Paddock’s Pick: Faithful Place

Editor’s note:  Anita Paddock’s review of books we should read are scheduled to appear on the second Friday of each month. Enjoy.

review by Anita Paddock
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This is an Irish detective novel that takes place in Dublin. I read about it on NPR’s website where it received high acclaim. I was not familiar with the author, but since I’m an NPR groupie, I wanted to read it.

And I’m glad I did. I learned a lot about Dublin and its history and its woes. It’s a place I’d now like to visit.

The author is talented indeed. At first I found it difficult to get the rhythm of the Irish dialect and slang, but by and by, I could hear, and understand, the dialogue in my head. And that was fun, especially trying to figure out which parts of the anatomy the men were referring to when they were telling jokes or the women were gossiping. Many unkind words were said to each other, and about others, whether at the breakfast table or at the local pub. The houses were so close together that everyone knew everyone’s business; it was almost impossible to keep family secrets.

Frank Mackey works Undercover in the Guards (that means the Irish police force). He’s a detective with a reputation for being smart and tough. He drinks too much, is divorced from a pretty woman, and has a daughter he’s crazy about. Pretty much a stereotypical detective.

Frank  left his low-class neighborhood called Faithful Place and his big-time dysfunctional family when he was just 19. He had plans on leaving with his girlfriend, Rosie, but she jilted him, or so he believes, and went on to England without him. He stayed in Dublin and made a career for himself, unlike his alcoholic father (Da) who was on the dole or worked part-time jobs and regularly beat up his shrieking mother (Ma) and the sons and daughters in the family.

The novel travels easily back and forth from the mid 1980’s until 22 years later, when Rosie’s suitcase is discovered in an abandoned flat. Frank has never gotten over his first love, and after he is notified of the discovery, he returns to the neighborhood, convinced that she is dead somewhere in the abandoned building, which she is. Taken off the case by his superiors, Frank revisits his old haunts and talks to their old friends, searching for a clue as to who killed Rosie and why.

This takes him back to his family and the neighborhood. It is with the author’s description of Dublin in the 80’s and Dublin now that I learned so much. I found it fascinating that Dublin teenagers in the 80’s sang the same songs and watched the same shows on the telly (television) as mine did at that age.

There is one line in the book that I underlined. (You can do that with your own books, you know. It’s like having a conversation with yourself.) That line is this: “Nobody in the world can make you crazy like your family can.” If you’re totally honest with yourself, you’ll agree.

Frank found out the hard way that your family can make you crazy.

•••

Like always, I like to find someone to interview who has some connection (sometimes I have to really stretch it) with the book I’m reviewing.

Since I’ve been corresponding lately with Dr. Taylor Prewitt, a retired cardiologist,  about a book he’s writing, and I knew that he and his family had visited Dublin in the mid 70’s, I asked him a few questions.

And what a treasure he gave me about Dublin! He kept a journal in which he describes his family’s week long trip through Ireland. I’ll pick out a few of the entries:
• We walked the narrow and crowded streets of Wexford at closing time — citizens were very poorly dressed, and the shops and row houses quite plain plastered,  although many were painted different colors. The gutters were filled  along both sides of the street with waste paper and broken bottles. Two elderly women in a news agent’s shop were discussing the merits of one of the current poets.

• We enjoyed visiting with a Dublin family — Mr. Schuster from Czechoslovakia and his wife Peggy from Ireland. We asked about the Irish language. Peggy grew up with it and her sons are apparently learning it in the German school they attend. Despite the place of honor on road signs, the old Irish tongue seems to be an ornament rather than a function of daily life. We heard the dock men speaking what must have been Welsh, but we haven’t heard any Celtic yet.

By chance, Taylor is re-reading an Irish novel, “The Kellys and the O’Kellys” by Anthony Trollope. He and his wife recently enjoyed listening to an audio book, “Run” by Ann Patchett, which they checked out from the Fort Smith Public Library.

Taylor says he began reading because it was a great way to pass the time. There wasn’t much else doing in the southeast Arkansas town where he grew up. He liked all the Hardy Boys novels and sports books like “Strikeout Story” by Bob Feller.

“Reading was also my way to learn things,” Taylor recalls. “It was a way for me to learn things that everybody else seemed to already know. Like the names of the planets and football scores.”

See what you can learn in a book?