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)