This is the Country

Book Review

William Wall

This is the Country is the story of an unnamed young male narrator, living in an Ireland that is grim and difficult, a place where the local industries have been taken over by foreigners or moved somewhere else entirely, where the most prosperous business by far is run by the small-town-boy-made good, a hooligan who turns crime into a thriving enterprise.

Our hero's father ran away from his responsibilities, and his mother is an apathetic alcoholic. Without much direction, he soon finds himself on the wrong side of the law, taking any drug that comes his way, indulging in petty theft, pulling mindless pranks, and in the process, forging a small semblance of a family with his friend Max.

When Max dies of tetanus, he is left alone, and soon takes up with Jacintha (or Jazz), the favored sister of Pat the Baker, head of the town's crime cartel. When Jazz gets pregnant, Pat is enraged, and breaks both of our hero's legs as a warning. It doesn't matter, though, because with Jazz and their daughter Kaylie, he has found his salvation. He cleans up his act, takes his family far out of the town, into the country, where he earns an honest living as a mechanic. The young family tentatively sketches out for themselves the beginnings of a normal life, and are happy, though the spectre of Pat's eventual retribution hovers ominously over their lives.

This is the Country is an unexpected delight. The writing is gritty yet tender, achingly poignant at times and funny at others. The unnamed main character worms its way into the reader's heart as he fumbles his way through life. It is a fine achievement of a novel, and the TurboBookSnob is grateful to the Booker judges for introducing her to this talented author.

“Other things that happened in the old man's house. I used to hear him snoring. I used to pretend this was my grandfather. Then other times, when I was dressed, I used to pretend I was his daughter. I'd wear her dresses and stuff and when he was gone to bed I used to say: Goodnight Dad, very quiet. Whisper. Then I'd take her clothes off one by one and put on her nightdress and get into her sheets. I'd listen to him shifting around and later, maybe, snoring his head off. Sometimes I'd look out her window at the sodium lights and the cars crawling by and pulling into driveways and I'd think about the normal people who lived in those houses. All these places called Baker Mews, Mornington Grove, Limeworth Downs. Other people naming the world. They've inventing normal. To be inside the window looking the other way, two kids playing Lego in front of an artificial fire. The husband going for a few scoops down the local. The wife going to some kind of a club. They all wear soft shoes and smell nice. The smell of cooking and washing machines in the house. I felt like my head was inside a freezer and everything was setting solid and tight. My scalding blood. One night I heard him crying. Not everything has an end. There is a store of something that nobody can touch and all harm is made good out of it, and I believe that old man had something good coming to him. I was sorry for him. I wished I was his daughter, come home for a few days' break. I wished I could get up before he woke and go downstairs and make him a surprise breakfast with a fry and tea and bring it up to him on a tray. I was grateful that he loved us so much.”

“We shake hands. I feel his strength. All the loneliness, missing his son Hally and his wife, the empty farm rich in useless blackberries, and still this hero handshake like the war isn't over yet, the last battle. I hold on to it as long as I can, hoping some will come my way.”

“Where do they all come from, everyone different in their own way? Reaching back from the dead, reaching out of life. Is the baby the start? Where did the number one soul come from? What's the engine that drives the whole thing? Not love, never mind what they say. Maybe loss. Maybe angers. Maybe need. The whole system powered by what's missing, everything coming and going, everything changing because nothing is ever enough.”

“Later there's a Crimeline special and I'm surprised to see all the old places are justly famous. They tell me that a certain acquaintance of mine was stabbed to death. The crime took place in full view of the CCTV on the side of the street. The shades were looking down from thirty feet up like God. They never trouble themselves. They pick up the pieces afterwards. I saw threads of blood on my hand one day and I wondered if God plans the colour of blood and the colour of skin and the shape. I thought about this acquaintance lying on the street with God's square eye watching him bleed to death. Did he think it was the end of the world or just his own single death? Or is it the same thing? As always he died for a woman. A knife for a woman, a gun is for drugs. It's a question of the right implement. A woman pierces you with a fine point, a long wound that screams coming in and going out. A deep would with a fine entry is the most dangerous. For drugs they shoot you in the head.”