Frank Delaney is first and foremost a superb storyteller. His fifth novel consists of two first-person narratives, one written by the man who desires, and the other by the woman who is pursued.
It is 1972, and Christopher Hunter has stopped for lunch at a hotel on the Dublin-Cork road in Co Tipperary. A chance glimpse of a bride instigates his pursuit. His opening words explain his predicament: "The woman I crave, as the earth needs the sun, does not know I exist. But I need and want her . . ." It is, frankly, unlikely, but part of the skill of the storyteller is to make us believe in unlikely predicaments.
Hunter is an unreliable narrator - a sensitive and intelligent journalist driven to an alcoholic crack-up by reporting the Troubles - which helps to explain his obsession with Ann Martin. The reader quickly comes to know more about Ann than Christopher does, from reading her lively account of events. She is the daughter of a bookie, Joss Halpin, and since the age of three she has lived in some splendour in a large country house. She is aware of belonging to the nouveaux riches, or "Nooves", as she calls them.
Ann has apparently been born with an innate awareness of her superiority to her parents. Her father is a sentimental old fool, and her mother is obsessed with keeping up appearances. As soon as Ann shows signs of growing up, her mother suddenly withdraws her affection, leaving the girl lonely and bewildered. Ann's parents set her up with Joey Martin, an associate in the betting business. Joey combines vulgarity and cruelty in equal measure. A rape on their first date leaves Ann pregnant, and leads to the wedding witnessed by Hunter.
Meanwhile, Hunter is trying to verify rumours that the IRA have been killing informers and denying them a Christian burial. He is kidnapped by a van full of armed men, and taken to a remote farmhouse - or is he? At this stage he has difficulty distinguishing alcohol-fuelled fantasies from reality, and is withdrawn from duty.
Meanwhile, Ann's marriage is in trouble. While Hunter's narrative is unreliable, hers is spiced by elements of mystery - references to a man called Richard point to happier times ahead. But, as is in all good stories, before things get better they must get worse. Her beloved baby son dies in an accident, she is incarcerated in a mental home, and subjected to a hysterectomy. When eventually she escapes, her first thought is for revenge on her mother and Joey.
The Troubles, which at one point threatened to erupt into the foreground, remain in the background. However, they are treated with sufficient complexity to provide an enlightening picture to a non-Irish reader. The Englishman, Christopher Hunter, and his father are sympathetically portrayed, played against the stereotyped stiff-upper-lip colonial. The only unlikely character is Richard, an octoroon and a Vietnam veteran, living semi-wild in the Tipperary countryside. No doubt Delaney, as a Tipperary man, has his reasons, but it is the one element in the story that fails to convince. There is a magnificent twist in the tail, which brings the story rushing to a satisfying ending.
While remaining within the bounds of popular fiction, Delaney has nevertheless provided a complex, sharply-observed background. It makes one wonder what he could achieve if he were to concentrate on his acute, often witty social observations, and his unusually clear understanding of how the English perceive the Irish and vice-versa, rather than the story.
Alannah Hopkin is a writer and critic
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