The current crop of younger Irish writers is stellar. Audrey Magee, still in her forties, drew readers worldwide with her fable-like story of insular violence in The Colony; Claire Keegan’s novellas and short stories are beloved by millions. Both of these writers have stayed in Ireland. Belgium-based Colin Walsh writes about the motherland from a distance, like his compatriots Colum McCann (New York) and Emma Donoghue (Canada). In his debut novel, Kala, Walsh calls this going to the Other Place.
Clarity is often achieved on writers’ homelands when they leave. Walsh’s take on contemporary Ireland is incisive. He sets his novel in the town of Kinlough in the northwest and introduces friends and family who are reuniting after some 20 years. Close friend Kala was a teenager brutally murdered in 2003, the case unsolved, and coincidentally her remains have just been discovered at a development site. Helen, who like the author lives in the US, remarks, “F...ing holiday homes, all over the lakeside. There is nothing this country won’t sell off for a few quid.” This sentiment is familiar to New Zealanders, as are other bon mots from Helen, particularly her remarks on how the Irish lay on the Irishness for the tourists and their own sense of national identity. This is “reactionary kitsch” – “There’s a reason romantics always end up as fascists. Appeals to authenticity are always rooted in essentialist thinking.”
The novel’s structure is clever, chapters in shifting first-person perspectives and moving back and forth from the time of the murder to the present. Voices of the large cast are distinct and idiosyncratic. Handsome Joe Brennan, son of the local cop, has an international career as a musician and is an appealing egotist. His chapters are written in the second person, which simply and richly portrays the schizoid sense of self that can come with fame. With his keen ear he notes: “It’s mad how Irish kids’ accents have slipped in the past few years. You feel old noticing how American they sound.” His generation still used Irish words like beor, for a beautiful girl, and were mad for shifting, which is French kissing. They played Sims, rode freely around on their bikes, smoked like chimneys and managed to get hold of gallons of booze.
Home in Kinlough, watching the young wans, he observes: “Back in the day things were tribal – clear lines. Your haircut and clothes said what music you liked, how smart you were, whether or not you were real, if you were reaching for the Other Place or stuck in the gutter. Internet’s taken all of that, mangled the codes … Kurt Cobain shot himself for being a sell-out and these kids wouldn’t even grasp the concept.”
Although the tense narration spins around solving the mystery surrounding ill-fated Kala, it’s Mush who is the beating heart of the story. He has stayed in Kinlough, running a cafe with his mother, and is closely related to the thuggish and scary Lyons. Kala’s murder has had fallout during the two decades, most miserably the suicide of one of their gang, and the appalling damage done to Mush himself.
Kala is a thriller, but so much more than that. Walsh’s demonstrated understanding of character and insight into small-town life, the influence of the internet and consequent changing mores of friendship and love, herald an extraordinary talent.
Kala, by Colin Walsh (Atlantic, $36.99)
