First
off let me just say emphatically that I loved this book. For a start it is
quite short (234 pages) which is always a relief after slogging through book
after book of 350/400 pages plus. I also hugely liked Paul McVeigh’s writing style,
easy to read, at times in your face, but never contrived. His characters seemed
so natural they just flowed onto and over the pages. It was almost as if I had
travelled back to Belfast in the 1980s and was a fly on the wall watching
events and relationships unfold.
This
is McVeigh’s debut novel and it won the Polari First Book Prize 2016. It was a
finalist for The People’s Book Prize 2016 and was shortlisted for both the
Guardian’s Not the Booker prize and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award
2016…a pretty impressive CV for a debut novel.
The
book centres around Mickey Donnelly who was ‘…born
the day the Troubles started…’ and his dysfunctional family, but I would
question whether they really are truly dysfunctional or a product of 1980s Belfast
and the Troubles. He loves his Ma unconditionally always trying to be the ‘good
son’ of the title, to win her acknowledgement and love. As much as he
loves Ma he hates his alcoholic Da and what he does to the family in equal
measure. Through one hot summer Mickey is on a voyage of self-discovery from
panic and fear at the impending end of the summer holidays when he will be off
to secondary school (not St Malachy’s where all the good, bright children go,
but to St Gabriel’s where he’ll get his head kicked in), through to discovering
the effects of first kisses and where his proclivities lie. He feels a ‘...funny
feeling down there...’ when he kisses Martine, but similarly feels the same funny
feeling when he is mesmerised by the hairiness of Pierre’s legs on a field trip
to Cave Hill.
To
make life more bearable Mickey Donnelly lives in a part fantasy world. His best
friend is his little sister Wee Maggie, seconded by his puppy Killer. His archenemies
are his older brother Paddy and a bully from down the street, Briege McAnally. The
McAnallys and the Donnellys are rival families on the street and the scene
where Mickey’s Ma finds out that Mrs McAnally has got an IRA heavy to frighten Mickey had me cheering Ma on. Mickey is on a quest to better himself and
take him and the family to America for a better life, except for Paddy and
especially his Da, he wants to leave them behind.
The
book is at times laugh out loud funny and at others heart rendingly sad, sometimes
it strikes a note of fear, but at all times it is real. It doesn’t steer away
from the fears engendered by sectarianism, the IRA, bombings, house raids, shootings,
police street patrols and the division and rivalry between the Catholics and
the Protestants, but many of these are given Mickey Donnelly’s own twist of
interpretation. I finished it a few weeks ago and Mickey Donnelly with his
antics and sayings are still popping up in my head, a rare thing when I have
moved on to the next book.
The Good Son by Paul McVeigh. Published
by Salt Publishing 2015.
