TAKE TWO IRISH WRITERS, ONE living in Dublin, the other abroad, both boasting pedigree (Madden's shortlisting for the Orange Prize, Donovan's longshot for the Booker) yet, despite the plaudits, neither having gained the public acknowledgement they
deserve.
It is almost impossible not to be moved by Deirdre Madden's disquieting Molly Fox's Birthday, her seventh novel. Having read Madden with admiration since her debut (Hidden Symptoms – dull grey cover, no hype, no spin; is this why her books have remained submerged?) some 21 years ago, what impresses is how she has grown. There's a surer voice, a less burnished self-consciousness, great intelligence and openness to the world with it's nuanced layers and contradictions; this, and a lyrical sensibility, give her novels an echoing richness.
Molly Fox is a book about friendship, told by an old friend of Molly's, who remains unnamed. Living in Molly's house in Dublin, (they've agreed a summer swap), our narrator (a playwright, successful in London, but with a northern Irish farm background just like Madden's) ponders Molly's essential nature (successful actress, shy, lacking intimacy, loving) and looks at their relationship since student days, when they were each involved in the life of Andrew, a mutual friend from the Belfast backstreets, the aesthete poor-boy, a misfit castaway from the bigotry and slums.
Set on a midsummer's day when little happens – a fan of Molly's arrives, her brother drops by, and Andrew, now a successful arts guru, pops up with champagne to celebrate Molly's birthday – this is a ruminative exercise on relationships.
Our narrator lies in "Molly's wide soft bed … and I wondered what it was to be Molly Fox. Slippery questions such as this greatly occupy both of us…" Such questions are the book's preoccupation: "Yes, who are we really?" the writer muses.
Here the playwright and the actress, acutely aware that they share the business of making up characters, swim before us, revealed in their work. Molly faking it, acting up, being someone else, even when shouting at her mother about the brother's perilous life – as Molly remembers and perceives it. Or, the narrator, seeing the family from which she springs almost like the members of a cast, the dynamics, the need, the special position of Father Tom, the elder brother who forms an exclusive bond with Molly beyond the fold.
Molly telephones late in the day to catch up with what's happened, and that's when it hits you that Madden has cleverly written a play, not a novel at all, the house and garden the perfect set, the handful of callers playing their roles as prompts and ghosts, and the murmuring monologue of the playwright slipping astutely like a hand inside the glove of Madden's tight text, a perfect fit.
With Madden you might hear Brian Friel at work (Molly Sweeney springs to mind), but little else. Gerard Donovan, more evocative (not derivative), summons echoes of John McGahern's arresting phrasing together with Iain Crichton Smith's unsurpassable way with steely pathos.
The 13 stories that make up Country of the Grand pinpoint our lives, from the amniotic darkness in which we swim to take our first gasp to the coffin darkness that finally nails us. He writes about pain – that of losing friends, of infidelity, of loneliness and indifference, pain both suffered and dispensed – with rare lightness.
In "Morning Swimmers", Jim overhears the gentle mockery of his friends discussing his wife and her amours. In "By Irish Nights", the youth of Ireland, modern, prosperous, their knuckles gripping the wheel, steer grimly towards suicide, road-kill, recklessness, becoming tomorrow's ghosts. And in the title story, a man is skittled comically, then tragically, into his childhood, the irretrievable, hooked savagely into a realisation of failure.
Donovan's narratives are gripping, his quirky angle on the world and grasp of dialogue pierce and haunt and softly vibrate long after he's nailed the final sentences of his tales. In one, a man asks: How long until ...? and starts an avalanche that buries him. Read and learn.
• Deirdre Madden is at the Edinburgh book festival today.
The full article contains 706 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
