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After the Lockout, by Darran McCann

Most debut authors could only dream of having a cover quote on their first novel from Hilary Mantel, and here’s what she has to say about After the Lockout: “A wonderful novel…deeply intelligent and self-aware…entertaining…” I’d have to agree with her, it’s all of those things.

The early chapters are set in the Montgomery Street brothel district of Dublin in 1917, in a city that is wracked with social and political strife.
The “Lockout” of 1913 looms large in the past, when the commercial and manufacturing heart was torn out of the city’s working class by the ruthless crushing of a mass campaign of strike action against starvation wages and job insecurity. For a detailed fictional account of the Lockout, you can’t get better than James Plunkett’s “Strumpet City”, but McCann explains enough of the bare bones of the history to allow a reader to grasp the severity and the cruelty of the crushing of Dublin’s nascent Labour movement.

The remainder of the narrative then moves to the village of Madden in Armagh, whence the protagonist, Victor Lennon, has fled, 10 years previously, after the suicide of his mother, and the refusal of the local Catholic hierarchy to grant her a Christian burial. Victor is a socialist, a Marxist, a veteran of the Lockout and much more importantly as far as the almost exclusively Catholic population of Madden is concerned, a veteran of the Easter Rising of 12 months earlier and a hero of Irish Republicanism.
Is Victor going to find out that his idea of a socialist, secular republic doesn’t suit the notions of the orthodox Catholic population of Madden?

The male characters in this novel are well drawn and well realised. I particularly enjoyed the character of Bishop Stanislaus Benedict, who I was feared was going to be yet another in a long line of Irish Catholic Priests I have read recently, upon whose malevolent shoulders rests every ill in Ireland since the marriage of Aoife and Strongbow. Instead, he reveals himself as a very complex, well developed character, with his own history of suffering, and a large dollop of compassion, although administered severely, and tempered with the morals and mores of his time. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church is the villain in this novel, but the character of the Churchman himself is nuanced and sensitive.

There are really only three female characters, unless we count the deceased mother of Lennon, and I think it’s understandable, given the nature and the topic of the novel that there are more men than women. I like the put-upon housekeeper in the Parochial House, she’s bursting with authenticity. The contrast between the two other females is rather too black-and-white.

I learned a lot from this book, in a very enjoyable way. There is a plethora of fiction relating to the 1916 rising, and to the Civil War, but this is the first novel I have read dealing specifically with the period of ratcheting tension prior to the War of Independence. Although Victor sometimes speaks a lot of exposition, and occasionally speaks like a political pamphlet, I can’t think of any other way that so much political history and background could have been included in a work of fiction, and I know I benefitted from having certain elements of the backstory explicitly explained, even if it made the dialogue occasionally clunky.

Highly recommended.

This is a fantastic debut novel from Darran McCann. He has taken as his subject one Victor Lennon, he is one of twelve children born to a rich landowner in the small village of Madden, near Armagh. He and his siblings have all left home seemingly as a reaction to their mother's suicide. They have flown to the four corners but he has only gone to Dublin.

To commit suicide is a mortal sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church and as such his Mother was denied a burial in consecrated ground. This meant she was to be put in the `poor ground', owned by no-one. Victors Father, Pius Madden has taken to brewing and drinking gut rot poteen and is slowly rotting in his farm house, grieving for his loss but still committed to the Church despite his treatment.

Victor is the man of the moment having survived the siege of the GPO during the Easter Uprising and after imprisonment being let out to return to his revolutionary ways in Dublin. He is a committed Communist and believes that it is not enough to gain independence from the British Empire, because you just replace one ruling class with another. Hence he believes political change has to go hand in hand with social change and despises Sinn Fein for their more conservative `take over' bid. He is also a veteran of the `lockout', which was an attempt to get the employers of Dublin to recognise Trades Unions; the Church played more than a passing role in its failure.

The village of Madden is going through an economic slump and the Lennon family have traditionally provided work for many of the locals. So Victor is contacted by an old friend Charlie, who asks him to return home to save the farm. Charlie was one of the many Irish men who volunteered to fight for King and Empire during the Great War. He has left his leg in France for his trouble and returns home to a changed land where, he once would have been considered a hero and is now viewed as a semi traitor. They make strange bedfellows, but Victor returns home to a true heroes welcome. What he encounters is a village in denial about the realities of a revolution, and still very much in the grip of the Church. Whilst Victor sees it all as superstition, he can not deny the strength of the over looked and aged Bishop Stanislaus Benedict. He also seems to be overly attractive to Ida Harte, who has been known to put it about a bit - even for payment! There is also his life's love who has waited for him, a football match which he gets coerced into and a lot of poteen being drunk at all hours of the day. His beliefs are more than at odd with the Church and it does not take long for the sides to be drawn; the whole village will be affected by what comes to pass.

McCann has a style that flows beautifully; there are no real chapters, just five distinct parts to the story. He reveals the past slowly where it is needed to add more emphasis to what is currently taking place. All of the characters come across as believable and even when you feel you are on Victor's side, his enemies reveal humanity and good grace that starts you doubting. It is one of those books that I wanted to know more. There is potential for a follow up and I will look forward to his next one. If you are a fan of Sebastian Barry, there will be much here that you will enjoy - highly recommended

This very fine novel is so well written and accomplished that it's hard to believe that it is the author's first.

Victor Lennon, hero of the failed Easter Uprising of 1916, returns to his home town in Armagh to look after his drunken father at the behest of Stanislaus, the local priest. Through the microcosm of this small town, we are shown the various tensions existing in Irish society at this period - the iron rule of the Catholic church, those who desire independence from the English, those who are fighting for those same English in WW1, those who, like Victor, are inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia to bring about a socialist republic.

But although there is much about religion and politics in this book, the author manages to keep it on a very human level. We see the growing strength of Victor's relationship with his father, the tension between his love for Maggie and his dedication to his cause. We come to understand his antipathy to the Church in general and to Stanislaus in particular. On the other hand, we are also shown Stanislaus' genuine concern for the moral welfare of his flock, his fears of what revolution may mean for the Church and his courage in standing up for his beliefs.

The author does not openly favour one side over the other - what we see are two fundamentally good but fallible men driven by circumstances to battle for the hearts and souls of the people. The use of language is excellent, in some parts almost poetic. There are a few occasions when the author falls into an anachronism, but not often or badly enough to spoil the flow of the story. I found the book uplifting in parts and deeply moving in others. A first-rate debut novel which I hope will be followed by many more. Highly recommended.