MARTIN HAWKINS is a young man clearly burdened by a story to tell; and he does so with an abrupt, chillingly clinical candour which is maintained until the last page. "I used to be quite a normal fellow," he says.
"I never was a chap who needed much explaining. And yet the most crucial acts of my life defy any reasonable explanation - defy it, yet cry out for it. After all, you cannot ruin other people's lives without attempting to explain why and how you did."
The obsessive narrator of Anne Haverty's original, strangely moving first novel One Day As A Tiger (Chatto, £9.99 in UK) is neither sympathetic, nor particularly interested in our sympathy or understanding. As he reconstructs the past through a series of vivid flashbacks, he seems exclusively concerned with setting the record straight, if largely for himself. Written in a matter of fact, deliberately functional, nonliterary prose shifting between stilted formality and conversational colloquialisms, the narrative voice possesses the clarity of an uninterested witness supplying evidence.
Once an aspiring academic, he suddenly decides he has had enough of life at Trinity College and wants - perhaps even needs - to return to Foilmore, the comfortable family farm. Home is not quite what it used to be, though, as both of his parents have died suddenly in an accident. Their death's are central to his going "downhill". Added to this grief is the irritating local interest excited by his former girlfriend's forthcoming marriage.
The farm is now in the care of Pierce, Martin's kindly big brother, and Etti, his wife. Initially Martin is busily trying to convince himself that he no longers seeks academic glory and now prefers the countryside. A confessional aside which claims, "I do not regard my own self with any more importance than I regard others. Except for those who are dead. The dead have earned their self importance" prepares us rather predictably for Martin's determined solitariness. Almost as quickly he makes obvious his interest in Etti, his sister in law.
Life on the family farm is routine enough, with Pierce working and Etti drifting prettily about. Martin is generous - perhaps too generous - with information and, by page 17, has announced that Pierce "had picked the wrong brother, however, and the wrong girl for a wife". Leaving little to chance or the reader's imagination, he continues: "That was Pierce's flaw. In my case, at least, he had no choice. He was landed with me as a burden on his birthright. But he did pick out Etti, out of all the girls he could have picked. Maybe she represented the hidden wrongheadedness in him, an obscure tendency to self destruction."
Martin sounds cold, but he is also emotionally traumatised - and so it is not so surprising that, when accompanying Pierce on a trip to purchase genetically engineered sheep, Martin should become fascinated with a sickly little lamb which appears doomed and freak like among its healthier fellows.
Against Pierce's advice, Martin buys the deformed creature as a pet, subjecting himself to the sneering comments of farmers incapable of tolerating what appears to be a townie's whim perpetrated by a farmer's son - who also happens to be the brother of a serious farmer and really should know better. "Marry has a little lamb" tenses one young farmer.
Of this same character, Martin notes with a clear eyed intelligence seldom directed at his own doings: "Young Delaney's destiny fits him. Rooted in tradition, though a dying one. And like all dying traditions, fast attaining the status of rural history ... in his declining years ... he might be able to rent himself out as an exhibit in a rural museum."
Among the strengths of this novel is Haverty's evocation of country life. Whereas many Irish writers appear to content themselves with a simplistic grim countryside versus marginally better city dichotomy, she has a clear understanding of the specific social distinctions existing between particular types of Irish country life.
Caring for Missy the weakling lamb seems to awaken Martin's previously muted compassion. "She was the first living thing I loved, the first for whom my love was artless and compassionate and without egotism." It is very touching, and Haverty manages to convey a sense of tragedy in a narrative which is resolutely unsentimental. The lamb becomes Martin's child; he tells her stories and tempts her poor appetite with chocolate. Missy's dependence and affection are heart rending, and it even becomes possible to like Martin as he recounts: "I would lift her on to my lap and gaze into her eyes, those light, disconcerting, seeing eyes. With depths of sorrow and bewilderment in them that cut me to the bone." The sheep, however, acts as a lure and soon draws Etti and Martin closer.
AS this relationship develops, Martin loses interest in Missy. She begins to wear "a wounded and watchful look in her eye" as her "private suffering" increases, and her trust in Martin turns into resentment. Her saviour has become a captor, just as she becomes a sacrifical lamb, and ultimately merely a narrative device.
Throughout the book Haverty ensures that her narrator's tone rarely falters. The short lived affection for the sheep is juxtaposed with his unconvincing human relationships, his crazed romance in particular. Martin is furtive and edgy, his self absorption so immense that it is easy to accept why he never raises the subject of genetic engineering, aside from once speculating about Missy's origins: "What crazy parentage did she have, I would ask myself ... Knowing nothing of the means by which they procure the genetic material for their meddlesome experiments on animals like Missy, I imagined various melodramatic scenarios." He invents a mythic father for the child like lamb.
Admittedly the only creature who engages our sympathies is the sheep. Haverty is better on dialogue than she is on characterisation, yet many of the loose ends in her story are explained by the narrator's unstable personality. Racing to a dramatic conclusion, this offbeat picaresque leaves the reader slightly dissatisfied by events but sufficiently convinced by the narrative voice.
