Book Reviews TRESPASSES BY LOUISE KENNEDY / BLOOMSBURY $29.99 It’s 1975 and ‘The Troubles’ are raging through Northern Ireland. Twenty five year old, Cushla Lavery lives in a small town near Belfast, where she teaches grade 7 pupils in the local Catholic primary school. She also looks after her gin-soaked mother, Gina, and still finds time for part-time work in brother Eamonn’s pub, with its clientele of local Protestants and security forces. It’s here that Cushla meets the older, married, Protestant barrister, Michael, who has outspoken views on the justice system and civil rights. Michael introduces Cushla to his sophisticated coterie of friends and the two soon become involved in a torrid love affair. At school, Cushla takes a young Davy McGeown, who is continually bullied by other pupils, under her wing, eventually meting Davy’s family who live in a ‘mixed’ housing estate on the edge of town. When Davy’s father is savagely beaten and left for dead by a Protestant gang Cushla’s decisions and actions, as tensions in the town rise, will have far reaching consequences for both her family and her covert liaison with Michael. Author, Louise Kennedy is the award-winning writer of an acclaimed short story collection with Trespasses her initial foray into the longer literary format. Having been brought up in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’ Kennedy has successfully depicted the cadence, unease and political turmoil of ‘normal’ life in province during this bleak time, as I recall from my time there during the mid-late 1970s. She has so perfectly captured the idiomatic Ulster vernacular that some readers might benefit from a copy of John Pepper’s, ‘Ulster – English Dictionary’. Characters are well rounded, plausible and memorable as they face the daily tensions of a society in conflict. Realistic, tender and unflinching, Trespasses is a masterful and intimate portrait of those caught between intransigent warring factions where it’s not what you do that matters, but who you are. Kennedy’s unforgiving, unflinching narrative has produced an immersive, addictive reading experience which will resonate with the reader long after the final page. - Reviewed by John Hagan.
74 | THE IRISH SCENE
AN ANSWER FOR EVERYTHING ORCHARD, TATE & WEBB / BLOOMSBURY $39.99 What are the 100 best books? Are extinct animals just hiding from us? Which songs have stood the test of time? Who is the best James Bond? These are just four of the 200 intriguing questions addressed in this excellent infographic publication. But what are infographics? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an infographic (or information graphic) is “a visual representation of information or data”. Basically, it’s a collection of imagery, such as pie charts and bar graphs with minimal text to give an easy-to-understand overview of a topic. According to co-author, Christian Tate, ‘With infographics you have the chance to tell so many different stories … with loads of information for people to delve into’. To further explain let’s peruse two examples of how the authors approached the first question (above) to develop a compendium of ‘best 100’ books published? The authors seemingly took a less than universal approach by collecting only rankings from the 30 best English language book lists, including published translations, up to 2001. This categorised the most popular 100 works of fiction and poetry resulting in the identification of F Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, as being the best book of all time. Ernest Hemingway received accolades for being the ‘most prolific author’, contributing four books to best 100 listings. In relation to songs which have stood the test of time (above), the authors worked with Spotify to determine the number of global plays every song received in 2020 to eventually identify which song from each year since 1950 remains most popular today. All the old favourites are there from country, folk, rock, soul, jazz and pop, with the authors revealing such trivia as the longest and shortest ballads. Interesting to note that six Christmas songs made the list. Topics in this fine publication include athletic achievements, engineering, the Earth and space, but not all inclusions are serious as authors tackle issues such as ‘What is the best thing since sliced bread’. And who would have known that Ireland rated 11th on the world consumption of
