Tragicomic rolling family saga

By Philippa Tracy

This family saga spans several decades in the lives of the Barnes family in a small town in Ireland in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash. Over the course of a long 650 pages, it moves backwards and forwards in time, and between the different perspectives, troubles and secrets of each member of the family: the father, Dickie, his wife Imelda, their 17-year-old daughter Cass, and 12-year-old PJ.

Dickie’s car sales business is going to the wall, not helped by a dodgy member of staff stealing catalytic converters. It also becomes clear that the problems with the business are not exclusively related to the financial crash. Dickie is prone to making poor choices. He drops out of Trinity college to take on the business from his father Maurice in the aftermath of the tragic death of his brother Frank, in whose shadow he always seems to be. “Frank was their father’s favourite; Frank was everyone’s favourite, apart from their mother, who obviously preferred Dickie only out of pity and so didn’t count.” Dickie was never a salesman and, to boot, he’s now being blackmailed for the secrets he keeps.

Instead of addressing any of his immediate problems, Dickie catastrophises about the end of the world, climate change and the culling of grey squirrels. He almost appears to prefer to dissuade people from buying cars because of the impact on the environment and then metaphorically buries his head in the woods behind his house, where he is building a bunker. His explanation to Imelda, “Right if the grid went down or if there was a war? Or a nuclear attack?” Consequently, he fails to notice his marriage is failing and his children are dealing with their own planet-sized issues. “Out of nowhere PJ started having asthma attacks. Cass stopped seeing her friends. Then she started drinking, in shitty pubs in town.”

While Cass is drinking and hanging out with her appallingly manipulative friend Elaine she comes close to failing her end of school exams. Meanwhile PJ is being threatened by a local bully who believes Dickie has ripped off his dad and is also dangerously close to being lured away to Dublin by some online-gaming catfish. And where is Imelda in all this? She is wrapped up in dealing with her own demons. She married Dickie because she had little choice at the time, having found out she was pregnant. But it was also to escape her own childhood fraught with trauma, including a sick mother, an abusive father and debt collectors. As well as this, Dickie is hardly the love of her life. His brother Frank was. And the bee sting that prevents her taking any photos on her wedding day seems symbolic of the fate of the marriage.

The novel is long and at times it feels it. Especially when Dickie is in the woods building his bunker. It can also take time to get used to reading the chapters told from Imelda’s point of view, as there is no punctuation. This perhaps reflects her own lack of education or tendency to talk in a stream of consciousness. However, the novel is at times also very funny and well worth the read. Imelda’s friends support her and the reader enjoys a laugh with their frequent comments about sex and marriage. “Married with children – the ultimate unphrodisiac Geraldine says I wish someone had told me that when I was forking out two grand for a wedding dress”. It is tragicomic. It covers a range of themes from the financial crisis to midlife crisis, class, small-town life and the redemptive power of love. Imelda sums up the precariousness of life and happiness: “like walking on a path made of spinning tops You took a step you were spun off one way The next step spun you off another Every moment was the moment when everything changed”.