Irish Emigrant Book Review, No.44 (March 1999)

Fatal Encounter by Nicholas Eckert
- Nicholas Eckert has taken the subject of the Gibraltar Killings and conducted an exhaustive study which shows very few of those involved in a good light. The prevarication and contradiction of the British Government when challenged on the sequence of events, the orchestrated responses of the SAS members involved in the shooting, the extreme violence of IRA members who killed two British soldiers during Kevin Brady’s funeral, and the blackening of the character of the main Gibraltarian witness by the British press, are all part of the complex story of the killing of Mairead Farrell, Daniel McCann and Sean Savage by the SAS in March, 1988.
Perhaps the most complete volte face was that concerning the surveillance of the trio prior to their arrival in the British colony. The day after the shooting the then British Foreign Minister, Sir Geoffrey Howe, addressed the House and thanked the Spanish authorities for their assistance in the surveillance operation. However by September of that year, at the inquest hearing in Gibraltar, police commissioner Canepa gave evidence that the Spanish police had lost sight of all three members of the Active Service Unit once they left the terminal of Malaga airport.
Eckert explores the controversy surrounding the Thames Television programme “Death on the Rock”, the inquest held seven months after the killing, and the domino effect which led to the violence at Milltown cemetery in Belfast at the funerals of Farrell, McCann and Savage when Kevin Brady was one of Michael Stone’s victims. It was at the funeral of Brady that the horrific killing of soldiers Wood and Howes was caught on camera for the world to witness, and the author also focuses on three men caught up unwittingly in the horror who were given lengthy jail sentences for what appears to have been minimal involvement.
Two notable factors of “Fatal Encounter” are the balance achieved by the author in recording the results of his investigations, and the clarity of presentation which is complemented by the diagrams and glossaries included in the narrative. This account of a far-reaching event in the story of the Northern conflict is both informative and disturbing.

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Too Little, Too Late by Colette Caddle
- Set in Dublin, Colette Caddle’s first novel has a diverse range of characters who find themselves dealing with infidelity, drunkenness, suicide and unplanned pregnancy against the backdrop of the hectic world of the restaurateur. Stephanie West is forced to choose between moving to Arizona with Sean Adams or staying in Dublin to buy out the owner of the Chez Nous restaurant which she manages. Her decision is heavily influenced by something that happened years earlier with which she has never come to terms, the death by suicide of her best friend, Ruth, which has left her fearful of any long term commitment.
The book focuses on a number of difficult relationships. Stephanie and Sean themselves, head chef Chris Connolly whose infidelity causes his wife Liz to leave him, and the remembered relationship between Ruth McCann and Des Healy, the father of her child. Through these we are introduced to others who come to play a central part in the development of the story, such as solicitor Edward McDermott and his sister Jennifer, Stephanie’s brother Joe and his wife Annie, Sean’s ex-wife Karen and his son Billy. What appear to be major setbacks in business and in life lead on to success, particularly for the female characters. Both Stephanie and Liz make a success of their ventures into the restaurant business and here the author gives us an interesting and obviously well-researched look at the catering business from the inside.
“Too Little, Too Late” is an enjoyable and undemanding first novel, with perhaps a little too much emphasis on the clothes and make-up adorning the main characters. However any irritation this causes is offset by the convincing way in which Ms Caddle has resolved the conflict between the main characters.

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Lives Less Ordinary by Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan
- The authors, a writer and artist respectively, have talked to 32 people who have purposely distanced themselves from the Celtic Tiger and all it stands for, finding fulfilment by so doing. Some, like water diviner Pat Liddy in County Clare, have never hankered after material gain. He lives still in the house in which he was born and is often paid for his divining skills in clocks. Others, like Pete and Carmel Duffy, made a conscious decision to withdraw from the world of commerce and they and their nine children support themselves on a small piece of land in Co. Meath. Some withdraw to find spiritual peace - one known only as M lives as a solitary in a house attached to a monastery and earns her living through translating for drug companies. Poet and writer John Moriarty left the world of academia to live in the shadow of Mangerton mountain in Kerry. Here he lives a solitary life but is nonetheless dependent on his neighbours, on God, on prayer and on “connectedness to the ground”.
The portraits include a few other well known names, for example Tim Robinson of Folding Landscapes and film-maker Joe Comerford, but largely concentrate on the anonymous people of Ireland. Jimmy Neff in Cork paints statues of the Madonna, artist Lily van Oost, until her recent death, lived alone in the Black Valley in Kerry, and the O’Regan family, Johnny, Mary and Sheila, together farm the land beside the Lee that first belonged to their grandmother. Perhaps the most whimsical pair are twins Noel and Roy Spence, from Co. Down, who both gave up teaching careers and have had such varied occupations as the making of Christmas grottoes and promotional videos, as well as showing films to a select few in a converted hen house in their back garden.
Perhaps the common philosophy reflected in this book can best be summed up by quoting Carmel Duffy: “All the time people say to you, It’s mad what’s going on, the rat race. But everybody’s running so fast they haven’t time to think about it, so they keep doing it. The people who’ve done different....don’t keep running after the person in front of them”.

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Consplawkus by Criostoir O’Flynn
- Criostoir O’Flynn, author of “There is an Isle”, has now published the first part of his literary autobiography. It is an extraordinary catalogue of frustration and alleged victimisation in his dealings with both ecclesiastical and state authority, with most of his troubles apparently emanating from his literary works. A prolific poet and playwright in both English and Irish, Limerickman O’Flynn came up against the conservatism of mid-century Ireland and was eventually forced to seek employment in England to support his growing family. Despite the difficult circumstances of his life, however, he encountered many eminent men and women including Ernest Blythe, IRA man Sean South, who was a boyhood friend, Eamon de Valera and Francis McManus, against whose judgement of his literary works he seems to have held a long resentment. Flynn gives us a glimpse of the claustrophobic and inward-looking country which was Ireland in the 1950s and, unusually for an autobiography, leaves us with a cliff-hanger in the promise of another “belt of the crozier” to be included in Part Two. The unusual title, incidentally, is Criostoir’s grandmother’s interpretation of a commendatory phrase, “gan spleachas” meaning “without dependence”.

The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland by Chrystel Hug
- In an expansion of her doctoral thesis, Chrystel Hug examines the four areas of Divorce, Contraception, Abortion and Homosexuality, focusing in particular on the changes which have come about over the last 20 years. With each topic she draws in the historical background since the foundation of the State, often a legacy from British legislation, and traces the gradual change in public perception and governmental attitudes reached through a series of bills and referenda. A number of personalities are highlighted as having been instrumental in this change, not least former President Mary Robinson, both in her capacity as a lawyer and as Head of State. Ms Hug quotes Ms Robinson’s words on the “X” case, in which a 14-year-old victim of rape was refused leave to travel to Britain for an abortion; while acknowledging that as President she had no role to play in the issue, she did exhort the people of Ireland to “face up to and look squarely and to say this is a problem we have got to resolve”. Ms Robinson was also closely associated with another personality, Senator David Norris, in his campaign to decriminalise homosexual acts between consenting adults and to gain equality-based legislation with regard to both homosexuals and heterosexuals. Ms Hug has charted a clear path through the labyrinth of referenda, opinion polls, ecclesiastical pronouncements and legislation regarding the four categories covered in her work.

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Upon Foreign Soil by John F. Deane
- The third in the Icarus series of poems by John F. Deane has been published by Dedalus. With titles echoing a religious theme, the poet recalls his childhood on Achill, the characters, the childish terror engendered by an illicit visit to the Protestant church, the visit of a Prince of the Church whose
“voluminous cloths and kingly colours set him apart and far above....”
The poet conveys in sparse language the interruption of a fair day by the visit of a politician who
“began to drop insisting words upon their heads....”
The collections begins and ends with a portrait of one who lives outside the mainstream of life. “In his Image” records the passage of a man weakened by drink who “....is, they say, his own crucifixion”, while “In his Own Image” describes a homeless man who
“....curls into a city doorway, his night-home refrigerator packing-cases, his mattress last month’s newspapers.
John F. Deane’s previous two collections in this series are “Far Country” and “For the Living and the Dead”.

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The White Battlefield of Silence by James McCabe
- A second collection from the same publishers, Dubliner James McCabe’s “The White Battlefield of Silence”, has a recurring theme of silence and its relationship with language, and pays homage to both Thomas Kinsella and Augustine Martin. Particularly effective are his series of poems on aspects of the Second World War, with “Oradour-Sur-Glane” striking a particular chord of familiarity with me. McCabe describes the day the 600 inhabitants of the French village were massacred in a single afternoon when “history arrived in trucks” and emphasises the irony of a child’s copybook in which were written over and over again
“Je prends la resolution De ne jamais faire de mal aux autres.”
(”I am resolved nevermore to harm others.)”
The starkness of this, and his “Fear and Misery in the Third Reich” is in marked contrast to his visit to Thomas Kinsella:
“An afternoon of high skies, luminous With cloud, shadow-shouldering mountainsides.....
All silence, forest, eagle ancient air.”

The Jesuits in Dublin by E.E. O’Donnell
- Fr E.E. O’Donnell SJ, perhaps best-known for his discovery of the photographs which comprise the Fr Browne Collection, has published a book describing the various buildings which his order has occupied in Dublin since its arrival at the end of the 16th century. Many of the former Jesuit houses are no longer in existence but Fr O’Donnell, with the aid of a series of maps, pinpoints their location. His book is also amply illustrated with Fr Browne’s own photographs and will be of particular interest to anyone with a knowledge of old Dublin.

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