This is the third book in a trilogy which started with The Dancer in 1995 and continued with The Gambler in 1996. Fans of Dwyer Hickey's work will be delighted to see the final instalment unfurl, because there is something about the ducking and diving of the Dancer - shyster, performer and father - which is oddly compelling. In The Gatemaker, set for the most part in the 1940s, the Dancer all but disappears from the narrative, retiring from New Street to a slower, more contemplative life in Crumlin, but his influence lingers on like the smell of fat frying or cabbage boiling.
His three sons, George, Herbert and Charlie, have all been indelibly marked by him. In Belfast, George works in the shipyards to finance his love of gambling, stumbling from one lucky escape to the next until, romantically, he becomes enmeshed in the past. Herbert is formed by bitterness after his dreams of becoming a barrister disappear and he is forced to settle for the life of a junior clerk. Even the series of events which bring him to the point of destruction are random; his is a thoroughly mundane tragedy.
Charlie, the youngest son, is perhaps the most affected by the Dancer's hazy, violent love. Without seeming to know why, Charlie runs everywhere, pursued by events he doesn't understand. Dwyer Hickey's talent is in the details. She gathers up all the vague feelings and inadequacies of an era, and blends them carefully with character observation to ensure that her novels are not arid tomes of social history. If The Gatemaker has a weakness, it is that the weak-willed, selfish brothers are so realistically drawn as to render them thoroughly unlikeable; at times the reader can't help but be repelled, rather than intrigued by her characters.
Louise East is an Irish Times journalist