TROUBLE’S BREWING FOR THESE BORDER DISSIDENTS

Country Michael Hughes★★★★★

As the Brexit negotiations near their end, the border has come to dominate headlines. And while much of the comments from leading Brexiteers have ranged from bizarre to downright dangerous, it’s perhaps worth revisiting a time when horror and violence were synonymous with the permeable line that separates the Republic of Ireland from the UK.

Set in 1996, Country is a story about a rogue squad of republican dissidents whose plot to attack a nearby army base threatens to sabotage the peace process. When the IRA’s star sniper Achill O’Brien refuses to take part following a dispute with his commanding officer, news of their falling out tempts British intelligence and the SAS into hatching a plot of their own to eliminate the team.

The story, a modern retelling of Homer’s Iliad, succeeds in being not so much a meditation on nationalism but the ego and self-interest that underpins it. Moments of bloody violence contrast with soaring rhetoric about peace and justice that serve as wonderful insights into the dissidents’ views of themselves.

Country is told in a number of parts, each told from the perspective of Achill, his superiors, the brothers Pig and Dog Campbell, Dog’s wife Nellie Campbell, an informer for the British intelligence services, and an SAS officer. The liveliness of the storytelling is in the voice and the interplay between sections, each exposing something previously unseen in the other characters. For instance, while Pig is the more animalistic, the truth of his weakness is revealed through Achill, and his ferocity through Dog, the more soft-hearted of the pair. Dog’s naivety, too, is also explained through Nellie.

Clear-voiced and visceral, Hughes does not spare the reader from the realities of the conflict in Northern Ireland. There are times when it is darkly comic, too. The image of irregular recruits trying to plot a guerrilla campaign but succeeding only in removing the kneecaps of a dissenting member is oddly funny.

This enjoyable novel gives voice to fine characters that are challenging, selfish, brutal and worth your time.