Sharp Words

9 out of 10
I’ve been waiting for this book since meeting Stuart Neville at one of the NaNoWriMo sessions at QUB last year. Stuart came in to talk to us about how he’d written his first novel, and how he’d got published, and I know I left the room feeling intensely jealous of the way the publishing part at least had seemed to come so easily for him!

I missed the novel’s launch in the No Alibis bookshop in Belfast, but I trotted down there the first day I could (back in July) and bought a copy – which turned out to be signed, so that was a nice plus and a damn good reason for supporting small independent bookshops! I started reading that evening, but didn’t tear through it in the way I usually do with new books. I wanted to savour it… and I really wanted to like it.

And thankfully, I really really did. It’s a well-paced, thoughtful, intelligent thriller that drew me in from the very first page. However, I like to read novels at least twice before I review them. So although I originally read it at the beginning of July, it has taken me until the end of August to feel brave enough to pick it up again – for me, brilliant as I thought it, it’s not the kind of book I can read over and over. It’s not the kind of book to read as an escape from reality – which is precisely why my husband gave up after the first couple of chapters (his loss).

Anyway, a synopsis. The novel is called The Ghosts of Belfast in the US rather than The Twelve, but both titles refer to the twelve ghosts which haunt protagonist Gerry Fegan. They are the ghosts of the people he killed while a republican hitman: a selection of soldiers, police, loyalist terrorists and civilian innocents. But although Fegan was the one who pulled the trigger or planted the bomb – and did twelve years in the Maze prison – ultimately others carry responsibility too for those deaths. And now his ghosts want vengeance.

The story is set in 2007, against the backdrop of Belfast’s new-found peace and prosperity. The Northern Ireland Assembly (its regional government) has been reformed, and both sides of the sectarian divide are cooperating with the UK government and with each other. Gerry Fegan’s activities to exorcise his ghosts threaten to destabilise the fragile political situation, and what at first seems to be the story of one man’s troubles quickly becomes a wide-reaching story about the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Although the bulk of the novel is written from Gerry’s point of view, some chapters are from the viewpoints of the Minister of State – a man who doesn’t want the job anyway – and of Davy Campbell, a man involved in the republican movement who has plenty of troubles of his own. These further the plot in a way that sticking with Gerry wouldn’t have done, as well as giving us interesting characters in their own right. Other important characters include local politicians and ‘community figures’, and a woman named Marie McKenna – a relative of one of those killed by Gerry – and her small daughter, who Gerry becomes attached to in a way that could spell disaster for him and them.

The tagline for The Twelve is “Sooner or later, everybody pays“, and it’s pretty clear right from the start of the novel that things are not going to end well. And they don’t, although some endings come sooner than others. But even though there are few real innocents in this story, Stuart Neville has managed to create a broad selection of characters who aren’t always the villains and monsters they might immediately seem to be. I was pulled into Gerry’s story, and even though he’s obviously a murderer and a desperate man, I still cared about what happened to him. Which is, of course, part of what made this an excellent book.

Another part of this book’s appeal for me was simply its setting in modern-day Northern Ireland, which is of course a setting I’m very familiar with. I enjoyed recognising the places where scenes take place, and spotting the traits of real politicians in Neville’s fictional ones. Now that I’ve finally written my own review, I can read others – and I’m curious to see what readers not so familiar with NI will make of the setting and story (I might pass it on to my dad to get his opinion). Plenty of the fictional events and back-story just rang all too true for me, and I think Stuart has crafted a very fine novel about Northern Ireland without resorting to stereotypes or sensationalism.

Because this isn’t the genre of book I usually read, I can’t put any of my ‘if you like this’ recommendations. But the blurbs on the cover of his novel say everything that needs to be said; it comes with plaudits from well-known writers such as John Connolly, and they seem to be well-deserved. And I look forward to seeing Stuart at a NaNoWriMo event this year, and telling him so!