The Irish Novel 1960 - 2010

1987: Carlo Gébler, Work and Play

same things as they make of each other, without knowing it. Hennessy, initially the exception to the common lot, ends up being typical of it – partly because he tries to change the system in which he is caught up by using its methods. His first effort is the misguided bank robbery, and he fails to beat Nally at his own game. The second attempt to do something different shows Hennessy’s human side in his fortuitous involvement with the enigmatic Kiki, his weakness for whom leads him to play into Nally’s hands. The ways of Hennessy and his kind are governed by, as the character himself notes, a ‘haphazard providence’ (99). The operation of such an contradictory agency is strikingly reproduced in the pace and plotting of Open Cut. And at other levels that agency’s dehumanising potential is realised amidst a bleak poetry of unhymned habitats – Archway, Hoxton, Clissold Park, ‘lower Holloway, a grimy congeries annealed in transience and dispassion’ (169). Supplementary Reading Kevin O’Connor, ‘Obituary of J.M. O’Neill’, The Guardian, 14 June 1999 Liviu Popoviciu, Chris Haywood and Máirtín Mac an Ghaill, ‘Migrating Masculinities: The Irish Diaspora in Britain’, Irish Studies Review, vol. 14, no. 2 (May 2006), pp. 169–87 Also Published in 1986 John Banville, Mefisto; Ita Daly, Ellen; David Martin, Dream; Michael Harding, Priest; Val Mulkerns, Very Like a Whale; Billy Roche, Tumbling Down (revised edition, 2008) 1987 Carlo Gébler, Work and Play Gébler (b. 1954) is the author of eight novels, a collection of short stories and four books of non-fiction, including the memoir Father and I (2000). He is also a playwright and has published fiction for children and young adults. Born in Dublin and reared in England, one of the recurring themes in his early work is displacement, whether in the west of Ireland – The Eleventh Summer (1985) – or on a wider international stage – August in July (1986), Malachy and His Family (1990) and Life of a Drum (1991). He has written two historical novels set in nineteenth -century Ireland, The Cure (1994), based on the notorious Bridget Cleary case, and How to Murder a Man (1998), dealing with the killing of a land agent. Contemporary Northern Ireland provides the setting for 96 THE IRISH NOVEL 1960–2010 A Good Day for a Dog (2008), while the background for The Dead Eight (2011) is Ireland in the 1930s. A former law student, now expelled from university for spending his summer term on a London drug binge, Fergus Maguire has returned to Ireland and is recuperating in rural County Wicklow. He is still trying to mend fences with the rest of his family – mother, sister Pippa and highly irate father – who live in Dalkey. On a visit home, Fergus and his father go swimming and Mr Maguire collapses and dies. Fergus finds himself disinherited in favour of Pippa, which induces a state of volatile anger and confusion. Anything seems possible. He returns to London, and though he does not reconnect with the drug scene, his time cannot be said to be profitably spent. In addition to a dead-end job answering viewers’ letters on behalf of a television company, he sees a certain amount of a friend from schooldays and former girlfriend , Laura Shellgate, and falls in with her immaturely hedonistic ways. In other words, his days are a combination of equally mindless work and play – ‘the way you Britons love to live’ (54), as an American friend of Laura’s remarks. Things begin to change as a result of a particularly outrageous night out at the restaurant of a pub called the Sacred Heart. As the police arrive, Fergus swallows a sachet of cocaine, and his ensuing interview at the police station is most uncomfortable, not least because his interviewer has invited Fergus to become an informer. His refusal does not end police interest in him, as subsequent events show. Meanwhile, at work, Fergus becomes an object of attention for the paranoid Mr Wiggins, who has sent a copy of his self-published book – a fantasy of mind-control entitled The Torture Papers – to Fergus’s office without having received an acknowledgement. The one area of normality, or that is not characterised by excess, that Fergus is in touch with is represented by the Singh family, who live one floor down from his Shepherds Bush apartment. But even here, normality is a relative term, as the Singhs are subjected to racist abuse and...