REDEMPTION is a difficult business. We all crave it but some of us need to go to great lengths to find the hero inside ourselves.
Take Paul Kelly, the hero of Eamonn Sweeney's first novel. He is the live-in manager of a grotty Brixton pub, although the management of anything with alcohol in it is scarcely his strong point. He's on the tear following his wife's recent death when word comes from Ireland that Johnny, his brother, has been murdered. Paul takes the train from Euston and, sustained by pints and double chasers, heads for the country he left in a hurry eight years ago.
You think Brixton is rough? Wait till you see Rathbawn, a town somewhere in the Irish midlands. It's a swamp of alcoholism, murder and human degradation. Men get up at dawn to beg the slops from lipstick-encrusted pint glasses in the local boozers; emaciated greyhounds creep slyly by; Paul's mam lives in a housing estate of discarded cars, disemboweled fridges and a level of random brutality which may explain why so many midland towns are now by-passed. This is where Paul "escaped" from and to which he has now returned to find out who murdered Johnny.
Paul teams up with Bumpers Kelly, a violent psychotic with a heart of gold. Bumper's brother has also been murdered and the two lads set out down the road of no return. On this journey the most serious questions will be asked about Paul's inherent worth and he will thus come through this ordeal and return a better man to London. Or not.
This is a novel of dirty realism in which the squalid, the doomed: and the hilarious all bump together in the jakes. In the bar, dialogue-driven method made famous and profitable by Roddy Doyle, the sordid lives of characters are rescued by their wit and their ability to love. The internalising, often more a sewer than a stream of consciousness, at times becomes garrulousness:
"Me and Lydia walked through Soho one night. We walked through it plenty of nights, what am I on about? But perhaps this was our first night out together. We had a meal in Leicester Square. Planet Spaghetti or something like that. I ordered lasagne because already I knew this was special enough for me not to make a fool of myself eating pasta in front of her", etc.
One can tire of such characters.
Sweeney has a keenly funny eye. At his brother's funeral service, Paul's bloodshot eyes fasten on the inscription above the altar: "I always wondered what Imprimi Potest and Nihil Obstat were. They sounded like Czechoslovakian teams who got knocked out in the second round of the European Cup Winners Cup."
Accurate, too. Here Bumper is using his feet to put manners into an old man: "Bumper dug hard into him with his boots like he was opening a roll of carpet." And there is a lyricism that marks Sweeney out when he writes:".
old Greek and Cypriot men who kept their coats on and sat at tables pulled up tight to the counter. They read Greek newspapers and slowly ate olives off side plates."
Written with an astute ear for language, a keen eye for detail and with genuine originality, this is an exciting story of brave hearts and dark deeds in a world of pain leavened only by wit and love.