Trespasses (2022)
By Louise Kennedy
Riverhead, 293 pages.
★★★
It has been said that Ireland is the only Western European nation that never experienced the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the Reformation. That's a mild exaggeration and heaven knows my Scottish ancestors have their share of lowlights, but there's indeed a heavy air of tragedy hanging over Irish history. This shows up so often in literature that I've dubbed it the Angela’s Ashes* Syndrome. Every now and then Emily will finish a depressing Irish novel, hurl it across the room, and proclaim, “Thank God I'm not Irish!” All of which is to say that Trespasses by Louise Kennedy is that kind of novel.
It is set during The Troubles of the early 1980s, a time in which sectarian strife in Northern Ireland burned with white-hot passion and senseless violence. Comely twenty-four-year-old year old Belfast resident Cushla Lavery is a primary school teacher whose students routinely witness bloodshed and lose family members. Imagine being a second-grader in a place where you understand homicide better than your ABC’s. Cushla carries the added burden of trying to be a Good Samaritan to seven-year old Davy McGeown and his impoverished family.
Cushla is a bit luckier than many in that she lives in a neighborhood in which there is fragile tolerance between Catholics and Protestants. There's no love lost, but as long as everyone respects what is perceived to be the natural order of things, the groups just disparage each other in private and drink in the same pubs, like the one owned by Cushla’s older brother Eamonn and frequented by Michael Agnew. He’s a Protestant–a Prod in the local parlance–but he’s also a civil rights a lawyer who champions the view that the British government has wronged Northern Ireland’s Catholics. The Laverys’ widowed mother Gina helps out at the pub, but she's an alky, which is hard on inventory. To help keep finances in line, Cushla often doubles as a barmaid. That’s where Michael and Cushla meet. Michael and several other Prods even ask Cushla to help them learn Irish Gaelic.
Of course, the bigger trouble behind The Troubles is that organized groups such as the Ulster Defence Association (Protestant) and the Irish Republican Army (Catholic) are not on board with a philosophy of live and let live. If you think either group is above recruiting youngsters or the not-so-bright to their respective causes, remind yourself that fanaticism doesn’t work that way. Prods and Catholics alike have ears to the ground to dole out retribution for those who violate their norms. This is so pronounced that the Irish National Liberation Army doesn't even trust the regular IRA to be fanatical enough in its anti-Protestantism hatred.
You can imagine that Cushla’s growing attraction to Michael isn't the wisest thing for her career, her family, or their respective safety. Yet Cushla pursues her infatuation even though Michael is married, has children, and is nearly two decades older than she. As such matters often go, each is foolish enough to think they can keep their relationship secret. One way Cushla tries to cover her tracks is to allow others to think she's dating Gerry Devlin, a work colleague, but it's not a very good cover.
Trespasses is a romance, but with elements of potential tragedy. At over 670,000 residents Belfast is a medium-sized city, but during The Troubles it functioned more like a patchwork of neighborhoods than a single municipality. In a place where no one entirely trusts anyone else, the accidental and incidental can be deadly. There are always those too blind to see their own hate, including Father Slattery, a 60s-something vestment-wearing bully and misanthrope. But at least he’s visible; it’s the ones in the shadows who are more venomous.
Kennedy does a fine job of taking us inside Belfast before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement established the framework for a peace that has (mostly) held. How did Cushla and Michael fare before that happened? That would be a spoiler. I will say, though, that Trespasses is Kennedy’s debut novel and that, though she spins a good tale, she too often telegraphs where the novel is headed. Her health woes and the fact that she channeled childhood memories imbue the novel with urgency, but more ambiguity would have made it an even stronger work.
Rob Weir
* The reference is to Frank McCourt’s 1996 novel, which is unrelentingly bleak.
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