FICTION: EÍLÍS NÍ DHUIBHNEreviews The Sea and the Silence by Peter Cunningham New Island, 254pp. €13.95
THE BIG HOUSE theme has long fascinated Irish writers, and Peter Cunningham’s new novel is evidence that it has not yet lost its grip. Born on a big farm in Co Meath, Ismé, or Iz, the heroine, an innocent femme fatale, marries into a decaying Big House demesne in Sibrille, on the outskirts of the fictional city of Monument.
So far so traditional. But she ends her days in the embassy belt in Ballsbridge, in a costly city pile, perhaps the latest manifestation of the big house in Ireland. Cunningham gives the old theme a new spin. Another major innovation is that his novel is set in the period from 1945-1965, against the backdrop of the second World War and the Troubles in the North, unlike most Big House novels, which tend to prefer the first World War.
Iz narrates the story, which she has left in two parcels to be opened on her death by her solicitor, who is in love with her, like almost all the men in the book. Parcel one contains an account of her life from her marriage in 1945 to 1965. It is written in an old-fashioned style which convinces only when one recalls that the voice is Iz’s. Even so, her turn of phrase can be hard to take, as are her frequent generalisations about the Anglo-Irish (“he had the Anglo-Irish tendency not to engage the specific, to reduce an issue to its most trivial and . . . refuse to recognize it”. )
The novel is over-reliant on tricks, like the parcel device. The most common of these contrivances is frequent reversals of fortune. Some are genuinely shocking; others you can see coming a mile away. There is undeniable satisfaction in that, though. The reader likes to be right. The twists are skilfully handled on the whole, and are evidence of Peter Cunningham’s realisation that one of the novelist’s duties is to entertain. The second part of the novel is set entirely in 1945, before Iz’s marriage to her decaying, Anglo-Irish, unfaithful dipsomaniac of a husband. Here her unwise choice of spouse is explained in a gripping narrative which managed to convince me to sit in Heuston station on a freezing night after my journey was over just to finish it. To force a reviewer to such extremes is quite a coup on the part of Cunningham, given that “the end” occurs half way through the volume.
It is the second novel, at least, recently to deal with Ireland and the second World War – James Ryan’s interesting “South of the Border” grapples more directly with the ambiguities of that period, one which is ripe for further literary exploration. The Emergency is just a part of the complex story of “The Silence and The Sea”, which succeeds in handling serious issues of class, race, and gender, and deeply felt human tragedy, in a lively and entertaining fashion. A book which will shorten any journey.
- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a novelist and writer