Oscar Wilde? Blah blah blah. W. B. Yeats? Blah away, O human child. Jim Bob Joyce? Blah, blah. Blah: blah. Ten million web pages devoted to each of those well-known bastards.
You'll find no hype here. No rehashed university essays. I'm highlighting Ireland's overlooked, equally noteworthy literary talent, and I'm doing it in my own words.
"Thank God for Chick Lit," John MacKenna praised, the first time I met him. I'd read his novel, A Haunted Heart. I was shocked. The craftsman who'd captured the character of nineteenth-century Ireland? The artist who delved belief and conviction... dug trashy pink-covered pulp about shags and shopping?
"Without Chick Lit's millions, publishers would never have the money to support the quality novels that will only sell 1500 copies."
It was a day of insight and surprises. Two days, actually. MacKenna is an approachable author who enjoys giving workshops and leading discussions. He's very active in the Arts Council of his native County Kildare- through which I was able to attend a seminar in 2004, meet the man and get his swing on things.
Born in Castledermot, Ireland, in 1952, John MacKenna taught school and won awards as a producer for RTE radio before picking up his pen. When not covering the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) for The Irish Times, he has produced critically acclaimed novels (Clare, The Last Fine Summer), short stories (A Year of Our Lives, The Fallen... which won the 1993 "Irish Times" prize for best first book of fiction), plays (The Woman At The Window), histories (Castledermot and Kilkea: A Social History, The Lost Village: A Diary of Castledermot in 1925), and biographies like Shackleton: An Irishman in Antarctica.
And: the dude likes O’Hara’s Celtic Stout! To excerpt John MacKenna's writing at length:
"At a time when Guinness now produces a drink that puts one in mind of what Americans call popsicles , the toasty, roasty, hoppy enervation of O’Hara’s is thrilling. This is a true stout: nutty and buttery with a weighty body and a tart crispness. The brothers who established the brewing company describe O’Hara’s as the way stout used to taste and anyone with a stout memory will find that the crispness and lucidity of O’Hara’s evokes the pleasures of nostalgia almost as much as the pleasures of drinking" . . . . . John MacKenna, The Irish Times.
Class! Gotta support your local micro brewers, and the goods of the Carlow Brewing Company? Tasty.
Kildare- just between counties Carlow and Dublin- figures prominently in John MacKenna's works. It's the setting of A Haunted Heart.
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 McKeena'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.
So in summary: John MacKenna, good! A Haunted Heart, good, Carlow Brewing Company, good! Sammy Kershaw, good. Shania Twain's bellybutton- very, very good!
For those working on novels themselves, let me just pass on a few nuggets o' literary wisdom from John MacKenna:
Clearly an artist who knows his craft. If you have the opportunity to attend one of John MacKenna's workshops, jump at it! Living too far outside the borders of beloved Kildare? Forego the pink-covered chick lit and treat yourself to one of his fine titles.
- Added to the DFA Guide, January 2005.
Guide Index. Red words? Check the Dub Glossary!