Irish Fiction: Gar Private in Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come! says that no-one can truly appreciate the fun there is in growing up in what seems like a provincial backwater in Ireland. John Kelly knows, though, and the hypothesis underlining his new novel is that much of the teenage angst caused by the feeling that a world of excitement exists elsewhere has as much to do with a state of mind as with the actualities of geography. Reviewed by Derek Hand.
Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, is the place, and teenagers Declan Lydon and Spit Maguire dream of action and experience and a whole world of living that must be going on in the exotic of other places. The medium to gauge things by is music, and the best music - that is, music that matters - comes from anywhere but home, or so it would seem.
However, as the story spins itself out, what the reader learns through narrator Declan is that, in fact, the local, far from being a cultural and musical wasteland, is full of unrecognised vibrancy and potential. It is certainly full of music, and music of all kinds. Folk, rock, country, blues, traditional and religious music exist side by side, and all of it equally important and equally significant to these teenagers, offering them access to experiences and emotions beyond their own articulation.
Irish male thirtysomethings everywhere will recognise themselves in the picture of adolescent air-guitar heroics and the vagaries of a garage-band culture, in which most groups split up before they ever really began. Kelly captures well these awkward moments of adolescence, a twilight world lived between hope and despair.
Readers familiar with Kelly's previous novel, The Little Hammer, will be accustomed to the eclectic nature of his writing, which brings together fact and fiction. While, in that novel, the voice of the narrator held the entire edifice together, the same is not true here. Formally, this is half-novel, half-Hot Press extended article. Certainly it is an Irish musical history lesson, with walk-on parts for Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy, Horslips and Van Morrison, which prove, if nothing else, that rock 'n' roll is much closer to home than some of us might imagine.
There is, too, knitted into the story, a mythical and historical narrative concerning the town of Enniskillen itself.
These different styles sit somewhat uneasily together, so much so that the voice, and the story, of Declan - which should be holding these various strands together - are overwhelmed at times. There is, as well, the difficulty of writing a novel about music without any of the joys of an accompanying soundtrack to help complete the picture. Pehaps, though, it is precisely this formal anxiety which brings coherence to the narrative, appropriately mirroring the lives of these young men, who attempt to make the world their own and thus reflective of their own nascent ideas and understanding.
The emphasis throughout is very much on the comic and the absurd, and yet the presence of this almost thesis-like argument and tone - concerning Ireland's cultural status as a place of innovation - demonstrates clearly the author's desire to do something more than merely provide another entertaining turn.
It might not be art in the traditional sense, but it is a lot of fun and there are serious lessons to be learnt. Enjoy. Yeah yeah yeah.
Derek Hand is a lecturer in English in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. His book, John Banville: Exploring Fictions, was published by the Liffey Press last year
Sophisticated Boom Boom. By John Kelly, Jonathan Cape, 195pp, £10