Tiger on Speed: The Trauma of Manic Modernity in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow

In this essay I examine Éilis Ní Dhuibhne's novel Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow (2007) within the framework of contemporary history. Focusing on its depiction of transportation and infrastructure, I argue that the author's portrait of Irish society at the height of the Celtic Tiger amounts to a devastating critique of what I call "manic modernity," i.e. the kind of late modernity that is obsessed with mobility and speed and its attendant risks. A modern retelling of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the novel functions as a perceptive diagnosis of the ills of late modernity and may be read as an attempt to secure a moment in time textually by assembling a record of a calamity in the making.