principles I like to imagine I hold. They include, among others (it was a regular Friday post):
1. watching women cook
2. The ESPN Sports Guy
3. sleeping in
4. long-distance eavesdropping
5. the Repairman Jack series of books by F. Paul Wilson
6. snobbery
Actually, on re-reading that list, maybe it’s time to revisit. I’ve formed new ones in the last four-five years.
I take your point about the black-comedy angle, and agree: yes, you have to have a really twisted sense of “comedy” to find it in The Twelve. Have you read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road? That’s one grim damned book, too.
John says
P.S. re: guilty pleasures… your turn!
The Querulous Squirrel says
Encouraging that a fellow blogger with a pen name actually wrote a real book under his real name. Hmmm.
Froog says
‘Guilty Pleasures’? It might take me a while to come up with a good list. (Though I could probably be tempted by most of yours.)
PS2 driving games and the music of AC/DC are the only two I commonly admit to.
John says
Squirrel: Was that a smidgen of possibility I just saw scampering through that comment?
Froog: the only two I commonly admit to
Such a simple phrase! But really, it’s like a magic sack into which one could stuff a whole world of both guilt and pleasure. *laughing*
fg says
Ha ha!
Watching women cook – I wish I watched more women (or men cook). Actually it is kind of wonderful when a man cooks for me.
ESPN guys – ummm, I met one in the street during the Olympics. We talked briefly, he was hansom. He asked to interview me – so we had a five minute interview right there and then. (I know it’s a huge channel now but didn’t know then – never had satellite.)
Sleeping in – I only like this on occasion and then it is bliss. If I do it too much I start feeling a little fretful.
Eavesdropping – this is the beauty of music in bars – takes the edge off and you can talk about all sorts in private. I increasingly prefer less music (if its not live) in bars. But see this privacy in public as a pro never the less. You I guess prefer less music too to indulge your guilty pleasure?
Repairman jack – sounds like a boy thing.
Snobbery – you’re right everyone has his or her weakness for this in one favoured field or another. A bit of a waste of energy as of course you quickly find that as soon as you are off your chosen topic you’re a little at sea like everyone else. Clever snobs keep the ball in their court.
(You will soon grow to hate my punctuation or lack of!)
Thanks for sharing
PS
Not really a ‘Guilty Pleasure’ (I wouldn’t like to go into them here) – cold baked beans are the devils work but with a generous dose of Worcestershire sauce…… ummm
John says
fg: Cold baked beans, hmm… you haven’t by any chance been sniffing around Froog’s remarkable list of the month –“shameful pleasures” — have you?
Yes — not too much music, please. (Though I’ve got “real” reason for this, too — like many people with hearing problems, I’m weirdly sensitive to extremely loud sounds. (Which means Froog’s on his own with AC/DC, far as I’m concerned anyhow.) On the other hand, I have an advantage that many normally-hearing people don’t: my hearing aid has a setting which boosts sounds in the typical human voice frequency rage and suppresses others — then it’s just a matter of pointing my head in the right direction. Heh: beware of the individual in a bar who seems to be directing his silent attention, successively, to one compass point after another.)
fg says
Your hearing aid sounds like something that 007 was hoping to get his hands on all along – no wonder eaves dropping has a special appeal as you can literally tune in.
Re the baked beans – that’s funny but you know baked beans are a British Institution all on their own. For example I doubt if a single child in the UK has left school without sing rhymes about how they are meant to make you fart! Maybe this is the the thin end of the wedge re The Guilty Pleasures of a Nation?
John says
fg: Well, the aid doesn’t just giveth; it taketh away as well. It’s actually two aids in one — one on each ear, connected by a wire across the back of my head (under my hair). The right side doesn’t feed into the right ear, which is functionally deaf; all the sound goes into the left.
In its default setting, anyway, it works as described above: 360-degree coverage, tuned to a sort of generic frequency range. When I put it on the listen-to-conversation setting, though, the right side shuts off, completely. Which means I’m picking up conversation from an area only a little more than 180 degrees around my left ear.
I try to sit to the left of the boring people. :)