Irish Fiction: Some ambiguity in the title of this book hints at the difficulty within: the attractive dust-jacket reads "A Novel Ireland".
Perhaps this was the designer's idea (a breed inclined to see words as mere shapes on a page), yet it is a truer description of this surreal melding of history, myth and fiction than the intended title, Ireland: A Novel, printed inside. In fact, this is a story about storytelling, a celebration of the ancient art of the seanchaí. But from the opening chapter, with chunks of stale fact and huge handfuls of downright invention thrown into the mix, it becomes increasingly difficult to decipher for whom, exactly, these wordy confections have been spun.
The shape of the novel is simple enough. An ageing seanchaí appears at the home of John O'Mara, solicitor, in 1951. He tells some high-flown stories about Newgrange and Conor of Ulster. The nine-year-old Ronan feels a strange attraction to the man (completely non-sexual, of course; this is rural Ireland). Devastated when his mother expels the old windbag from her house, he spends the next 10 years searching for the magus and collecting his and other people's chronicles, each one of which is delivered to us here at some length.
So, in vaguely chronological order, we hop and begob through subjects such as St Patrick, Spenser, the Penal Laws (which here seem to last for 300 years), Handel's Messiah, the Battle of the Boyne, an attractive theory about the Irish language having been invented out of the Tower of Babel, and a final, rather exhausted, wind-up at the GPO, 1916. Filled with so much verbiage, Ronan, too, fattens into a great Irish storyteller (if still a somewhat prissy virgin), his art eventually distilled into a chair in Irish History at the National University. The account of his meanderings ends in the mid-1960s, which is just as well. Though taught by a storyteller who boasts "I have never separated history from myth. I don't think you can in Ireland", we are not told how Ronan will age with the winds of so-called "Revisionism" about to blow through the halls of academe. Perhaps the poor innocent found a niche in the Irish Centres of West Belfast or South Boston, where tales of heroic victimhood could still be of use.
Which leaves the question: what is the intention of all this work? Frank Delaney is the author of a number of well-crafted historical novels. He is Irish, so he must know that most of what he has to tell is not historiography but the stuff of redundant schoolbooks, and just as clichéd. He is also a broadcaster, and, as his seanchaí admits rather late in the book, well aware of the difficulties in trying to reach too wide an audience:
"Let us assume there are Martians among you who have never heard of Parnell or the Land War in Ireland or Irish republicanism or Kitty O'Shea or any of the whole damn boiling.
"And why should you have? Many of you have come here from overseas and the only thing you know about Ireland is that we have ugly little men here, tricky fellows in green hats, who'll look you in the eye and promise you a crock of gold. But then, when your glance is distracted even for a second, they vanish and take the gold with them.
"Yes, we have such figures here - I can show you several of them. We call them 'elected politicians'."
So, something for everyone: a nod to any reader who believed another bestselling blockbuster which once linked ancient archaeological sites with visitors from outer space; a knowing wink to the new ethnic mix of Irish society who may be finding it difficult to distinguish tales about Congested Districts from the horrors of bungalow bliss; and for the rest of us, a nudge in the ribs about the hilariously corrupt little place we've made all by ourselves, not to mention that funny oul' leprechaun guff we encourage our tourists to buy, piled high like false gold in books like this.
Ireland: A Novel By Frank Delaney Time Warner Books, 468pp. £17.99
Aisling Foster is a writer and critic