Brian Moore reissues: fine fictions and experiments from chameleon

Three of Belfast-born writer Brian Moore’s novels, all out of print for decades, have been reissued by Turnpike Press for his centenary in August.

We start with the best. The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1965) is not only one of Moore’s finest fictions, but also his most autobiographical book, and therefore of special interest to admirers of the “chameleon novelist” who never wrote the same book twice. It’s about teenager Gavin Burke, hating life in “dull, dead” Belfast during the second World War, who lives in the knowledge that “there was nothing in the world so imposing that a big bomb couldn’t blow it up.” Gavin’s a first-aider for an air raid team, but his mind is elsewhere, directed by the “Black Angel” on his shoulder. Moore’s unfussy style moves between internal and external action, and offers a fresh perspective on a much-covered era.

School demons

The Feast of Lupercal (1958) was Moore’s second novel, and it reads like a companion piece to his debut Judith Hearne. This time, the loner is a man, secondary school teacher Diarmuid Devine, and it’s sex – or the lack of it – rather than alcohol that fuels his despair. An excruciating comedy of embarrassment and a minor key tragedy, this novel also exorcises Moore’s demons about his old school in Belfast. Revenge is sweet, and a little bitter.

Fictionalised kidnapping

The Revolution Script (1971) is the runt of the litter, abandoned by Moore, who never allowed it to be republished during his lifetime. It’s an example of what Truman Capote called the non-fiction novel, or Moore subsequently dismissed as “journalism” (hey!) – a fictionalised account of events in Canada in 1970, when Québecois separatists kidnapped a government minister and a British commissioner. It moves along smoothly enough, and we get some interesting political angles when the government goes all-out authoritarian to stop the crisis, but Moore’s great strength of characterisation is necessarily missing for the kidnappers, whose minds he doesn’t satisfactorily enter. Still, it provided a new route for Moore’s writing, paving the way for the late-career thrillers. And we can hardly deny such a versatile writer the odd experiment which doesn’t quite come off.