Joining the elite

FICTION: UnionBy John Mulcahy ABDEF, 283pp. €12.99

‘WE MUST not confuse the efficiency of any parliament with the rationale for it.” John Mulcahy puts these elegantly ironic words into the mouth of Lord Altamont as he plots the Act of Union following the 1798 rebellion. Could Altamont’s idea have relevance to the present chaotic situation in Ireland?

If anyone should understand that situation it is Mulcahy, who has been editor successively of Hibernia Magazine, the Sunday Tribune, the Phoenix, the satirical news magazine and the Irish Arts Review. The temptation, therefore, to read this novel (his first) as a kind of historical issue of the Phoenixis hard to resist. And as all novels are concealed forms of autobiography, the temptation to read Unionas personal revelation is similiarly enticing.

On that front Uniondoes not disappoint. Some of the story is channelled through John Magee of the Dublin Evening Post, "the most notorious editor in the capital . . . not known for his understatement". One of Magee's journalists, Brendan O'Reilly, also tells the tale. Son of the wealthiest merchant in Westport, Brendan is an ideal hack, "a young man more in need of an occupation than remuneration".

Unlike The Year of the French,Thomas Flanagan's classic novel of the period, which anchors itself in the intelligence of a poor poet, the point of view of Unionfloats on privilege. The novel opens at a picnic hosted by Capt John Preston in Mayo. This "delicious repast" of salmon "washed down with a choice Chablis" introduces the reader to a large cast of characters, including the gorgeous Pamela, the captain's niece, and the dashing Stephen Allan, the captain's right-hand man, a servant with a secret – love, one can hint, is in the heir.

The idyll is soon interrupted. The French land at Killala and Capt Preston’s mansion is burned down by revolting peasants. Their leader is Hugh O’Malley, “a strong build of a lad with a freckled face and a great mop of red hair”. Hugh is arrested, tortured by the police, tried and sentenced to death, but on his way to the gallows he escapes, with the assistance of stampeding bullocks.

In no time at all Brendan and Pamela are in Dublin, Stephen is in Jamaica and Hugh – well, Hugh vanishes until, feisty as ever, he reappears at Robert Emmet’s rising to plant a pike in the chest of . . . But that would be to give away too much of the story.

The core of the book, however, is concerned with conflicts that have racked Ireland for the past four decades. On the one hand there is materialism: as a hard-headed businessman Mulcahy has always understood money. In Unionthe greed of Lord Altamont and others of his class corrupts and eventually destroys the Parliament – the parallels with contemporary events are obvious. On the other hand there is in the book, as there is in the Phoenix, a gingerly attachment to the romance of republicanism.

As a work of fiction Unionhas its faults. The prose grinds and the plot groans – wills are torn up and bastardy leaps out of the bushes – but Mulcahy is an important exemplar of Irish thinking, and, now and in the future, cultural historians will gain valuable insights from analysing how he resolves the conflict between realism and revolution, as it were between due diligence and derring-do. Suffice it to say that a journalist dies for the cause, and the reader is treated to the entire text of that great song Bould Robert Emmet, the Darling of Ireland. Fascinating stuff.

Brian Lynch's Duras Press has just published The Nicotine Cat and Other Peopleby Augustus Young