FICTION: Reflections in a Tar-BarrelBy Jack Harte Scotus Press, 239 pp. €11.95
THIS, JACK HARTE’S second novel, follows the peregrinations of Tommy Loftus, a hawker of religious goods in the west of Ireland.
Considered a half-wit by many, his mother included, Lofty manages nonetheless to build up a highly successful business. People begin to believe that he possesses mystical powers when Mrs Callaghan’s cow is miraculously cured after she prays to the statue of the Virgin Mary that Lofty erected at the back of his van. News of the cure spreads quickly, as is wont to happen in rural Ireland, and Lofty is constantly assailed by people looking for healing, good weather for the hay and special intentions of all sorts.
The irony in all this is that Lofty has given up on religion, believing that the Creator, in whom he had invested great hope, has not done well by him. In school, he is ridiculed for his stupidity, which in reality is an acute case of dyslexia.
His mother, a teacher, cannot endure the thought of having such a “slow” son and packs him off to a different school to the one where she works.
From the first day, he finds school intolerable. So unnerved is he that he cannot even answer the teacher when asked his name: “I did not want to make a fool of myself. Confusion. Anxiety. Embarrassment. All swirling around in my brain. And my mind was blank.”
His last hope of ever making his devout mother proud is dashed when, in response to his announcement that he has a vocation, she icily declares that you need brains to be a priest. The boy cannot even turn for comfort to his father, an outgoing, pleasant man who died in unusual circumstances (suspected suicide) when Lofty was still very young.
The novel opens with Lofty driving his van at breakneck speed along the narrow western roads with a priest and a prostitute in the back. During a stop-over in Paris on the way home from a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Lofty had befriended the prostitute, Michelle, and invited her to come and service the needs of the sex-starved bachelor farmers in the west of Ireland. Michelle follows up on the offer and arrives soon afterwards in Sligo.
The van is then successfully transformed into a mobile brothel. Lofty, madly in love with Michelle, resents having to share her with others.
Then there is also the constant risk of people discovering the use his van, once considered a shrine, is being put to. I will not spoil the plot by supplying too much information, but let me just say that things do eventually reach a crisis point.
For all that it stretches our willing suspension of disbelief to breaking point, there is something endearing about this novel. The beauty of the Sligo landscape is sketched with tenderness and skill and the author has a good ear for dialogue.
- Eamon Maher is director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies in IT Tallaght and is co-editor, with John Littleton, of Contemporary Catholicism in Ireland: A Critical Appraisal (The Columba Press)