Fiction: Tom Phelan's new novel tells a story of love and a story of war and the consequences of war for a group of people from a fictional town in the Irish midlands.
The most effective scenes are those set in the battlefields of first World War Belgium. The unrelenting focus on the brutal physicality of the war, on how bombs and bayonets tear apart the human body, forces the reader to confront what should be comfortingly familiar made strange and frighteningly disconnected from any natural context. The sheer scale and horror of these killing fields is hard to comprehend and Phelan does well to capture the incomprehension of his two main characters, Con Hatchel and Matt Wrenn.
Not so convincing, however, is his portrayal of the politics of the time. A far too easy opposition is set up between those who fought in the trenches of the Somme and Ypres and those who fought for Irish independence in 1916. Nationalists are cartoon villains, all mystical Ireland and mad martyrdom. The difficulty with this is that Phelan's inability to understand nationalist sentiment is matched by an equally worrying inability to understand those who went to fight in the Great War. In his desire to present them as honest and upstanding, they become Forrest Gump-like characters who get caught up passively in history rather than make it.
Comparisons, of course, can be made with Sebastian Barry's novel A Long Long Way. At the heart of that much better novel, though, was an effort to tackle the issues surrounding the conflict between upholding empire on the one hand, and the defiance of empire on the other. There is no working through of ideas here, no sense of a Yeatsian work-in-progress. Rather, the author imposes ideas from outside the story, reducing the characters to mere ciphers speaking someone else's words.
Various characters narrate the story. It is a device that allows the reader to witness events and motivations from numerous interlocking angles. Some voices are more credible than others. Many share an often prurient regard for all things sexual which leads - one presumes unconsciously on the author's part - to some funny moments.
In the end this novel is unable to transcend often sentimental and obvious emotions while peddling a simplistic view of Irish life and history. It is a great pity because that moment of knotty allegiances and problematical choices is still being reckoned with today.
Derek Hand is currently writing a history of the Irish novel for Cambridge University Press. He was awarded a research fellowship 2005-2006 from St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, where he teaches in the English department
The Canal Bridge By Tom Phelan. Lilliput Press, 280pp. €14.99