Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Ulster: A Novel ApproachThe Whore Mother by Shaun HerronReview by: James SimmonsFortnight, No. 71 (Nov. 2, 1973), p. 18Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25544763 .

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18 FRIDAY. 2nd NOVEMBER. 1973

features of insularity or the interesting bias of the Irish Americans. A sagacious Irish publisher could start a series of

translations of foreign studies on Irish

history held as reference works in their

country of origin. This "As Others See

Us" series could help more than one

Irishman?North or South? to get out

of the "One or Two Nations" bog. Mr. Pierre Joannon's History of Ire

land would be a suitable work to start

such a series. Despite its number of

"Wild Geese", France has always cast a

puzzled look on the antics of "LTle

d'Emeraude" but has managed to pro duce from time to time a brilliant histo

rian to unravel the complex situation. From the early settlements to January 1973, Mr. Joannon renders intelligible the whole political history of the island

with an emphasis on the period from the

Union. The size of his study leaves him with enough space to lay down the various reasons for the Irish question

through all ages in a scholarly but

readable way. It is compelling reading for the French who have been subjected to rather unpalatable "instant history"

paperbacks, sporting cursory generaliz ations and dubious analyses. Modern Irish history is very much "terra incog

nita" in France. The author explains this by the geographical position of Ireland. So far none of the spate of

books on the 'troubles' have been trans

lated into French but it is wise that the first explorers should be able historians rather than hasty journalists. With this clear account of an intricate and dra

matic history, the French have no more excuse for ignoring what has happened here.

Ulster: A Novel Approach James Simmons

The Whore Mother, Shaun Herron

(Jonathan Cape, ?2.25).

Despite the unpromising title, this a

tough, well-written book. It seems to have sprung from a curious double am bition to write a popular thriller with just the right ingredients of sex and violence, and at the same time to expose the

cruelty and bad thinking of terrorists. The hero, mcManus, is a middle-class

Antrim Road, Queen's University Cath olic who has joined the Provisional IRA and, as the book begins, is already frightened and disgusted by the ignor ance, cruelty and corruption of his fellow

murderers.

They suspect him and beat him up and he makes a break for freedom. All this is very vividly described, the voices sound right, and it is rather fun to have the sort of action you get in Raymond Chandler or Geoffrey Household hap pening in the familiar streets of Belfast,

car-chasing along the coast road, rape and murder in the Glens of Antrim. It is not intentionally comic like With

O'Leary in the Grave, but genuinely knowledgeable and ethically sound,

something like Chandler or Hammet. I am willing to believe that this is how it

might be.

And yet as far as I know Shaun Herron is even more of an outsider than I am, and the mind is continually niggled on this score. Of course one never is sure, unless one joins in, perhaps not even then. But the intelligent reader somehow knows from his reading (for all good books seem to agree on these things since time began), that wars attract sadists, that corruption and hypocrisy are universal, that good men make ten der love and often doubt themselves.

Hemingway's fictional account of the

Spanish Civil War is not contradicted by Orwell's documentary account.

Without being anything like a great novelist, Shaun Herron has imagination. His Derry gunman abroad in Kerry is believeable at the same time as being a

variation on a stock thriller character, so is the central villain, Power. Herron fills in a fairly comprehensive picture of

Catholic Ulster, from McManus's edu

cation, the biased and hate-forming his

tory lessons, given without much real

thought by the tweedy teacher who is

shocked when McManus wants to actu

ally take to the gun, the basics of Pro

visional and Official IRA policy, the atti tudes of children and women, the impor tance of ballads, the hostility between

Northern and Southern Catholics. It is

definitely more than a journalist's novel, one is always being modestly surprised ..

just when you thought it was formula

writing. One of the surprises is not easy to

fathom. In his fever the hero winds up with the widow of a Liberal novelist who

died of a broken heart because of the

stupidity of his Irish audience, and cen

sorship. She treats him as a child, wears

glasses and looks formidable during the

day, but at night creeps into his bed and initiates him into the delights of love

making. This unusual situation is pre sented with considerable conviction, so

much so that one comes to think Herron has a third ambition, to push a definite

theory of the therapeutic powers of sex; but he never drops his vivid, shallow,

thriller-style of writing, so that no char acter is much developed. You assent to events as they occur, bu they don't stick in the mind.

With unusual conviction; Herron makes horror dominate the ending.

However the mixture is uneasy. A

thriller is the better for a wise-cracking hero, but McManus is very ordinary. Occasional key lines are acutely embar

assing. McManus is allowed to believe he has been betrayed by the widow, Kate, and dies on the line: "Piteous Jesus Kate no no no not you Kate".

Which isn't even clear. We are only told that McManus is a

boxer a paragraph before he makes a

spectacular attack on his captors. Her ron is serious enough to make one want to take his picture of the IRA seriously, at the same time one is very much aware

that the style and some of the content is dictated by something like mercenary motives. One doesn't want to get too solemn about our rather common-place

"Troubles", but it is a little distasteful, and would be so, I think even to an

Englishman or an American, just as we

get uneasy about bandwagon novels on

colour prejudice. As the man said when he fell on his

father's grave: "I'd rather it hadn't 'a

happened."

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