The Disenchanted Widow by Christina McKenna

I think it's safe to say this one wasn't for me at all.  Unfortunately this was my first book by this author and I already have another 2 purchased - if this book is representative of her work then I am rather regretting my rash purchase of 3 books by an untried author.  I will be honest, the whole Irish thing swayed me - I have said it before, and will doubtless say it many times - there is something about Irish authors writing about their homeland that gets right to the heart of people and situations and drags me straight in.  Maybe that meant I went in to this book with my expectations set way too high, maybe I just didn't like it.

Really this is the story of 4 separate people who are all thrown together by circumstance and set during The Troubles in early 1980s Northern Ireland.  Bessie Lawless/Elizabeth Halstone on the run after her alcoholic husbands demise in a car accident, Gusty Grant the hapless mechanic with hidden proclivities, Father Cassidy moved to a small parish from a big city and Lorcan Strong artist and restorer who returns to his home town.  Their stories mesh and twine around each other set against the back drop of radio and newspaper reports on the Hunger Strikes and the back drop of small town nosiness and gossip.

There is what could be a very good story here, unfortunately I just couldn't enjoy it. 

The insistence of the author to put speech in to a faux Irish dialect really began to grate.  Dialects are spoken, not written, and the constant manipulation of language to try and ineffectually replicate speech drive me to distraction.  We know what an Irish accent sounds like, we understand the vagaries of vowel sounds and consonant combinations so allow the reader to hear the voice instead of foisting it on them.  It is nowhere near as bad as Angela's Ashes which I found completely impenetrable due to the linguistics employed but I really found it annoying.

The characters themselves are pretty much one or two trick ponies.  You get the sense there is something more to them than you are shown but it never gets revealed on the page.  Our main character Bessie remains the hard-faced brassy woman throughout and never deviates from this role.  She has moments of empathy with her son but they are rarely seen and she treats absolutely everyone with wariness or contempt.  This is the one character everything hangs on so you can imagine how little exploration of the others we get.

Having lived through the time period this book is set in (albeit in England) I also didn't really feel a sense of the tension of the time.  I was at an age to start being more aware of what was happening in the world around me and although I felt safe in my small home town any visit to a neighbouring city was fraught with worry - borne out after it was devastatingly bombed by the IRA.  If I felt like that imagine how much worse it was anywhere in Northern Ireland - nowhere was safe and anybody could be a secret paramilitary.  Very scary times that felt almost glossed over.

I will persevere with the other two books but they have slid a long way down my reading list now.