From a Low and Quiet Sea
The Spinning Heart, Donal Ryan’s first novel, was previously reviewed in this column. The reviewer noted its unique jigsaw-puzzle quality: the many side-by-side narrators all recounting the actions and perspectives of various loosely connected characters. This made for a perpetually off-balance and high-tension reading experience as one wondered how the actions, events, and motives would all converge. Ryan’s latest novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, reprises this method, but focuses on three main characters who are even, it seems, more randomly connected.
We are first introduced to Farouk, a doctor who lives a fraught existence in Isis-occupied Syria, where he, his wife, and daughter attempt to stay off the radar of sociopathic ISIS administrators. Finally, the stonings, the crucifixions, and encroaching personal threats become too much, and the family take a chance on escape via the Mediterranean Sea, destination Europe. Ryan very deftly humanises these events, highlighting Farouk’s humanity, his devotion to and concern for his family in the face of random, mindless cruelty. As the escape founders we empathize with his fears, his desperation, and his madness.
On the other hand, Lampy is a local Limerick boy, and a bastard only in the literal sense. Around 20 years of age, he lives with his Mam and Mam’s father, Pop (Dixie to his mates). This unusual family configuration is the result of a “fling” that Mam had in her youth—but hold on, that’s a lie, something told to fend off questions. Mam equivocates and Pop prevaricates. Lampy’s father is “somewhere in England”. Enough said! It is here that the reader experiences Ryan’s typically layered atmosphere. What is left undone and unsaid speaks loud. Lampy, unlucky at love and somewhat gormless, works at an auld Folks’ residence and helps supervise the dayroom and drive the adapted transport bus. On one particular wintry morning he almost crashes the bus on an icy road, and, due to an instrument malfunction, must switch buses before he can complete his day’s tasks (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLEASE!). His grandfather, Pop/dixie, is a natural comedian, a pub wag, and shows his devotion to his family in typical Irish fashion—though equal measures of torment and generosity. Mam works as a secretary-receptionist in a local hospital, is still fit, and not above being asked out for the occasional date.
While Farouk and Lampy are fairly likeable and vulnerable, third main character John is a nasty piece of work. The youthful death of his wunderkind brother casts his entire family into a selfdestructive tailspin. Then, perhaps as a consequence of this, as John grows up he develops a wonderful virtuosity at bullying, coercing, and bearing false witness— a skill that he uses to full advantage in his job as high-level lobbyist. In the story, we come upon him in an apparent confessional as he sourly tells of all the people he has screwed and abused in his ascent to knighthood.
Armoured they came from the east/from a low and quiet sea./we were a naked rabble, throwing stones;/they laughed, and slaughtered us. This poem (re the Norman Conquest of Ireland) is part of John’s jaundiced recollections, and it was recited by a boy in Brother Alphonsus Keene’s English class. John envied the boy—who had all the things he hadn’t— and proceeded to bully and victimize him, and make him reviled by his schoolmates. As John remembers, “I always had a fiendish knack for making people hate each other.”
So, these are the dramatis personae. What to do with them? Detractors suggest that Ryan seems to be simply riding the coattails of his first success. The disjointed narrative? The jigsaw character development? The layering of details? Seen it, been there, done that, in The Spinning Heart. So why produce another? Well, simply put, From a Low and Quiet Sea works, and the sheer vibrancy of the plotting and prose suggest that Ryan’s signature genre has not been exhausted. He demonstrates even more nuance as he lays out the events and the interweaving of the characters, and he shows how they are affected by a caustic moral environment. Whether by ISIS mullahs or catholic priests, or overly gossipy neighbours, the characters are victimized or twisted by a close-minded cruelty.
Ryan provides a subtle insight into the nature of this mutual influence. On the first page, Farouk muses in wonderment to his daughter on the social life of trees. “[Trees] speak to each other through tunnels that extend from their roots, opened in the earth by fungus, sending their messages cell by cell .... Nutrients will travel in the tunnel ...from the roots of a healthy tree to its starving neighbour, even one of a different species .... They know the rule, the only one that’s real and must be kept...be kind.” This serves as an operational metaphor for the way Ryan views characters and their interactions. Later, one of the quasi-senile ladies that Lampy cares for says, “What’s in the past can’t be changed and what’s to come can’t be known, and you can’t give your life to worrying. Sure you can’t. All you have to do is be kind and you’ll have lived a good life.”
When considered in the light of contemporary Irish history, this almost Buddhist philosophy comes as a salutary corrective to the xenophobia, the cruel factionalism, the repressive abuses of the catholic church and the selfish materialistic excesses that have plagued Ireland. Throughout, Ryan shows the skill of a dentist in zeroing in on what makes us uncomfortable. Moments of loss, humiliation, self-deception, and disillusionment are excruciatingly rendered. And the diverse plot lines converge relentlessly on a conclusion that would give Sophocles and Ibsen a run for their money.
From a Low and Quiet Sea is there for the taking in the Lennoxville Public Library.