The Irish Novel 1960 - 2010

1992: Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

1992 Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy The author of a collection of short stories and of a number of plays, McCabe (b. 1955) is best know for his ten novels. Both Music on Clinton Street (1986) and Carn (1989) establish his fictional world, the former with its emphasis on popular culture, the latter by its bordercountry setting (McCabe was born in Clones, County Monaghan). More obviously genre-bending later works include The Dead School (1995), Breakfast on Pluto (1998), Emerald Germs of Ireland (2001), Call Me the Breeze (2003), Winterwood (2006), The Holy City (2009) and The Stray Sod Country (2010). A baroque imagination is evident in all these works, generally expressed in a diverting combination of gothic excess and excruciating comedy which also reveals a satirical eye for social and cultural tastes and beliefs. ‘The Butcher Boy’ is a folk song replete with that genre’s familiar themes of love, loss and violence, and one of the most ingenious aspects of this novel is the manner in which it adapts not only these themes to meet its own narrative interests but how the notion of the folk is treated in the process. A recording of the song is one of the prize possessions of manic-depressive Annie Brady, mother of the young narrator, Francie. It plays a prominent part in what might be called the novel’s soundtrack, a complicated chorus in Francie’s head consisting of popular songs from various traditions as well as snatches of film dialogue, real – as with ‘Take ’em to Missouri!’ (9), a line of John Wayne’s in Red River, which recurs throughout – and invented, as with the numerous lapses into cowboy lingo and tough-guy argot. And the novel’s musical aspect also embraces Francie’s father, Benny, an erstwhile trumpeter of some ability who has forsaken playing in favour of drinking. This soundtrack is just one of the haunting presences that unpredictably assail Francie’s consciousness. In time, the accumulation of presences includes his mother, dead by her own hand, and his father, dead of neglect; Francie’s fabrication of their honeymoon in Bundoran; his father’s brother, Alo, a London-based emigrant beloved of Mary, who has waited for him at home in the anonymous and largely generic town in which the Bradys reside. The haunting is not confined to Francie. Memories of childhood years spent in an orphanage with Alo continue to beset Benny, and he cannot help himself from bitterly referring to that period at a party welcoming Alo home for Christmas. This 114 THE IRISH NOVEL 1960–2010 deviation from the done thing is one of the novel’s many instances of being let down. Most of these affect Francie, and their recurrence make them one of the few consistent features of his experience, even if in themselves they are manifestations of inconsistency. Their impact on the youngster obviously shows his vulnerability and neediness, and while their occurrence within the family circle is the product of Annie and Benny being psychologically frail and emotionally undernourished , the let-down Francie experiences at the hands of public servants and their institutions reflects a failure to nurture, which is more difficult to justify and accept. But failure on the part of police, clergy and psychiatric health professionals seems to be the inevitable concomitant of a more fundamental social deficiency, the nature of which is exemplified by the character who becomes Francie’s bête noir, Mrs Nugent. Her years in England have evidently led her to raise her son, Philip, above ‘blood brothers’ (53) such as Francie and his pal, Joe Purcell. She considers Francie, in particular, to be separate from and unequal to her wellgroomed , piano-playing Philip, and her calling his family ‘pigs’ (4) is one of the first voices from outside the family to haunt Francie. His fixation with Mrs Nugent leads to some piggish behaviour towards her and her values. He attacks Philip, invades and despoils the houseproud Nugent home, and acts out his sense of stigma and shame. In its unpredictability and improvisation, Francie’s retaliation is a show of spirit which plainly contrasts with Mrs Nugent’s power of judgment and socially discriminatory outlook. This energy is also a feature of Francie’s narrative voice, the instrument, so to speak, that not only makes him distinctive and different but establishes him as central to his own experiences, contrary to the counterproductive effects of those experiences when they take place. His war against the Nugents...