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  • Brian Moore and the Meaning of the Past: An Irish Novelist Reimagines History
  • Shillana Sanchez
Brian Moore and the Meaning of the Past: An Irish Novelist Reimagines History, by Patrick Hicks , pp. 215. New York: Mellen Press, 2007. $109.95.

Patrick Hicks's Brian Moore and the Meaning of the Past: An Irish Novelist Reimagines History is an ambitious survey that investigates all nineteen of Moore's published novels. While other Moore critics have called attention to his geography—including his nationality, his various domiciles and the locations of his narratives—they have stopped short of connecting his assorted geographies with a critical inquiry of their historicity. Hicks makes this connection, and shows its significance as he argues for a consideration of Moore's "lively celebration of historical perplexity," moving beyond other critics who have focused mainly on Moore's use of faith. Hicks offers an analysis that at once serves to catalog Moore's novels and argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the author and his work.

Like virtually all Moore scholars before him, Hicks calls attention to the author's complicated nationality; born in Belfast in 1921, Moore moved to Canada in 1947 where he stayed until 1959, at which time he moved to the United States. While he spent the last forty years of his life living in the United States, he maintained Canadian citizenship. However—unlike earlier studies—Hicks questions how Moore's nationality affects our understanding of his work within a historical context. "History," he argues, "remains a constant yet hidden ideological force that shapes our present reality." The "hidden ideological force" driving Moore's work is responsible for the historical theme present in each of the novels.

Hicks arranges his analysis in four distinct sections, the most compelling of which is Chapter One, "Struggling Against an Irish Background." This chapter [End Page 155] offers a reading of each of Moore's first seven novels. Hick contends that the characters in these books all "want to be free of their upbringing and abandon their Irish background." This chapter not only interrogates the characters and narratives of these seven novels, it also returns to Moore's own "historical palimpsest" as a young author excavating his own Irish past.

Hicks's organization is advantageous when his analysis turns to the role of history in Moore's oeuvre. Each of Moore's novels is investigated in chronological order, drawing parallels between Moore's personal history and development, and that of his novels. Hicks recognizes his organization as a "contrived mode of categorizing [making] it difficult to examine how the concerns of one novel influences the next," and that the four thematic sections should "in no way be construed as definitive barriers that stamp the end of one era and mark the beginning of another in Moore's literary development." Yet, despite these caveats and limitations, the approach offers several ways for the reader to understand the analysis. Each of the individual discussions of the novels can be read as a stand-alone analysis, offering insight on not only such well-known and often-discussed novels as The Emperor of Ice Cream (1965) or Catholics (1972), but also on his lesser known novels. This is, thus, the first critical effort to treat the full body of Moore's fiction.

Initially, it appears at times as though Hicks is labored with summaries of the novels, offering summative context of the characters and narratives. Yet newcomers to Moore's work can make use of the summaries provided, and for the beginning Moore scholar, this contextualization serves to introduce significant details of the novels, as well as to tease out the critical elements of each. Taken as a whole, this volume leaves readers with a careful balance of narrative summary and analysis.

Brian Moore and the Meaning of the Past: An Irish Novelist Reimagines History offers a thoughtful discussion of Moore's nineteen novels within an historical context, while at the same time presenting necessary introductory material. The chronological approach helps to systematize a discussion of a potentially dizzying collection of novels. Hicks's exceptional ability to contextualize Moore's work with both the historic moments he...

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