![]() ![]() There is a strong tradition of gallows humour in Irish writing, she points out, that is “actually a way of absorbing these things that are very difficult to face. ![]() “It is a heavy load and I think that’s why it needed the comedy, otherwise it would have been relentless horror and misery, ”says Kidd. The novel cuts between the mayhem unleashed in 1976 and the awful events of 1950, breaking down the barriers between mystery story and comedy of manners, mixing magical realism and crime fiction. Taking the starring role in an amateur production of JM Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, he puts the womenfolk in a flutter and confronts the pillars of traditional male authority head on. Twenty-six years after the murder of his mother Orla, long-haired, dark-eyed Mahony comes back to Mulderrig to investigate. The mystery buried in the woods surrounding the little speck of a place Kidd has imagined on the west coast of Ireland features incest, prostitution and a vanished child, but stitched alongside the story of a life cut short is a rollicking tale of a hero’s return. ![]()
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