First FictionBrian Kennedy can write. He can also sing, of course, with a sweet clarity that soothes as it entertains. While the writing in his first novel, The Arrival of Fergal Flynn, is neither as polished nor as pitch-perfect as his singing, he will undoubtedly get there. There will be other novels.
It's only fair to first declare the background which makes it impossible to read Fergal Flynn without the singer/author's famous, and shamelessly romantic, face floating between you and the page. Impossible because the story - the coming of age of a sexually confused teenager with a beautiful voice in a troubled Belfast - could be Brian Kennedy's own.
He has said himself that his novel is faction - which is to say half fact, half fiction. He has spoken of how he didn't fit in at school, of the awesome and wonderful implications of discovering he could sing, of his homosexuality. Fergal Flynn shares all of these experiences and more - and it's the more which makes the book. The story's life and heart's core are in the minutiae which give harrowing life to poverty and invoke the recurring beat of everyday fears in a war-torn city, the miserable, mean brutality of a bad marriage, the machismo which cripples men and women both.
If Fergal Flynn, living with a trio of sports-loving brothers, a brute for a father, a valium-addled mother and wasting, alcoholic grandmother, didn't have much of a start in life then neither did his misfortunate parents. In a fine description of their hapless, hopeless wedding celebrations, Patrick Flynn's hired wedding suit is destroyed "by squirt after panicked squirt of slimy white pigeon shit" so that he drinks until he can't stand up. His mother's deflowering, ". . . in the damp heat of neglected grass that would one day become a housing estate . . ." is over ". . . in a miracle of seconds". But Fergal has a voice that will be his way out. Both his sexuality and singing talent find release in his friendship with Father Dermot MacManus; young, handsome, sun bronzed and newly arrived in the parish from service in Africa.
There's a fair amount of intense, teenage wanking and angst before Fergal and Father Mac come together in the sand dunes - and a fair amount too of their growing love and sexual couplings afterwards.
Fergal Flynn's story lacks tension and has no surprises. The strength of this book is in the detail. It's in the way Fergal's mother comes to life as she claws at the constantly weeping sores on her back; in the description of his grandmother Noreen as "a filthy, plucked turkey, totally naked", reverting back to childhood; in the dialogue, which is very good; and in the humour which lightens black hours.
It would be unfair to tell the end, even if its hopeful outcome is never really in doubt.
It will be interesting to see what Brian Kennedy writes in the future, what he makes of subject matter not quite so close to the bone and heart of his own experiences. The golden rule which says you should write about the things you know about is only a rule after all.
Rose Doyle's novel, Shadows Will Fall, will be published in November by Hodder and Stoughton. A book of her long-running series in this paper, Trade Names (which looks at Dublin's old, venerable businesses), will be published by New Island Books next month
The Arrival of Fergal Flynn By Brian Kennedy Hodder Headline, 303pp. £10.99