Fiction: Falling Glass

As published in Irish America magazine, Review of Books
October / November 2012  p. 97

Adrian McKinty uses his native Carrickfergus as the backdrop for much of Falling Glass, his new crime drama about an Irish Traveller, or Pavee, introduced to us as Killian. An ex-enforcer for the IRA, Killian decided at 40 to turn his life around, enrolling in university and buying some real estate. But when the recession causes his only legitimate business venture to fail, Killian takes one final job as a gun-for-hire. Which, of course, leads to another job.

Falling Glass is fast-paced, violent, and sexy – in a removed, technical way. If you weren’t up on recent history and culture before reading this novel, you will be, halfway through. “Thirty years of low-level civil war had kept out the chains, but the peace dividend had brought them in with a vengeance,” McKinty writes. “Drugs, new houses and McDonalds – that was the post ceasefire Northern Ireland.” Killian gives the impression that he (like, McKinty seems to be implying, Northern Ireland as whole) is a bit of a latecomer, not only to higher education, but to the grip of Western corporate culture. Making him equally voracious for Dunkin’ Donuts as for architectural theory.

A running joke is that the main characters all have terrible luck with transportation. Foul-smelling rental cars, rude airline passengers, unnecessary boat rides – McKinty has clearly had his share of negative travel experiences. Falling Glass, however, moves along smoothly, without any abrupt shifts or changes in direction, and it’s over sooner than you’d like.

(Serpent’s Tail / 320 pages / $14.95)

Nonfiction: The Graves Are Walking

As published in Irish America magazine, Review of Books

October / November 2012  p.96

There are plenty of books about the famine. But with The Graves Are Walking, John Kelly has done more than simply re-examine the facts and submit a new take on the disaster; which in itself would have been quite a feat, considering the mounds of previous academic study devoted to subject. Kelly has constructed a narrative in which the circumstances surrounding the Great Hunger mirror the U.S.’s current socio-political climate.

The introduction, which takes us through Cork during the height of the famine, has a deliberately apocalyptic feel. Kelly recounts a brief interaction between an English colonel stationed in Dublin and a colleague in 1846. “There is an undefined notion that something terrible is about to take place. Men’s minds are in a very unsettled state.” The prophecies, the chaos, the eerie feeling that a storm, possibly a revolution, lingers in the not-too-distant future – sound familiar yet? Just wait.

This account speaks of mounting debts in the wake of the initial crisis, of a biased media, and of ideologues. Religious fanaticism and racial bigotry masquerade as political savvy. Kelly places much of the blame for the social disaster not on a crop fungus or a primitive infrastructure, but on what he claims was Britain’s purposeful attempt at social engineering.

The Graves Are Walking will undoubtedly be the subject of some controversy. But the fact that Kelly has made this effort to remind us that “history” is alive, repetitive and relevant, is something we should all be able to agree on as a worthwhile endeavor.

(Henry Holt & Company / 397 pages / $32.00)

Dancing Through Life: Terry McLaughlin

As published in Irish America magazine
August / September 2012  p.54 - 56

The second installment in a new series on inspiring Irish-American seniors.

Teresa “Terry” McLaughlin is doing something right. At 91, she receives frequent reminders that she’s still a man magnet, but it would be truer to say simply that she is magnetic; no qualifiers necessary. Maybe it’s the subtle way she has of smiling. Maybe it’s that she radiates an aura of inner peace and joy, as so many strangers-from-across-the-room have sworn to her she does. Or, who knows, maybe it’s just that she dresses well. Whatever the reason, this former professional dancer and current great-grandmother of eight – like the earthy, golden hue she’s worn for her visit to Irish America – is unassuming, but only at first.

Born on May 3, 1921, in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn to Catholic parents, Terry Carl always had a confidence about her. The youngest of five, she quickly took on the role of entertainer. “When I was a little girl, they used to call me Tootsie,” she says, smiling. “I used to imitate Charlie Chaplin, with my father’s derby. I’d come downstairs with the cane and everything, make my mother laugh.” Her mother, Elizabeth Bridgette O’Connor, encouraged her, paying for lessons in tap and Irish step dancing. Elizabeth had distant roots stretching back to a town called Greysteel in Faughanvale, Co Derry, where the O’Connor family once owned a pub and general store. “As a kid, my mother had ideas of me going places,” Terry explains. But her mother wasn’t the only one dreaming big – Terry, too, had her sights set high, only her goals were a bit more specific. “I’m going to be a professional dancer and have ten children,” she would tell her friends in Brooklyn. It turns out Terry wasn’t imagining, so much as she was prophesying.

She auditioned for Earl Lindsay right out of high school, and earned a spot in his review. At just 18 years old, Terry was living her dream as a  professional dancer, performing at the Lotus Club in Washington, DC. For two years, she continued to perform with Lindsay’s review. But during a visit home for rehearsals, she discovered that her father, William, who worked for the Daily News, was sick with worry about her. “He didn’t want to tell me. He wanted me to continue with what I wanted to do,” she explains. “He used to call me his ‘pet.’ I was his baby.” But after seeing what her being away was doing to him, Terry felt she couldn’t in good conscience continue  with a lifestyle that would take her so far away from her family. She traded in her career as a dancer for a job in bookkeeping at Grace Line (part of W. R. Grace & Co). “I used to meet [Peter Grace] at the water machine on the seventh floor!” she exclaims, then laughs, “Oh, I had a lot of fun.”

Terry was 25 when she and two of her friends, on their way home from a bridal shower, stopped in at a local pub for a beer. There, an embarrassing mishap involving inadequately labeled restroom doors resulted in a chance meeting between Terry and Navy vet Vincent McLaughlin – whom she would marry just six months later. He and his two friends joined the women for a drink, and “There was just something about him, a kindness,” she says, to which she was drawn. As fate would have it, Terry’s  friends paired off with, and also eventually married, Vincent’s companions.

A widower with a three-year-old daughter, Vincent offered Terry a considerably different life to the one she had been leading. Vincent (whose great-uncle, Hugh McLaughlin, was a politician, and played an important role in the creation of Prospect Park and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge) was also from Brooklyn, and that’s where the newlyweds stayed for their first several years of marriage. However, soon after the couple’s third child was born, the McLaughlins, now with four young children, moved to a farm in Waterford, Connecticut.

So, in her early 30’s, this fashionable young woman from Brooklyn was raising young children in a country house with only cows and chickens for company; the nearest neighbor over a mile away.

Like her mother, Terry encouraged her children to express themselves creatively. Once a week, she and the kids would perform a Talent Night for Vincent, who worked as a traveling salesman and was home only on weekends.

How did she keep from going stir crazy? “Oh, I’d talk to the hens!” she replies. Perhaps the real answer, then, is that she didn’t keep from going stir crazy. “One morning, I went into the coop and saw an egg lying there, and this hen was up walking around. I said, ‘Get over there, you’re supposed to be sitting on that egg,’ and so help me, it went over – sat down on the egg!” Terry chuckles, “I used to have more fun with them.”

In fact, there were so many hens on Vincent and Terry’s farm that she decided to make a small side-business selling eggs. “I put up a sign on the trellis, ‘60 cents a dozen.’ And I’d ask them to please bring back their boxes, because you know, I didn’t have a lot of boxes. And they would. When my husband came home, he was surprised.”

Suddenly Terry’s story begins to sound oddly familiar: Early show business aspirations. Comical accidents. Living-room variety shows. A young family from New York City moving to a farm in Connecticut.  The mother scheming to sell eggs, her husband in the dark about it. All this happened on I Love Lucy! And, hold on, didn’t Lucy once dress up as Charlie Chaplin, too?

Terry concedes to a measure of resemblance between her own life and that of a certain Lucille Esmeralda McGillicuddy Ricardo. Of course, there are differences. Her husband was not from Cuba. And Terry, unlike the fictional Lucy, came to confront a kind of adversity that would have felt very much out of place on the light-hearted sitcom.

In 1960, the couple moved to a  larger house in Merrick, Long Island, to accommodate their growing family. But in 1964, just six months after their tenth child was born, Vincent went into the hospital for an operation, and died from an overdose of anesthesia. Suddenly a 42-year-old widow with ten children to raise on her own, Terry found herself “in a daze.” For a year I couldn’t go up to the bedroom. I slept on the couch. Never would I have made it without my faith. I prayed, ‘I can’t do it alone,’” she reflects.“But, you know, no matter how bad situations are, you get through them.”

Vincent died not long after President Kennedy was assassinated, and Terry looked to Jackie Kennedy for strength and inspiration. Terry made her bed every morning, and did her best to make sure all her children were taken care of. As if the new economic strain was not enough of a challenge, Terry also faced the overwhelming concern over how she could protect her many children.

One afternoon, she was alone with just her youngest child and one of her teenage sons who was sick with the flu when an intruder forced his way into their home with a gun. The man told her to get on the floor, and instead of complying, “I said, ‘No,’” she explains rather matter-of-factly. “And I fought him, I fought him. I fought him because I had just lost my husband. And what ran through my head was, ‘My children will be orphans.’ And I fought, I just fought.”

Police told her she had done the right  thing, that the man was not expecting her to put up a struggle, and got frightened when she did. “My God, Terry,” her friend and neighbor, Ed, said after reading about the incident, “I’d never fight a gun.” To this day, she  has no reply, other than “I’m Irish.”

The few moments of peace Terry  was able to enjoy during this period of heartache and worry were found at a local pub called The Hearthstone, where she would sometimes join friends to relax and dance for a couple of precious hours.

She eventually sold the Merrick house and moved to an apartment in New Hyde Park, where she worked as a bank teller until she finally retired and moved in with her daughter Teresa and her family in Florida. These days, she spends about half the year visiting her other nine children (Rosemary, Paul, Irene, Laura, Vincent, Kenneth, Christina, Virginia and Richard), and along with them, her nineteen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

But, back to the story about selling eggs, I urge Terry. Vincent was surprised, yes, but was he good-surprised, or was he Ricky-Ricardo-surprised? She laughs again, “He was very happy!”

And, of course, he had every reason to be happy. Because if Terry has only one actual thing in common with this ridiculous television character to whom I insist on comparing her, it’s a similarly dogged refusal to allow unfortunate circumstances, and life’s unrelenting unpredictability, to ever diminish her optimism, or her ability to find humor in the moment.

Perhaps this is what people are picking up on when they find themselves inexplicably drawn to her. “I think it’s because I love people,” she muses, “and when you love something, it comes right back at you.”

I don’t know much about auras, but I’m inclined to say that Terry’s is a warm constant glow. Less like sunshine, and more like the Sun itself.

Fiction: Long Time, No See

As published in Irish America magazine, Review of Books

August / September 2012  p.74

Westmeath native Dermot Healy’s highly anticipated fourth novel Long Time, No See, revolves around the residents of a small coastal town in Northwest Ireland, and is narrated from the perspective of a young man known to neighbors as “Mister Psyche.” Recently finished with school, Mister Psyche, whose real name is Phillip, spends his days doing odd jobs around the town and running errands for his testy uncle, Joejoe.

That Healy also writes plays is obvious. He thrusts us into the world of his novel without any backstory at all, providing explanations through conversational dialogue and through the characters’ various idiosyncrasies. That Healy writes poetry is also obvious. Dialogue is not indicated by quotation marks. Instead it is woven into Mister Psyche’s narration, which has no set form. Healy purposefully makes it difficult to tell which words are Mister Psyche’s exposition, which are his internal thoughts, and which are being spoken out loud (let alone by whom). It’s tempting to call this technique impressionist, but scenes are so conversationally realistic – often excruciatingly so – that the result is actually closer to something out of French New Wave cinema than it is to any Monet.

The best artists use their medium to do what can’t be done in any other, and Healy obviously has a deep appreciation for the novel. He shows us that it can recreate the experience of subjective day-to-day living in a way unlike any other art form. “Me body was sort of a ghost. Coming behind me,” muses Joejoe’s disembodied voice, during a blackout. “But I knew from the beginning that the mind was there.” For all its monotony, Long Time, No See is a wonderful expression of the life of a mind, in a body, in a very small town.

(Viking / $27.95 / 438 pages)

A Climb to Give Thanks

As published in Irish America magazine
June / July 2012  p. 62 - 64

Most people, upon reaching their 90th birthday, celebrate the milestone in some way that is significant to themselves and to their loved ones. Most people, upon reaching their 90th birthday, however, do not climb mountains – significant or not. But most people are not Patrick Connolly, and this is exactly what he did. On August 3, 2011, just two days before officially turning 90, he, along with 59 of his relatives, summited Ireland’s holy mountain, Croagh Patrick. The location of the mountain (County Mayo) holds special significance for Patrick, as Mayo was his father’s home, and the place from which his father emigrated so many years before.

From his family farm in Mayo, Patrick’s father, also Patrick Connolly, left for Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, where he boarded the RMS Lusitania. He paid for his passage to America by shoveling coal. It was on the Lusitania that he met Anna Beagan, who was also working on board, as a waitress. Seven years later, to the month, they married. The couple eventually settled in Howard Beach, Queens, just blocks from where their son, Patrick, and his wife, Breeda, live today.

The Connollys’ kitchen is tidy and comfortable. Like the rest of the house, it is filled with family photographs, and carries the faint aroma of homemade bread – soda bread, what else? Every corner, every shelf, has a different story to tell. Here is a little change bank in the shape of a smiling cottage (dubbed the “Ireland or Bust” bank) which once sat atop the fridge collecting pocket change, in an effort to save up money for the family’s first trip to Ireland together. Over here, a clock that was hand-carved for them by a man in Long Kesh Prison, circa 1978; a gift thanking the family for their involvement with a Troubles relief program, Project Children. The late-morning sun falls just on the edge of their kitchen table, which is set for tea. While Breeda pours, Patrick and two of the couple’s eight children, Brian and Stephen, sit down around the table.

“The best you ever had,” Patrick says, referring to Breeda’s soda bread.

And it ought to be. Mary Breeda Walsh grew up in Limerick City until she was 16. She came to America in 1938, just in time for the World’s Fair, to visit her father and brother, who had moved here for work. But in 1939, World War II broke out in Europe, and civilian travel was cut off, leaving her an effective refugee in Howard Beach. It was there, just down the block from her father’s house, that she and Patrick first met through his sister, Helen, whom Breeda had forged a deep friendship with while Patrick was serving in Europe as a bombardier with the Air Corps. And it was 15 years ago, on one of their visits back to Breeda’s homeland, that Patrick saw Croagh Patrick for the first time. They could not climb that day because of bad weather, but just being in the mountain’s presence was enough for him to grasp the meaning of the majestic rock as a place of spiritual power.

Croagh Patrick, or Cruach Phádraig, locally known as the Reek, measures 764 meters (2,507 feet) in height, and is a popular destination for spiritual seekers of many faiths, from all over the world. Saint Patrick is said to have fasted at the top of the mountain for 40 days, and legend says he built a church up there. A small chapel was erected at the summit just after the turn of the 20th century, and some visitors choose to make their way through the difficult – and occasionally deadly – terrain barefoot, as an ascetic act of penance and self-sacrifice. But Croagh Patrick has held holy significance for climbers long before Christianity was introduced to Ireland in the fifth century. The ground there was considered sacred by the Druids, who are thought to have used the mountain for pilgrimages during the summer solstice – a special time of year for them, as they revered the sun.

Patrick describes the view over Clew Bay. “At the end of July, the beginning of August, as the sun’s setting in the west, it looks like it’s rolling down the mountain. And that’s one of the reasons why [the Druids] thought this was a holy place. But it’s biblical, too,” he continues, “that being on a mountain is sacred. That was all part of this.”

By “this,” Patrick means his remarkable ascent up what, towards the top of the summit, becomes a 50-degree incline. But he also means the gathering of approximately 80 of his relatives (those who didn’t do the climb still came to cheer the others on, and to take part in the rest of the 10 days’ worth of activities that Patrick’s son, Stephen, had planned out). It was a get-together which required considerable organization, but Stephen was unfazed by the logistics of it. He has worked with documentary crews in several countries, under all kinds of conditions, and has managed tours for some popular musicians. Of course, it helps to have friends and cousins all over the country, making suggestions for the itinerary.

Two years ago, the Connollys were on another one of their excursions (this one, too, organized by Stephen) when a group decided to attempt climbing Croagh Patrick. It was the elder Patrick’s 88th birthday, and though he got as far up as the first stop on the pilgrimage – a statue of the patron saint – he didn’t trust himself to make it all the way to the top. During a car ride later the same trip, Patrick confided in Stephen that he had made a vow back at the foot of the mountain, that he would climb Croagh Patrick on his 90th birthday, in honor of his and Breeda’s parents.

The only agreement they made: if his doctor said he couldn’t do it, he wouldn’t.

When his doctor asked him why he wanted to do the climb, Patrick told him it was to be his way of thanking God for his Irish roots, for his family, and for his friends. The doctor replied simply, “Well, I’m not going to stand between you and God. So send me a picture of the rock from the top.”

“I have a pacemaker,” Patrick explains, “and take a stress test every six months. I knew it was going to be difficult, that I had to work out. I asked for guidance.” It was while Patrick was exercising, early on into his training, that he suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of calm. It was, he believes, the Holy Spirit, sending him the message, “You do your part, and I’ll do mine.” He began using the treadmill at the gym three times a week, and would spend another one or two days walking around his neighborhood, or in Forest Park, eventually walking four or five miles at a time.

Of course, they still took plenty of precautions. Conveniently, firemen and EMTs abound in this family (Patrick was once himself a fireman). Fully prepared with water, chairs, and even tents in case the need presented itself, the group stopped every 100 yards or so to say a decade of the Rosary, as a way of pacing themselves, and also out of respect for Patrick’s wishes, that this trip be an act of thanksgiving and praise.

Brian Connolly remembers when his children finally reached the summit. “Because it takes so long, and it does challenge your will to continue, they clearly began to understand that ‘this whole thing is bigger than me.’ You have a moment, and whether there’s a church there or not, you realize how small you are, and the majesty of God’s earth…There’s no question, if you’re open, there is a message from the Creator there.”

By Patrick’s side the entire time was his seven-year-old great-grandson, also named Patrick. For the full 15-hour trek, fifth-generation Patrick Connolly stayed right in step with second-generation Patrick Connolly. “Now I know I can do anything,” he told his mother. Seeing this young boy – and the whole span of generations of girls and boys, and women and men (including his younger sister, Nancy, who made the climb despite recent health issues) all gathered together in one place, going on the same journey together – Patrick realized that his should not be thought of as a pilgrimage solely of faith and gratitude for what had already come to pass, but also as one to celebrate hope for the future, and love in the present.

Here, Breeda interjects, “I didn’t climb up. I stayed in Campbell’s Pub!” But then she clarifies, “We were in and out. We did go part ways up the mountain.” This pub, Campbell’s, has been at the foot of Croagh Patrick for centuries, and has been in current owner Pádraig Fitzpatrick’s family for 175 years. “They are Croagh Patrick,” Brian explains. “There’s no other commercial anything there. [Pádraig] is the gatekeeper of Croagh Patrick.” Pádraig kept his pub open well into the night, sitting and chatting with Breeda and the others, waiting to welcome in the hikers. “He kept the pints pouring,” Brian smiles appreciatively. “The sandwiches just kept coming out of the kitchen, and they kept the fire going. I don’t even know if anyone paid a bill that night.”

Stephen has pulled out the family tree that he put together and distributed among his relatives. A bound collection of personal accounts from everyone who has descended from Patrick’s parents, it’s quite a tome. The book’s weight alone suggests how remarkable it is that this large family, which has expanded so rapidly over the course of just a couple of generations, has all come into being because of the love shared between these two courageous immigrants pictured on the cover.

Flipping through the book, Stephen remarks, “It’s happened many times, that there’ll be a wedding scheduled or a party scheduled, and somebody died right before it. A lot of times, people would reschedule the party or cancel the party. But we don’t do that. That party’s going on, and that’s one of the good things about being in this family, because if you were ever a part of the family, you can know we’re going to remember you. And we’ll celebrate your life. But we’re moving on, too, because it’s always going to be about the next generation, and the next generation, and the next generation.”

And the continuation of the generations is really what this whole pilgrimage was about in the first place – thanking those who came before, embracing those who are here now, and awaiting those who are yet to come. For the Connolly clan, as they refer to themselves, doesn’t actually have a family tree, so much as a family mountain. And Patrick Connolly now sits at the very top, beaming.

John Cusack on Poe and The Raven

As published in Irish America Magazine, Hibernia 
June / July 2012 p. 18

Exploring a character forced to grapple with inner demons is a familiar task for actor John Cusack, who has portrayed quite a few anguished souls throughout his versatile film career. From his role as an existentially suffering puppeteer in Charlie Kaufman’s absurdist Being John Malkovich to his – not one but two – turns at playing troubled assassins (first in Grosse Pointe Blank, and again in War, Inc., which he also co-wrote and produced), it’s clear that Cusack is not one to skirt the darker aspects of the human condition. His latest turn toward the macabre is his portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe in April’s gory thriller The Raven, directed by James McTeigue.

For someone so drawn to the complex and disturbing, Cusack’s demeanor is quite calm. Asked about his fascination with such a morbid figure as Poe, his eyes light up, and he replies simply, “Oh, it’s fun, right?” before elaborating, “That’s Poe’s deal, that we’re all sort of attracted to the abyss. It’s poetic,” he grins. “Poe-etic.”

It would seem that all this exploration of the depths has served as kind of purging for Cusack. It’s a rare person who not only can understand despair, but can also find humor within it. “Around Halloween or the Day of the Dead,” he continues, “doesn’t everybody get into the supernatural, and the ghouls, and the underworld? Dreams and nightmares? It’s just an interesting headspace. It’s not something I want to stay in, but it’s certainly a fun place to visit once in a while – once a year, twice a year.”

Edgar Allan Poe, whose writings and mysterious life inspired the movie The Raven, had roots stretching from Baltimore, Maryland back to Dring, County Cavan, Ireland, where his great-grandfather grew up. Poe’s hometown of Baltimore serves as backdrop for the film, which also stars Brendan Gleeson as the disapproving father of Poe’s beloved. This entirely fictionalized account of Poe’s last days entertains the unsettling question of how a real-life serial killer might have gone about mimicking Poe’s grisliest stories. The movie’s answer? Accurately.

“There are not many writers who try to [delve into] their worst nightmares,” Cusack maintains. “But there’s a couple who want to go deeper in, and that’s just an interesting mind. [Poe] was this guy who wanted to embrace the nightmare.”

Cusack, like Poe, has a distant Irish background. Raised by politically active Irish Catholics in Chicago, he leads a life at once thoroughly individualistic – disregarding the mainstream in decisions both artistic and lifestyle – while still deeply rooted in family tradition.

Though he has plenty to be happy about (he recently received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame) Cusack seems most at ease when speaking about heavier topics. Censorship, for one, is something he believes does not belong in the arts. “I think the artist has got to get a free pass, because I don’t know how you can explore, or go down different roads if you’re going to judge them all the time. That imagery [of the unconscious] is not sanitized. It’s violent, and it’s lurid, and it’s perverse. Dreams can be that way.”

Though he identifies entirely as American, Cusack seems to be in touch with that certain entangling of melancholy and joy unique to the Celtic spirit. He reflects, “Poe was always talking about that space between waking and dreaming,  sanity and insanity, life and death. He was always into that twilight space.”

And Cusack is himself a bit of a living paradox – this non-smoker who casually puffs on an electric cigarette, this relaxed figure with the venti coffee cup in hand –  with those intense eyes hovering above that easy smile.

Fiction: Bloodland

As published in Irish America Magazine, Review of Books
April / May 2012  p. 94

In a genre that may seem to have exhausted all possible plot-lines, Alan Glynn’s new thriller, Bloodland, is refreshingly unpredictable. An out of work journalist researching a dead socialite, an American senator attacked in the Congo, a drunk former-Taoiseach, and an Irish real estate developer with a chronic tension headache are the seemingly unrelated players this Dublin-born author weaves together in his fourth novel – a conspiracy theory about corrupt business practices and international oligarchy.

Part of this unpredictability comes from the fragmented nature in which the events are presented to the reader. Focus continually alternates between the four main characters, and though these changes in perspective are indicated simply by an extra space between paragraphs, the words, “Cut To,” would not feel entirely out of place. Glynn’s first novel, The Dark Fields, came to movie theaters last March under the title Limitless, and narrated as it is – in the present tense with abrupt, conversational language – the teased out Bloodland often reads like a screenplay, or an ambitious television pilot.

Certainly, the story is timely. The financial crisis, the pervasiveness of the Internet, and the military industrial complex are all key elements. Drugs, too (the legal kind this time) are a powerful influence. Characters in search of answers are slaves to coffee’s stimulation, while those attempting to keep secrets buried seek comfort in whiskey’s depressant effects. In keeping with genre tradition, women are incidental at best – showing up to service the plot, and occasionally, the men. But in a world so unnervingly like the one portrayed in this paranoid novel, such cliches may remain one of the few consistencies on which we can continually rely.

($16.00 / Picador / 375 pages)