A Haunted Heart
John MacKenna
Picador, 2000
The End Is Nigh. Maybe with Heavenly Love Before It Gets Here
Important note: though Kildare is famous for its horses, the novel A Haunted Heart has nothing to do with country star Sammy Kershaw's 1993 album of the same name. No "Queen of my Double-Wide Trailer" here! No Shania Twain singing backup vocals, though she would fit right in. I've seen that video of her, jigging the Irish dancing bandwagon for all it was worth. Man!
John MacKeena's novel has good bellybuttons of its own. Two sides of A Haunted Heart's love triangle are beautiful young women. But, as these extrordinary Victorians are the uber-devout Quakers, there's not a chance of any flesh below the jawline being revealed. Or is there? Third triangle side: the charismatic Joshua Jacob, whose passion and powerful speech attract Elizabeth and Abigail into his small nineteenth-century utopian commune. Perfect fraternity and heavenly love here on Earth? Heaven's not where he's keeping his eyes. Good intentions? Harsh reality? Strange, coming-of-age feelings bursting at their chastity-belt seams? Tension builds. It is soon clear, Jacob's right about one thing: The End is Nigh.
The novel is structured as a story-within-a-story. The narrator is a dying Elizabeth, who has returned from England to her native Athy in the 1959 after more than half a century of self-imposed exile. There's a two-fold tension: what happened all those years ago, with Abagail and Joshua Jacob and the White Friends? And, will she find the person that she is currently seeking, and be able to deliver this story that she is spending her last, painful days, confessing onto paper?
A short, solid, novel. Excellent observations, sincere emotion, characters who deliver true insight. And, at one stage, efforts to recreate Eden on earth have nutty chicks running around in fig leaves! Yowza.
Cool thing? That episode actually happened. The White Friends were real, fig leaves and all. MacKenna invoked artistic license to advance the movement from the 1840's to the close of the century, but his research is spot-on. The dude knows history and our place within.
Three stars out of five, says Mick. Truth gets my nod, but I'm a go-go boot type of DFA. Readers who appreciate romances and readers who find it easy to slip into old woman shoes will doubtless enjoy the novel more.
Mick proudly presents a profile of John MacKenna on the DFA Guide to Dublin.
...and check out Mick's interview with John MacKenna for writingshow.com.
Thank God that Critical Mick had the opportunity to meet John MacKenna and read A Haunted Heart. But do not thank Him by running around in a fig leaf, unless you are Liz Madden, Gloria Mulhall, or a member of The Corrs (female members only).
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