While being held hostage in Beirut, Brian Keenan was imaginatively nourished by the songs of the last Irish bard, Turlough O'Carolan. This novel is, as he says himself, an attempt to repay that debt of gratitude. Happily, Keenan has achieved his aim.
Too much can be made of trying to link the imprisonment of O'Carolan's blindness with that of Keenan's own captivity. If that were the only area of interest this would be a lesser book. It is, however, a testament to the skills of Keenan's writing - first magnificently witnessed in An Evil Cradling - that his celebrity status is soon forgotten as the character of O'Carolan is brought before the reader.
It is as a writer, though, that connections between subject and author can be productively made. For Keenan's true intent with this work is to celebrate the artistic imagination. The book has no pretensions to being an accurately historical work, a meticulous biography of the bard. Rather, O'Carolan is transformed in Keenan's treatment of him into a figure important for his ability to make art out of the everyday world and, in so doing, remake that world anew.
O'Carolan's story is told by many voices. The reader is offered numerous perspectives and recollections of the bard from those who knew him best as they gather round his deathbed. O'Carolan's voice, too, is heard - and like the others, he is also concerned with coming to some understanding of his art. Keenan's technique allows for a multilayered picture of this difficult, talented man. He is many things to many people: he is, for instance, Turlo, the playful childhood friend of his constant companion Seamus Brennan. He is a young man frightened by the blindness that befalls him. He is ultimately, of course, O'Carolan the poet and harpist journeying through an Ireland on the cusp of change, bringing harmony to a world of chaos.
Though O'Carolan the man and his art are the main focus of the novel, the stuff of history is central to this work. It is a time of change in Ireland. O'Carolan, as an artist, reflects and mediates this change. His peculiar situation of mediating between the worlds of Gaelic Ireland and Anglo-Ireland, and of being on the threshold between an old and a new world is crucial to Keenan's portrait. There are clear resonances for the present day, also faced with massive change. Art, Keenan is declaring, has a very necessary role in this; it can bring people together and reconcile differences.
At a time when grand narratives such as nationalism and artistic endeavour are all too cynically attacked and dismantled, it is refreshing to encounter a piece of writing that celebrates both in its lyrical investigation of the link between the two in an Irish context. Brian Keenan, more than most, is aware of the possibilities that the human imagination can hold. In this book he succeeds in offering the reader an insight into those myriad possibilities.
Derek Hand is Faculty of Arts Fellow in the Department of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin