Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Trout
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Benjamin, Peter; Lauder, Peter
BIRTHDATE: 1947
WEBSITE: http://www.petercunninghambooks.com/
CITY: Dublin
STATE:
COUNTRY: Ireland
NATIONALITY: Irish
http://sandstonepress.com/authors/peter-cunningham * http://www.petercunninghambooks.com/about/ * https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-trout-by-peter-cunningham-fishing-for-truth-of-clerical-abuse-1.2760679 * https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-trout-by-peter-cunningham-1.2764759
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1947; son of Redmond Cunningham; married; wife’s name Carol; children: six.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, newspaper columnist, and novelist. Worked variously in accounting, in farming, in commodities trading, and in the sugar industry.
MEMBER:Aosdana (the Irish academy of arts and letters).
AWARDS:Cecil Day-Lewis Bursary Award, 2011; Prix de l’Europe, 2013, and Prix Caillou, both for The Sea and the Silence.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including the Irish Times.
SIDELIGHTS
Peter Cunningham is an Irish writer, journalist, and novelist from Waterford, a seaport in southeast Ireland and the country’s oldest city. Early in his career, he worked as an accountant and a commodities trader. When his first novel, Noble Lord, was published in 1986, he devoted more and more of his time to writing thrillers. More thrillers followed, but in 1990, a family tragedy changed the direction of his writing. His eldest son, also named Peter, was killed in an automobile accident, which devastated Cunningham, his wife Carol, and his other five children. From that point forward, Cunningham “He began to write contemporary fiction, based on life in Waterford, which he fictionalized as Monument, a port town in Ireland’s south east,” noted a writer on the Peter Cunningham Website.
Tapes of the River Delta
The first of those contemporary novels, Tapes of the River Delta, explores the history of a family through almost one hundred years of Irish history during the twentieth century. At the beginning of the novel, narrator Theo Shortcourse is on the run after committing a murder and escaping from the psychiatric hospital where he was being held. While hiding in a river delta, he thinks back over his early childhood, when he was best friends with, and a frequent nemesis of, his nephew Bain Cross. He wonders why his mother has long preferred Bain to him and if there is an issue of parentage that he doesn’t know about. He realizes that his mother also interfered in his first relationship and that her actions were probably deliberate.
As Theo grows older, he enters politics, as does Bain, and both men rise to prominent positions. They continue to encounter each other, bother personally and professionally, and the tension between them never fully dissipates. When Theo is seduced by a married British woman, he is warned that she intends to spy on him for Bain. Undeterred, Theo continues the relationship until the situation ends with the murder that started the book.
“This is a skillful production, written in prose that has a trace of Irish lilt,” commented Mary Ellen Quinn in a Booklist review. With this novel, noted a Publishers Weekly writer, “Cunningham paints a dark and compelling canvas that writhes with incest, betrayal, spiritual and political bankruptcy—and the blasted hopes of 20th-century Ireland.”
Consequences of the Heart
Chud Church, the protagonist of Consequences of the Heart, grows up in his maternal grandmother’s care in Ireland. He is best friends with Jack Santry, the son of a prominent local family. The two young men are both romantically interested in Rosa Bensey, but only one can become her husband. A coin toss before Jack and Chud set out for their participation in the D-Day invasion grants Jack the privilege of marriage to Rosa, while Chud gives up his romantic aspirations and becomes a close friend. In the years following the war, Jack is involved in a scandal, Chud murders a soldier who tries to blackmail Jack over an instance of battlefield cowardice, and Chud becomes involved in an intense and passionate affair with Rosa. Other forces are conspiring to affect Chud, including his own family history and Jack and Rosa’s son Kevin, who seeks revenge against Chud. A Kirkus Reviews writer called the novel a “lovingly detailed examination of twentieth-century Anglo-Irish culture as well as a dissection of personal relationships.” Lucille Cormier, writing in Historical Novels Review, concluded: “Consequences of the Heart is much more than a love story; it is a finely woven and lyrical reflection on human nature.”
Acts of Allegiance
Acts of Allegiance is a “masterful novel,” commented Jane Casey in the Irish Times, the story of Marty Ransom, an Irish civil servant who becomes embroiled in spying for MI5 during the Troubles. As the story progresses, Marty finds that he has to choose where he allegiance lies, whether with Ireland or the British government. Making his decision even more difficult is his desire to know more about his father and what kind of person he was. His own memories of his father are dim and confused, and he can’t even remember details about the man’s death. Marty’s decisions about his own identity are strongly bound to his father. As he searches for information on his father and the meaning he requires in his own life, the “revelations unfold like dark petals, with each sequential revealing the clues that lie hidden in Marty’s memories,” observed Maryam Madani on the Totally Dublin Website.
Madani stated, “Acts of Allegiance is a rare find that manages to combine literary lyricism with a satisfyingly propulsive, airtight plot. It is a cracking tale of espionage, state secrets and betrayal.” In assessing Acts of Allegiance, John Kilraine on the RTE Website stated, “The crucial test for any book is whether it keeps you turning the pages to see what happens next, and the latest novel from Peter Cunningham certainly does that.” Casey concluded, “The sign of a great writer is to take the personal and specific and draw out what is universal about it, and Peter Cunningham achieves this with tremendous skill.”
The Trout
The Trout, Cunningham’s 2017 novel, weaves a man’s personal history into what appears to be a trap for him in the present. Narrator Alex Smyth is a successful Irish writer who has settled down with his wife in Bayport, Ontario, a rural Canadian community. When he receives a fishing lure in the mail, with no note, return address, or other identification, a series of disturbing childhood memories return. For most of his life, Alex has thought he killed someone when he was seven years old. He doesn’t know who it might have been, and he has no solid memory of the events, just impressions. It’s like he has amnesia related to what would have been a traumatic event. The fishing lure—a specialized tool for catching trout—causes these troubling memories and feelings to resurface. It doesn’t take long for these confusing memories to affect Alex and his marriage.
Alex believes that the answers to his questions have something to do with another boy he knew named Terence Deasy. Increasingly haunted and disturbed by his recollections, he returns to Ireland to find Terence, locate answers to his lifelong mystery, and put his troubled past to rest.
“Brief, cogent paragraphs about trout provide a connecting thread in this thoughtful, exquisitely told tale,” commented a Publishers Weekly contributor. An Internet Bookwatch writer called The Trout a “masterfully written novel” and an “original and multilayered psychological thriller that will hold the reader’s rapt attention from beginning to end.” Irish Times contributor Tom Moriarty called the novel a “well-crafted, crisply written, gripping story.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 15, 1996, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of Tapes of the River Delta, p. 989.
Historical Novels Review, August, 2010, Patricia O’Sullivan, review of The Sea and the Silence; August, 2011, review of Consequences of the Heart.
Independent (London, England), January 27, 2018, Hilary A. White, “‘No Day Goes By That I Don’t Think of Peter Twenty Times’—Irish Writer on His Son’s Death in Car Crash,” profile of Peter Cunningham.
Internet Bookwatch, October, 2017, review of The Trout.
Irish Times, August 26, 2016, Tom Moriarty, review of The Trout; September 23, 2017, Jane Casey, “Acts of Allegiance by Peter Cunningham: Signs of a Great Writer,” review of Acts of Allegiance.
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2011, review of Consequences of the Heart.
Publishers Weekly, February 19, 1996, review of Tapes of the River Delta, p. 205; December 13, 2010, review of Capital Sins, p. 38; May 15, 2017, review of The Trout, p. 41.
ONLINE
Million Kindle Books, http://www.amillionkindlebooks.com/ (July 9, 2013), P.S. Karr, review of The Sea and the Silence.
Peter Cunningham Website, http://www.petercunninghambooks.com (February 9, 2018).
RTE Website, https://www.rte.ie/ (October 25, 2017), John Kilraine, review of Acts of Allegiance.
Sandstone Press Website, http://www.sandstonepress.com/ (January 9, 2018), biography of Peter Cunningham.
Totally Dublin, http://www.totallydublin.ie/ (February 9, 2018), Maryam Madani, review of Acts of Allegiance.
Undiscovered Scotland, https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/ (February 9, 2018), review of Acts of Allegiance.
The Trout by Peter Cunningham: fishing for truth of clerical abuse
‘I decided to tell the story of a monstrous crime that takes place, almost casually, at a time of suppressed consciousness in Ireland’
Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 15:58
Peter Cunningham
Peter Cunningham: “Hypnotised by the power of religion, Irish people allowed the unspeakable crimes taking place against children to go unchecked on the basis that they did not know these crimes were taking place”
Peter Cunningham: “Hypnotised by the power of religion, Irish people allowed the unspeakable crimes taking place against children to go unchecked on the basis that they did not know these crimes were taking place”
Two issues lie at the heart of The Trout. The first is elusive childhood memory; the second is the ability of whole societies to deny the evidence of their eyes.
As adults, we all know the moments when we suddenly smell something, or taste something, or see or hear something, and for the tiniest second a memory floats up from our deep unconscious. It’s like a spark from a deep, deep cave. But we can’t grasp it, can’t keep it – and then it’s gone, just as our dreams defy our attempts to hold on to them. We are left with a feeling that we have just encountered something which we know intimately – that is part of us – and yet we don’t know what it is. We know it, yet we don’t know it. We may, also for a nano-second, think, I’ll ask my mother – but my mother has not been there for years. We are left in this tantalising state of being on the brink of something that we know is very important for us, and yet is utterly unobtainable.
In some cases – and this is what happens in The Trout – that tiny memory is so strong that it governs us. It can even terrify us. Alex, a man in late middle age, has been assailed by such flashes of memory all his adult life. His memory is horrifying. Alex thinks that as a young boy he murdered someone. But he does not know who, or why, or when.
Denying that what we see is actually happening
In Germany in the 1930s, even though people could see in plain sight was happening to the Jews, they were able to convince themselves that it was not happening. Decent, ordinary people, who saw their neighbours being rounded up and loaded like cattle into wagons, were able to contradict the evidence of their eyes. Subsequently they would deny that such events ever happened.
In Ireland, in the eight and more decades following independence, the treatment and management of vulnerable children was shameful. More than 35,000 Irish children were, for various reasons, sent into a network of church-run industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels, where extensive abuse was then carried out by those in charge. 35,000 children.
Whether from a blind acquiescence to a powerful and domineering Catholic Church, or from an inbuilt powerlessness when it came to confronting authority, Irish people failed to act on the evidence of their eyes. A massive, collective lack of consciousness seized two or three Irish generations. Hypnotised by the power of religion, they allowed the unspeakable crimes taking place against children to go unchecked on the basis that they did not know these crimes were taking place. Wedged in the grip of a complex far more powerful than their common sense or moral compass, they did nothing.
The church, which was part of this culture, actively nurtured it. The fact that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children – many of them with mental disabilities – could not have been a secret. When the heat eventually came – when the general consciousness began to rise and the scale of these crimes started to emerge – the reaction of the Church was indicative of a defensive mindset established over centuries.
One of the many reports commissioned by the Government into the abuse of children in Ireland by Catholic clergy stated that highly-placed clerics, including the then archbishop of Dublin, subsequently a cardinal, had lied to successive tribunals, inquiries and police investigations about their knowledge of the activities of paedophile priests in their dioceses. Priests known to the church as deviants had been moved quietly to other parishes, and let loose again on children; but when asked by the civil authorities whether this had happened, the church’s highest officers said that it had not.
Faced subsequently with the incontrovertible evidence of their own lies, these churchmen then explained that their untrue responses were justified by the doctrine of mental reservation. Using this convoluted legerdemain, a priest can tell a lie while at the same time internally correcting it, on the basis that God knows the true story and therefore one has not really lied.
I decided to tell the story of a monstrous crime that takes place, almost casually, at a time of suppressed consciousness in Ireland. I set The Trout in the beautiful hinterland of my own south-east, in the midst of rivers and hills, streams and valleys I know so well, in a simple place populated by good people whose knowledge – whose consciousness of the truth – lies submerged deep beneath the surface. It remains there for decades, until one day, against all the odds, it bursts upwards out of the depths and into the daylight, where it hangs, dazzling, refusing to be ignored any more, like a beautiful, shimmering trout.
The Trout by Peter Cunningham is published by Sandstone Press today, at £8.99. It will be launched by Thomas McCarthy on August 31st, at 6pm, in Hodges Figgis, Dawson Street, Dublin 2
About
You are here:Home/About
Peter_Cunningham2Peter Cunningham is from Waterford, Ireland’s oldest city. He says he grew up in an extended family of storytellers. Although he wrote continuously in school, in university and as a young adult, he also worked in a variety of other jobs, including accountancy, the sugar industry, and farming. He married Carol, a Jungian analyst, in 1973.
His first novels, beginning with Noble Lord in 1986, were thrillers. Following the death of his eldest son, also Peter, in 1990, the direction of the writing changed. He began to write contemporary fiction, based on life in Waterford, which he fictionalised as Monument, a port town in Ireland’s south east. Beginning with Tapes of the River Delta, these novels have been widely acclaimed. Consequences of the Heart was shortlisted for the Listowel Writer’s Prize; The Sea and the Silence won the prestigious Prix de l’Europe.
The Taoiseach was a controversial best seller, whilst Capital Sins, for which Cunningham was described by the Irish Times newspaper as “the Hemmingway of the Celtic Tiger”, was a satire set in the Irish economic meltdown.
Sister Caravaggio, conceived with his close friend, the late Maeve Binchy, and written as a collaborative novel with four other well-known Irish writers, was also a best seller.
He has expressed a wish to write for the stage and is developing a comedy loosely based on Capital Sins.
The Trout, his most recent novel, is published by Sandstone Press in the UK and will be published in the USA on July 4 next by Arcade.
He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of arts and letters.
Peter Cunningham
Peter Cunningham is from Waterford in the south east of Ireland. He is the author of the Monument series, widely acclaimed novels set in a fictional version of his home town. His novel, The Taoiseach was a controversial best seller; The Sea and the Silence won the prestigious Prix de l’Europe. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of arts and letters, and lives with his wife, not far from Dublin.
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Life Saturday 27 January 2018
'No day goes by that I don't think of Peter 20 times' - Irish writer on his son's death in car crash
Author Peter Cunningham tells Hilary A White how his son's death in a car accident and finding out about his father's time as a British spy both profoundly affected what he would write
Honour: Cunningham's father, Redmond, was the only Irishman to receive the Military Cross for Gallantry for his heroics at the Normandy D-Day landings. Photo: Tony Gavin
Honour: Cunningham's father, Redmond, was the only Irishman to receive the Military Cross for Gallantry for his heroics at the Normandy D-Day landings. Photo: Tony Gavin
November 10 2017 12:00 AM
Peter Cunningham, an award-winning Irish author, suffered an unimaginable tragedy in 1990 when his son Peter Jr, the eldest of six children with wife Carol, was killed in a car accident.
"That was a bomb in our lives," he says.
"And here was I, having given up the day job and committed myself to writing a thriller a year for HarperCollins and I just couldn't do that anymore. I just. Could not. Do it."
It's crushing to listen to Cunningham, with brittle calm, relate the path such absolute grief sent one on.
He speaks about how it "completely reoriented" his and Carol's life, and, ultimately, was the making of him as a writer. He was no longer interested in genre fiction that could be fired out in eight months.
The decision "to go deeper" was forced upon him and resulted in more tender, socially-aware and award-courting fare such as Consequences of the Heart (1998) and the Prix de l'Europe-winning The Sea and the Silence (2008).
Although he'd go on to learn that thrills and perspiration were in his family DNA, thriller-writing itself couldn't save him anymore, he softly explains.
"You never go back to the point at which you left the road, at which this happened. No day goes by that I don't think of Peter 20 times. Sometimes there's a comfort that he's there for me to lean on. I'm not a religious person but that's as close as I get. I embarked on writing as a way of life in a way that I hadn't before, and it was thanks to Peter."
There is nothing average about Peter Cunningham's journey to elder statesman of Irish fiction.
After leaving Waterford and studying in UCD, he worked as an accountant and commodities trader both home and abroad.
An avenue into full-time writing opened in 1985 when his first novel, the thriller Noble Lord, was picked up by HarperCollins for £10,000, a good payday at the time.
A UK agent followed.
He became a thriller-writing machine for the next number of years, pouring his experience of the financial world into white-collar crime sagas under pen surnames such as Lauder, Wilben and Benjamin.
His father has been a huge influence in his new book.
If a young Peter Cunningham had ever been asked to stand up and tell the class about his father, there would have been something of an awkward gap in the story. And even had he known then what he knows now, he would've had to keep his mouth shut.
His family had always known Cunningham Sr was a highly decorated WWII Royal Engineers army officer. He was a local hero in Ballybricken in Waterford, the corner of Ireland that has always been a constant in his son's 30-year career as a novelist. Like tens of thousands of Irish nationals, his father travelled over the Border to enlist with the British army and fight Hitler. He went up to the North in 1940, and two years later was working as a citizen with the Royal Engineers in Omagh. Suddenly, he was gazetted as a second lieutenant to Scotland. This, Cunningham tells me over the rim of his coffee cup, was "an extraordinarily unusual development". Something was amiss.
"I'd never been that interested but in my father's old age I found myself trying to understand the process by which he became an officer," he explains. "I had to go right back into the 1930s to where he came from."
What was uncovered has formed the backbone of Cunningham's umpteenth novel, Acts of Allegiance. In short, his father was a spy.
Cunningham folds his legs and clears his throat. He details how his father, Redmond, came from Home-Ruler stock. His own father had been John Redmond's election agent, hence the name, and he had grown up in a household that was pro-Fine Gael, anti-Dev and anti-Republican. De Valera's policies during the economic war of the 1930s ravaged his grandfather's pig-exporting business. When war broke out, Redmond couldn't reconcile the stance of neutrality. Enlisting with the British army was tricky for "a non-officer, middle-class young Irish guy with very few connections" because the opportunist IRA had declared war on Britain. Through a connection in the livestock trade, he managed to get a job as a clerk for the Royal Engineers.
"I asked him when he had just a few years left in life what he actually did and he told me," the author says. "You had the enemy within in Northern Ireland - there was fear of both a German division in Ireland and the IRA. He would have been providing information about IRA sympathisers and so on."
By the time Cunningham Sr returned from duty, he was the only Irishman to receive the Military Cross for Gallantry for his heroics at the Normandy D-Day landings. That nerve in the field is possibly a result of the knife-edge he lived on in Omagh. Cunningham's belief is that he was rumbled and had to be flown to safety, hence the sudden posting in Scotland. "I think the strain of that told on him all his life. He wasn't the easiest of men."
It makes Acts of Allegiance, a nuanced spy saga set in the fledgling Republic, a particularly personal work for the 70-year-old. Like le Carré's oeuvre, his father's soirée as a secret agent and that of the protagonist in Acts of Allegiance is more mundane than the Martini glasses and gadgets, but laden with treacherous pitfalls all the same.
Cunningham said elsewhere that, as a spy, his father "mingled, observed, listened and reported". It doesn't sound too dissimilar to a writer.
"Yes," he nods slowly. "Never thought of that. I started talking about the whole business with my father with some sections of my family for the first time some years ago. It mightn't have been that popular, but that's what writers are here for - we're here to say what happened and present that the best way we can."
Acts of Allegiance is published by Sandstone Press, priced €16.99
Peter Cunningham (Irish writer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter Cunningham is an award-winning Irish novelist and newspaper columnist.[1] He grew up in Waterford[2][3] and was educated at Waterpark School, Glenstal Abbey School and University College Dublin.[4] He worked as an accountant and a trader of commodities[2] until 1986 when his first novel was published. Titled Noble Lord, it was a thriller, written under the pseudonym Peter Lauder.[1][2] Later, under the pseudonym Peter Wilben, he published the Joe Grace Thriller Series.
He is best known however for the historical novels The Sea and the Silence, Tapes of the River Delta, Consequences Of The Heart and Love In One Edition, which chronicle the lives of local families during the twentieth century in Monument, the fictional version of Waterford in south-east Ireland, where Cunningham grew up. His novel, The Taoiseach, which was based on the life of former Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Charles J. Haughey was a controversial bestseller. Capital Sins, a satirical novel, dealt with the collapse of the Irish economy during the financial crisis that began in 2008. Cunningham’s work has attracted a significant amount of critical attention and praise. The Sea and the Silence (translated into French as La Mer et le silence) was awarded the Prix de l’Europe in 2013. This novel also won the Prix Caillou in France and was short-listed for the Prix des Lecteurs du Telégramme. Consequences of the Heart was short-listed for the Kerry Listowel Writer’s Prize. In 2011 Cunningham won the Cecil Day-Lewis Bursary Award. His fiction is distinguished by its fusing of political material with psychological realism and a lyrical sensitivity to place and people. Peter Cunningham is a member of Aosdána, (the Irish Academy for Arts and Letters). He has judged the Glen Dimplex Literary Awards and the Bantry Festival Writer’s Prize.
He is married to Carol, a Jungian analyst, with whom he has six children. He lives in County Kildare, Ireland.
The Trout
Publishers Weekly.
264.20 (May 15, 2017): p41.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Trout
Peter Cunningham. Arcade, $22.99 (296p)
ISBN 978-1-62872-744-9
Writer Alex Smyth, the narrator of this satisfying novel from Irish author Cunningham (CapitalSins), grew
up in Ireland but has settled in rural Bayport, Ontario. One day he receives a letter postmarked in Toronto
containing only a fishing lure, which stirs up unsettling childhood memories, some of which involve
another boy, Terence Deasy. Alex thinks he "murdered someone" when he was seven, but he can't
remember. As he tells his wife, Kay, "It's like there are big holes in my brain." He also feels uncomfortable
that his first novel falsely eulogizes his elderly and estranged father. Dr. Patrick Smyth. Leaving Kay at
home in Bayport, Alex returns to Ireland to seek answers from his father and to track down the key players
from his childhood. including Terence. Cunningham artfully spins several stories at once: Kay, alone in
Bayport with her doubts about their marriage and fears of a stalker; Alex seeing people and events from
both a child's and an adult's perspective. Brief, cogent paragraphs about trout provide a connecting thread in
this thoughtful, exquisitely told tale. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Trout." Publishers Weekly, 15 May 2017, p. 41. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A492435626/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f8a622a2.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A492435626
1/27/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Cunningham, Peter: CONSEQUENCES OF
THE HEART
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2011):
COPYRIGHT 2011 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Cunningham, Peter CONSEQUENCES OF THE HEART Gemma (Adult Fiction) $16.95 5, 4 ISBN: 978-1-
934848-38-8
In a narrative that spans more than 60 years in the lives of its characters, Irish author Cunningham examines
a Jules-and-Jim-type love affair as well as a mysterious incident from D-Day.
In David Copperfield fashion, Chud Church begins by recounting the circumstances of his conception and
birth. His father was an Italian sailor passing through the Irish port of Monument and his mother a local
beauty who dies at a relatively young age. Chud is raised by his formidable maternal grandmother, Ma
Church, who becomes a successful entrepreneur and property owner. The core of the story revolves around
Chud's relationship to Jack Santry, scion of a prominent family, and Rosa Bensey, the love interest of both
Jack and Chud. Owing to a coin toss before the two friends set out for the D-Day Invasion, Jack winds up
marrying Rosa and Chud is relegated to the status of "good friend." Fate has other things in store, of course,
including a postwar scandal involving Jack's cowardice on that day and a subsequent attempt on the part of
a fellow soldier to blackmail him. Chud finds out about the blackmailer, visits him and, in anger, winds up
killing him-though almost no one knows this at the time. Eventually, Chud and Rosa begin a passionate
affair, a consummation that for many years Chud has devoutly wished for, despite his own marriage and the
birth (and death) of a daughter. As Cunningham traces his story across decades and several generations, we
learn that Jack and Rosa's son Kevin desires to exact revenge on Chud, and he does this through exerting
severe economic pressure.
A lovingly detailed examination of 20th-century Anglo-Irish culture as well as a dissection of personal
relationships.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Cunningham, Peter: CONSEQUENCES OF THE HEART." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2011. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A256559521/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7797f0c6. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A256559521
1/27/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Capital Sins
Publishers Weekly.
257.49 (Dec. 13, 2010): p38.
COPYRIGHT 2010 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Capital Sins
Peter Cunningham. New Island (Dufour, dist.), $25.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-84840-071-9
The Celtic Tiger roars and whimpers in Cunningham's finely honed satire, set in booming 2006 Ireland,
where real estate developer Albert Barr lives the high life and has all his bets on the success of a massively
expensive project called Goose Point. It's backed by HUBBI bank, though its egomaniacal chairman is
squeezing Barr for more collateral and the bank itself is so overextended that its future also rests on the
success of Goose Point. But the project keeps hitting roadblocks from archeologists who claim the site is a
gold mine for Irish history. Barr's home life isn't any rosier as he tries to placate his slightly unhinged wife,
who happens to be the daughter of a government official who can help Barr get the necessary permits. Then
there's Lee Carew, a struggling journalist who literally stumbles upon something that could shut down the
whole project, and the revelation has the potential to destroy a lot more than his career. Cunningham (The
Sea and the Silence) balances his plots nicely, giving readers a fast and witty nutshell of the financial
collapse without resorting to preachiness or sacrificing his wicked sense of humor. (Feb,)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Capital Sins." Publishers Weekly, 13 Dec. 2010, p. 38. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A244648968/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ae7f3bea.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A244648968
1/27/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Tapes of the River Delta
Publishers Weekly.
243.8 (Feb. 19, 1996): p205+.
COPYRIGHT 1996 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Peter Cunningham. St. Martin's. $23.95 (352p) ISBN 0-312-14051-7
Like Robert B. Parker before him (in 1994's All Our Yesterdays), Cunningham slips away from formula
fiction (in his case, thrillers like All Risks Mortality, 1988) to deliver a multigenerational saga. Setting his
tale in both Ireland and America, Cunningham uses crime, politics and family tragedy to explore the Irish
soul. But where the creator of Spenser got mired in blarney, Cunningham manages a marvelously lyrical,
powerfully erotic story. Narrator Theo Shortcourse has committed murder. As he hides from his pursuers in
an Irish river delta, he thinks back on his life and those of his ancestors. For most of his privileged days,
Theo has been haunted by uncertainty about his parentage and by the preference of his mother, Sparrow, for
his lifelong nemesis: his nephew Bain, three years older than he and "better at everything." As a young man,
Theo loses (through his mother's manipulations) the serving girl with whom he is having his first
satisfactory sexual relationship. He then marries Bain's sex-obsessed mistress, Juliet--who later runs away
with another man. In time, Theo rises to a powerful government position, only to be seduced by a married
British woman. Although he is warned that she is using him to spy on Bain, who has become Ireland's
prime minister, Theo refuses to give the woman up--a decision that eventually leads to the crime that sends
him on the lam. With the figurative blood of Irish saints and sinners, Cunningham paints a dark and
compelling canvas that writhes with incest, betrayal, spiritual and political bankruptcy--and the blasted
hopes of 20th-century Ireland. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Tapes of the River Delta." Publishers Weekly, 19 Feb. 1996, p. 205+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18012925/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=72b547e6.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18012925
1/27/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Tapes of the River Delta
Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist.
92.12 (Feb. 15, 1996): p989+.
COPYRIGHT 1996 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Cunningham's novel, spanning almost the entire twentieth century, delineates the story of one family against
the tumultous background of Irish history. Theo Shortcourse begins history when he is in his sixties, having
recently escaped from a mental hospital where he was being held for observation for committing murder.
Theo grows up believing he is the son of Sparrow Love Shortcourse, who comes from a well-off merchant
family, and Pa Shortcourse, a butcher, famous as the hero of the legendary Deilt Ambush. Theo's closest
childhood friend, Bain Cross, is the son of his much older sister Mag. Once grown, Bain enters politics,
eventually becoming prime minister. Theo finds a job in the Monument Customs and Excise Office,
gradually rising to the post of superintendent. Both in their personal and professional lives, Theo's and
Bain's paths keep crossing, for they are bound not only by genealogy but also by convoluted politics. There
are many mysteries, and the suspense is maintained by a narrative that shifts back and forth in time. This is
a skillful production, written in prose that has a trace of Irish lilt.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Quinn, Mary Ellen. "Tapes of the River Delta." Booklist, 15 Feb. 1996, p. 989+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18071217/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bb1f582d.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18071217
1/27/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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The Trout
Internet Bookwatch.
(Oct. 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
The Trout
Peter Cunningham
Arcade Publishing
www.arcadepub.com
c/o Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018
www.skyhorsepublishing.com
9781628727449, $22.99, HC, 296pp, www.amazon.com
Alex Smyth, of Irish birth but living for many years with his wife in rural Canada, receives a trout fly in the
mail, with no message and no return address. It stirs a fear that he is being stalked after the publication of
his most recent book, and it awakens in him deeply buried, inchoate memories from his childhood in
Ireland, before he was old enough to understand the adult world around him. It also evokes the guilt that he
may have murdered a man, a feeling so strong it changes him and threatens his marriage. Alex has no
choice but to return alone to Ireland and his estranged father, to try and begin to solve the mystery. Another
masterfully written novel by award-winning author Peter Cunningham, "The Trout" is an original and multilayered
psychological thriller that will hold the reader's rapt attention from beginning to end. Of special note
is how deftly Cunningham has occasionally inserted fishing lore into this narrative story of predators and
prey. While very strongly recommended, especially for community library Mystery/Suspense collections, it
should be noted for the personal reading lists of suspense thriller fans that "The Trout" is also available in a
digital book format (Kindle, $13.79).
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Trout." Internet Bookwatch, Oct. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514724246/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=886179b0.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A514724246
The Trout by Peter Cunningham
Browser review
Tom Moriarty
Fri, Aug 26, 2016, 17:28
First published:
Fri, Aug 26, 2016, 17:28
Like a trout returning across the ocean to breed in the river of its birth, Alex Smyth returns from Canada to Ireland to try to solve a childhood mystery. The eponymous fish is not merely metaphor; the plot hinges on dark events during fishing trips at night. The trout also inspires some of Cunningham’s finest descriptions: “the man with only the rod in his hand, his prey a thing of silver beauty in the water, the line of communication between man and fish as delicate as gossamer”.
This is a well-crafted crisply written, gripping story, its readability enhanced by the brevity of its sentences and chapters. The initial section, set in Canada’s Ontario province, is outstanding; Alex and his wife Kay’s peaceful existence is threatened by a frightening incursion from the past. Later, in tying up loose ends, some of the carefully built tension is lost but Cunningham excels at interweaving the murky events of 40 years ago with Alex’s present-day search for reconciliation.
Acts of Allegiance by Peter Cunningham: Signs of a great writer
A sharp reminder of what evil can be done in the name of good, and how condescension and arrogance can lead to disaster
Charles Haughey is flanked by photographers at a press conference in Dublin, following his acquittal in the Arms Trial in October 1970
Charles Haughey is flanked by photographers at a press conference in Dublin, following his acquittal in the Arms Trial in October 1970
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Jane Casey
Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 06:00
First published:
Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 06:00
“What man are you at the end of the day, Mr Ransom?”
This is the question that torments Marty Ransom, the hero of Peter Cunningham’s masterful novel Acts of Allegiance. What man is he? An Irishman? A good husband? A loyal civil servant? A spy? None of the above?
Cunningham takes the reader back and forth through Ransom’s life, from the 1950s to the bleakness of the Troubles and beyond. Ransom grows up in idyllic rural Waterford on a country estate named Waterloo. It’s a glamorous lifestyle, but one based entirely on an illusion: Marty’s father, Captain Ransom, is far from the Anglo-Irish gentleman he aspires to be. His surname and the Waterloo property come from his wife’s side. In reality he is Paddy Kane from Fowler Street, Waterford. Marty’s childhood is divided between the freezing but elegant discomforts of Waterloo and the close quarters of the little house on Fowler Street where his grandmother lives with aunts and uncles and Marty’s cousin, Iggy Kane. Marty dreams of being just like Iggy, a born troublemaker. Iggy has a gift for working with his hands, whereas Marty only has an Anglicised accent and a ticket to boarding school in England.
A ward for wounded servicemen in the concert hall of Mill Hill School, London, February 1940. Photograph: Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesWalking Wounded, by Sheila Llewellyn review – a great sense of war-time Manchester
Lidia Yuknavitch: the narrative form could be at odds with her style. Photograph: Andrew Kovalev The Book of Joan, by Lidia Yuknavitch review – an uncanny prescience
Footlights: Tyrone Guthrie in the early 1960s. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch/Corbis via GettyRise Above! Letters from Tyrone Guthrie review: an admirable collection
English writer and editor Robert McCrum ‘believes that in a largely secular age the words of great writers offer consolation and a way to navigate death and dying’. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty ImagesWith the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial book review
Danny Denton’s splashes of reality flood the narrative with reminders of Ireland’s recent economic fall from grace. Photograph: Rachel BradburyA grim dystopian Ireland that is all too believable
Issues of class, of background, of loyalty: Cunningham is superb at evoking the uneasiness of Ransom at all ages in negotiating the social minefield. He is a tentative character, unsure of other people’s motivations and indeed his own. But that very uncertainty is what makes him malleable. After serving in the British army like his father, Ransom is pushed into the Department of External Affairs where he barters successfully with the British to secure economic opportunities for Ireland in the bleak post-war period. But the British have an agenda, and Ransom is useful for their purposes too.
Unknown and unknowable
The fate of the two countries is tied together by a long history. One side barely remembers it while the other cannot forget it, and in the middle stands Ransom, unsure which way to face. By an accident of birth and upbringing he has connections with both the British establishment and those who seek to counter them in Northern Ireland. The complexity and inequality of the Anglo-Irish relationship is laid bare here, but subtly; for one English character “Ireland seemed nothing like a foreign country to her; yet the fact that it was clearly intrigued her”. It is unknown and unknowable, brutal at times, brutalised beyond peace.
Acts of Allegiance follows the events of history closely: here is Bloody Sunday and national outrage, there is Charlie Haughey, lording it at the races in Paris, opening back channels of communication with the IRA as a power play. Cunningham doesn’t get bogged down, sketching in the details of what really happened, keeping the narrative tightly focused. Ransom’s obsessions are the novel’s preoccupation and for the edgy, self-absorbed protagonist, key figures of history pass by without being accorded particular significance beyond how he, Ransom, may appear in their eyes.
The plot slips back and forth from one decade to the next, foreshadowing trouble, shading in details that make sense of what has gone before. The significance of the scattered vignettes emerges gradually and indeed some of them are notable chiefly for the beauty of the language. Cunningham has a lyrical way with description: “the big triangular field was nailed like a pennant to the throat of the mountain” conveys the entire scene and so much more.
At the heart of this book is a son striving to live up to his father: to be as brave and as insouciant and charming as a man whose flaws are tragically visible to everyone else. “You’re like a man who’s been hollowed out,” one character says to Marty. The trouble with following his perspective is that, at times, some emotional affect is lacking. It’s entirely in keeping with the skilful characterisation, but it’s a risk all the same. However, the plot engages where the protagonist might not. This is an intricately structured novel.
It is also a timely novel, as the United Kingdom arrives at another crossroads that might affect Ireland for better or worse, though the book contains far more than an echo of Brexit. It’s a sharp reminder of what evil can be done in the name of good, and how condescension and arrogance can lead to disaster. The sign of a great writer is to take the personal and specific and draw out what is universal about it, and Peter Cunningham achieves this with tremendous skill.
Reviewed: Acts of Allegiance by Peter Cunningham
Updated / Wednesday, 25 Oct 2017 11:29 0
Peter Cunningham
Peter Cunningham
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Publisher Sandstone Press, paperback
The crucial test for any book is whether it keeps you turning the pages to see what happens next, and the latest novel from Peter Cunningham certainly does that.
The premise is original: the central character is an Irish civil servant in Dublin working for M15 during the Troubles. The first thirty or so pages skip backward and forward in time while introducing a host of characters before it settles into its stride as a reasonably well paced thriller.
Marty Ranson is of mixed Irish Catholic/English Protestant heritage, and grew up in a 'Big House' in Co Waterford. Hewas sent to boarding school in Britain and later serves in the British Army in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. On returning to Ireland he is recruited to M15 while working for the Department of External Affairs in Dublin during the 1960s.
He regards himself as Irish, and his real home as being the house where his cousin Iggy lived in Waterford city with his grandmother and assorted uncles and aunts. Iggy moves to Armagh and becomes involved with the IRA in later years. As an agent for the British government, Marty has to choose where his real allegiance lies. The plot is predictable in many ways, but is crafted well enough to keep you reading.
Charlie Haughey and his involvement in the Arms Crisis, as well as other real events like Bloody Sunday are featured. It is a fraught exercise using real events in fiction, especially when it concerns atrocities that still affect living people. One particularly notorious IRA attack is a pivotal moment in the book, but the circumstances are fictionalised and presented as fact. Marty - a senior Irish diplomat, no less - muses that everyone knows no-one will ever be brought to justice, given what he perceives as connivance and incompetence on the part of the security forces in Ireland. This suits the book's themes of deception and betrayal but seems somehow at odds with the fact that the Taoiseach at the time was the late Fine Gael leader Liam Cosgrave. He was elected to get tough on crime and it was, after all, the era of the so-called Garda 'Heavy Gang'.
Credulity is stretched badly on occasion, particularly in the action sequences as described in the book. The author seems to be aware of this, and has the MI5 agents describing one of their own operations as "foolish", "idiotic" and "a farce".
The Irish Catholic characters do not come out well. At times the novel reads like a cross between Angela's Ashes and The Butcher Boy. Marty Ransom's Irish relations are depicted as unpleasant and odd. In contrast, British M15 agents are charming and reasonable and 1960s London is lovingly described in terms of its imperial grandeur. Marty generally accepts that being a British spy is the "honourable thing to do".
It is, after all, a work of fiction and succeeds in maintaining interest but overall I did not find it particularly convincing.
John Kilraine
BOOK REVIEW: ACTS OF ALLEGIANCE – PETER CUNNINGHAM
Posted 3 months ago in Print
Acts of Allegiance
Peter Cunningham
[Sandstone Press]
Acts of Allegiance is a rare find that manages to combine literary lyricism with a satisfyingly propulsive, airtight plot. It is a cracking tale of espionage, state secrets and betrayal, taking us on a devastating tour past the landmark events of the Troubles; through Bloody Sunday and sinister figures like former Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey. Peter Cunningham is a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of arts and letters. His former novel, The Taoiseach, concentrated more heavily on Charles J. Haughey and was a popular and controversial bestseller in 2004. This novel couldn’t be better-timed, as Brexit causes border talks to resurface and the ties between Britain and Ireland are brought into question all over again.
Yet at heart, this is a reflective novel centred around one man’s conflicted self and search for his father. It’s made all the more interesting by the fact that Peter Cunningham’s own father was a spy passing information to the British on possible IRA activity in Omagh in the 1940s, a fact Peter never knew until adulthood. Some of the scenes are inspired by real life events, like meeting Sean Lemass, then-Taoiseach and former IRA republican, with his father, a British Army intelligence officer, at the races.
The story weaves between our protagonist Marty Ransom’s memories of his childhood in Waterford, and his adult life as both a civil servant in the Irish Embassy and a spy for the British. He is a man utterly divided between nations, women, and family loyalties. “I wondered then was there anyone in my life I had not at some point betrayed.”
In his split self he mirrors the state of Ireland as a nation. Even his childhood is split between memories of Waterloo, the land owned by his Anglo-Irish father, and Fowler Street, with his father’s Catholic family. Here he grew up in awe of his cousin Iggy Kane, a rebel who never bowed to authority, and who would later make use of his magic tinkering hands in the IRA on the other side of Cunningham’s world. The narrative moves back and forth in time and geographic location as Marty struggles to piece together his identity and that of his father; to answer his supervisor’s question, “What man are you at the end of the day, Mr. Ransom?” Marty cannot decide what sort of man he is without knowing what sort of man his father was, and the truth of his father, including his death, evades him, shrouded in mystery and shadow. The revelations unfold like dark petals, with each sequential revealing the clues that lie hidden in Marty’s memories.
This book is an intriguing excavation of how the personal and political can tragically collide. “Ireland is a very young democracy, as democracies go, and as we work through our differences, sometimes paths diverge, even in families. . . even the closest childhood friends and blood relations can find themselves on opposite sides, and new alignments take shape, and we come to love differently than we did as children.”
Words – Maryam Madani
ACTS OF ALLEGIANCE BY PETER CUNNINGHAM
Book Cover
Marty Ransom is an Irish diplomat working in Dublin and later in Paris during the 1960s and the troubled 1970s that followed. He is a man whose loyalties are deeply divided. He loves his country, but he has served in the British army and was brought up in a strongly Anglo-Irish tradition. His private life is equally torn. He has a beautiful wife and children he adores, plus a home in Dublin and a family estate in the south east of Ireland. But his long-standing friendship with Alison, who works for the British Home Office and later in their embassy in Dublin, threatens to undermine everything he holds dear. Alison and her husband are frequent weekend guests of Marty and his wife, but it is only the bond between Marty and Alison that holds the four together.
As tensions grow in the north, Marty is approached by the Irish Minister for Finance, Charles Haughey, to act as a channel of communication with a new IRA faction, a faction in which Marty's cousin is a key player. Marty is also asked by Alison to keep her informed of his links with Haughey and of his day-to-day work in the Department of External Affairs. Marty comes to realise that Alison is working for the British intelligence service, but where's the harm in exchanges of information about issue of mutual concern? When unrest in the north develops into bloody violence, people are forced to choose sides. Suddenly Marty finds himself having to make decisions that will have life and death consequences, and his relatively calm and ordered existence is challenged like never before.
"Acts of Allegiance" by Peter Cunningham tells's Marty's story in a gripping way, and in doing so it also illuminates a deeply damaging and damaged period in Ireland's history. The central characters of Marty, his wife Sugar, and Alison are beautifully drawn, and we really feel Marty's anguish as circumstances beyond his control carry him from comfort and certainty to danger and despair, and to a central role in a war he wants no part of. The story is told through a highly fragmented timeline. We are cast forwards and backwards in time by the author, from Marty's childhood in the early 1950s to his life in the 1960s and 1970s, and back again. The geographical settings are initially mainly in Dublin and south east Ireland, and there are later excursions to London, Paris, Armagh and elsewhere. The only constant throughout is the oscillating timeline. The effect of this is to keep the reader actively engaged in rearranging the pieces to make sense of the emerging story, and the result is a book that becomes ever more compelling as the number of available fragments grows and you are drawn towards its devastating conclusion.
Consequences of the Heart
BY PETER CUNNINGHAM
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“Mine is a tale of great love.” So begins the memoir of Charles “Chud” Church, (1922-1999). Set in the fictional town of Monument, Ireland, it is indeed a tale of love, of a complex ménage à trois involving lifelong friends: wild and impetuous Chud, in love since childhood with Rosa, the beautiful, decisive daughter of the town bookmaker, and Jack, mild-tempered heir to the Santry estate. Chud is the third wheel in Jack and Rosa’s relationship. Nonetheless the three are inseparable.
Foul play and certain disgrace curtail the trio’s rendezvous, and each is sent away from Monument. Time passes and the war with Germany becomes a certainty. Jack and Chud find themselves on the same landing beach on June 6, 1944. Here their lives take yet another momentous turn. After the war, they will return to Monument where Jack will marry Rosa – the result of a coin toss with Chud – and the three take up where they left off, stoking smoldering flames of ire and revenge in certain of the townspeople. The crucible explodes in a hilariously ironic penultimate scene – which I won’t spoil. The ending itself is wonderfully tantalizing.
The characters are the best part of this remarkable story. Nothing is missing in complexity and shading. The three-way relationship is a true study in codependency and narcissism. Still the characters are likeable and worth caring about. Consequences of the Heart is much more than a love story; it is a finely woven and lyrical reflection on human nature.
A great book. Two (or more) thumbs up!
The Sea and the Silence
BY PETER CUNNINGHAM
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“What I was caught up in, I dimly understood, was the embodiment of history.”
Ismay Seston’s world is changing. World War II rages in Europe and, even though Ireland remains neutral, there is no neutrality for the Anglo-Irish who exist between two cultures, despised by both. But Ismay has the optimism of youth and beauty, ready to choose love over family, heritage and politics. However, history, like the sea, does not discriminate in its tendency to crush, saturate, and drown. Ismay finds that silence is her only weapon against history, but silence too has a price.
This is a beautifully written novel both in its reflectiveness and its imagery. It has the British languor and angst of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and the Irish passion and dysfunction of John McGahern’s Amongst Women. Cunningham’s sympathetic portrayal of the Anglo-Irish during their decline is skillfully done, not glossing over their poor treatment of the Irish or their desire to be considered English, but showing how they were pawns in a greater drama, much as Ismay becomes in her own family.
Some readers might be thrown off by the structure of the novel. The first half describes Ismay’s troubled marriage to Ronnie and the raising of their only child, a boy named Hector. The second half recounts the events in Ismay’s life that have led to her living in a lighthouse in a rural part of Ireland. While both parts are told in first person, it is the second part which reveals Ismay on an intimate level. I enjoyed this non-linear style of storytelling as it made Ismay’s motives unclear, a mystery that is understood only by reading part two.
Home > Drama > Review: The Sea and the Silence by Peter Cunningham
Review: The Sea and the Silence by Peter Cunningham
July 9, 2013 by P S Karr
The award winning The Sea and the Silence is the story of Ismay’s life and is presented in two parts – her married life and its aftermath, and her prenuptial period. I did not smile, laugh, cry or choke up while reading this book, but felt a kind of aura or anticipation that there was something spectacular about to happen on the next page.
the sea the silence
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The book begins in the 1940s. Ismay is a young bride who is about to see her future home for the first time. She is ecstatic when the car comes over a rise and she sees the sea spread below her. ‘I see the sea!’, says Ismay. You think this must be a private joke, or maybe she is really seeing the sea for the first time. You file it away thinking there must be a reference to it later. Ismay and her husband Ronnie, the scion of the local Anglo Irish landowner family live in a lighthouse. They have a son. Ronnie is not very successful at what he does. Ismay mostly walks about on the cliffs or by the river. She doesn’t work, neither does she ride, fish or hunt. There are times when you wonder how someone can live such an empty existence.
The second part of the book tells us about Ismay’s life before she came to live in the lighthouse. We find that Ismay has grown up on a sprawling estate that is about to be snatched away by the Land Commission. Her father is sickly and her brother is fighting the war. Her family is trying to arrange a marriage of convenience that will solve their financial problems. At a rugby match future husband Ronnie invites her to, she sees a different type of life and is drawn to it. Will her family let Ismay defy them?
The mystery, or rather secret of Ismay’s life is revealed in the end. You realize the author’s prowess as a storyteller because for the most part of the book, the reader is not even given an inkling about what is to come or what lies beneath. There is an air of despondency because you know all along that the person whose life you are reading about has passed away. In the end, you realize that there was only one driving force in Ismay’s life, and she never made any effort to make much of what she had.
The Sea and the Silence is an interesting story against the backdrop of the Irish conflict. The irony of the plot will strike you a while after you turn the last page. This book will make more sense to someone who is familiar with the history of Ireland. For the uninitiated, some background might have helped. Regardless, I would say this is a must read.