This Human Season

Book Review

Louise Dean

This Human Season is set in Belfast in 1979, and is the intertwining story of two very different people, each struggling in his or her way to hold on to the things they believe in and to the families they cherish and are compelled to protect.

Kathleen is a beautiful housewife, fighting a daily battle to hold her family together – a drunken, irresponsible and unstable husband, a son Sean who is imprisoned in the notorious Long Kesh prison for IRA activities, and two younger children who are already world-weary and yet attracted to the violence they shouldn't be inured to. Kathleen's desire to protect her family is fierce and unwavering.

John Dunn has just finished serving twenty years in the British Army, and now lives in Belfast , where he works in the Long Kesh prison. The work is difficult and revolting, but the pay is quite good, and it enables him to buy a small house and a reliable car, and to start a respectable life with his new girlfriend and newly discovered teenage son. To John, this is worth the nights of excruciating work, and the hardship of coming home in the morning with his boots and clothes reeking of urine and shit, with which the prisoners coat the floors and walls of their cells because there is no other way to handle it. Prison warden's orders.

In prison, John meets Kathleen's son Sean, a quiet, meditative young man who can sing like and angel. In speaking with prisoners such as Sean and witnessing the inhumane way in which the prisoners are treated, John begins to question the very foundation upon which he has built his career, and indeed, his very life.

Louise Dean's writing is difficult to read at times, but the horrifying poignancy makes it worthwhile. Her ear for dialogue is impeccable. She wrote this novel while living in France , and it is astonishing, knowing this, to hear the perfect Irish lilts and the rhythm of the language. She is a prodigiously talented writer, and the TurboBookSnob thinks it was a tragedy that This Human Season did not make the 2005 Booker Longlist.

“You see it's the greatest thing in the world, to give your life for something you believe in. And then on the other hand, it's bloody pointless. Your body goes in the ground, feeding animals. And killing for what you believe in is pointless as well. You can't change anyone's mind by killing them. And between those two things there are a whole load of accidents that happen. And now we've got it all happening on a bigger scale. You get people going on about peace not war; that's easy talk. We can all say it's wrong, but none of us can help the fact that it's in us. There's something bloody horrible inside us; a monster. We don't like it so we make out it's not in us personally, we make out it's upstairs or outside or living in someone else's house, and once we've got rid of it, we'll be straight.”

“It makes you wonder whether socialism only works with men who are repressed.”

“Death comes unasked. That's what they say. Any time, any place, anywhere – like with your martini drink. Well so does life, Kathleen, and so does love. The best thing of all is when we don't do the thinking for ourselves, we just get on with what we're given.”