Graphic scenes in a tragicomic island murder mystery

FICTION Scenes of a Graphic Nature Caroline O’Donoghue Virago, €13.99

CHARLIE Regan’s father was the only childhood survivor of a horrific calamity in his tiny school on the fictional island of Clipim, off the coast of Kerry. Every one of his schoolmates died, along with their teacher. Years later, in his late teens, he left Clipim for England, married, settled and never saw Clipim again.

Charlie and her best friend since film school, Laura, have made a documentary about the Clipim tragedy called It Takes A Village. Now with her beloved father dying of cancer, her mother being even more overbearing than usual, and Charlie secretly selling erotic photos of herself to pay the rent, she’s notified that this documentary is being screened at the Cork Film Festival.

Neither friend has ever been to Ireland and although Charlie is broke, Laura’s film career has been thriving. So it’s off to Cork — mostly on Laura’s money — where they meet someone who tells them there’s a lot more to the Clipim story. An impromptu trip to the island unleashes a flurry of fun and games.

Is it possible that Charlie’s father has, all along, been an unreliable narrator? Because although the beauty of Clipim is staggering, there’s an air of menace about the place. The tragedy occurred in 1963 and the islanders don’t want two young English upstarts digging up the past. But why not? Undeterred by the islanders’ hostility, they decide to go digging anyway, with some hair-raising results.

This novel is a kind of tragicomedy as well as a murder mystery and is in turns bawl-out-loud funny and vaguely disturbing. It has lots to say, as did O’Donoghue’s debut novel Promising Young Women, about the difficulties of being a young woman right now. Identity, along with sexuality, is explored at some length, albeit through a glass darkly.

It’s a story about unrequited love, about the isolation of being an only child about to lose the one parent they connect with, and it’s also — importantly — a commentary on how fond this country is of keeping its dirty little secrets. A passage in the middle of the book relates the story of the Tuam babies, and of how Charlie’s and Laura’s film-making colleagues were astounded to hear it.

“‘The septic tank?’ The septic tank. ‘Human trafficking?’ Human trafficking. ‘By nuns?’ By nuns. […] But Ireland? A place where so many of our parents and grandparents were from? Where Saoirse Ronan was from? A country that had Topshop and Nesquik and chemotherapy and gay marriage?” Indeed. Dear old Mother Ireland.

O’Donoghue’s first novel was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards in 2018. This, her second, deserves another bite of the cherry.