FICTION: A beguiling novel that juxtaposes an Irishwoman's alienation in Italy with the evolution of fascism
Last Train from LiguriaBy Christine Dwyer Hickey, Atlantic, 392pp, £12.99
THE SECOND WORLD WAR is an interesting subject in an Irish context. The Irish novel has never fully made the war its own. There are exceptions of course, such as Francis Stuart's novels. Ita Daly's Unholy Ghostsremains a favourite of mine, and last year saw James Ryan's South of the Border. But the second World War does not seem to penetrate the Irish creative consciousness in any comprehensive way, neither for readers nor writers. It is not ourstory. We are neutralabout second World War novels. Where the British novel regularly lands on the Normandy beaches or evacuates Dunkirk, gaining plaudits as it goes, we have left the second World War story to the political historians, and the dreary right/wrong debate about Dev's contested handshake at the German legation following the death of Hitler.
Into this lightly tilled field goes Christine Dwyer Hickey in her follow up to the masterful Tatty. (One of her previous novels, The Gatemaker, is set in Dublin during the war years.) Last Train from Liguriais largely set in Italy during the 1930s, and charts the evolution of fascist Italy alongside the developing story of an Irishwoman, Bella Stuart, who works as a governess to a Jewish-Italian family. Hitler starts out as a joke: a seaside entertainment with a ventriloquist's dummy-baby complete with Hitler moustache, and a swastika bonnet. The baby is shouting for his "Mutti" to come and change his nappy, but she has in fact run off with a Jew. "' Ein Jude!!!' the baby howls . . . and what's more a musician. ' Un musicista?' 'Yes,' the ventriloquist says – 'with a very large trombone.' 'Un trombone grandissimo?' The baby is inconsolable. The beach is in uproar . . . All around, the sound of laughing voices . . . "
But things don’t stay funny for long. Year by year the atmosphere in Italy becomes more sinister as fascism spreads like an infection. At first Bella suffers from a form of social disconnection, an inability to be at ease in her own skin. She feels no romantic yearning and expresses no sexual needs, despite her 32 years. An early encounter in a garden in Sicily with a circle of male nude statuary disorients her and leaves her with the telling thought: “They are not real men, with their hairless bodies and pretty bunches of harmless fruit. They will not harm.” This episode hints at a buried trauma.
Bella shares the care of six-year-old Alec with the music teacher Edward King, a fugitive with a sordid murder in his past. Edward struggles with binge-alcoholism, having the occasional lapse: “Satisfy the need, overfeed the need, wear it out till it weakens and goes whimpering back to its corner. Only keep in mind that it never quite dies . . . ” When he is drunk, Edward is disgusting, sexist, brutish. When sober, he has a certain moral dignity. But Edward suffers alienation from the self, and while he does try, he never quite comes up to the mark as a man.
Bella becomes deeply attached to her young charge Alec. He is a beautiful child, who is described as “not quite right”. He has social difficulty and would probably be diagnosed in a modern context as having Asperger’s syndrome. Alec’s special vulnerability stirs the human instincts of the emotionally stunted Bella and Edward, whose fierce protection of the child draws them together. Meanwhile the political situation is becoming more intense: frenzied public scenes where townfolk wives surrender their gold wedding rings for steel ones to help Mussolini’s African campaign. Anti-Jewish race laws are introduced. Hitler invades Czechoslovakia. Fascism is characterised as a form of madness: Hitler is “a certifiable nutter with too many puppets”. And that “Duce chap doesn’t seem to be the full shilling either”. Restrictions are placed on travel. Bella and Edward make an attempt to flee Italy with Alec and his new baby sister on false papers. It is half successful. One adult and one child get out.
THE REST OFthe book is set in Dublin in the 1990s. We meet 35-year-old Anna Moore. She too is socially isolated and dysfunctional, has difficulty controlling her emotions, and feels herself "boil up with rage" at small provocations. She uses alcohol to regulate her spirits. Anna is caring for her elderly Grandmother "Nonna" (Italian for Grandma) who is in St Ita's psychiatric hospital, Portrane. A revelation at the hospital catapults Anna into a state of crisis and after Nonna's death she sets off in search of her past, a trail that eventually takes her to Italy and a photograph.
Dwyer Hickey is excellent on social observation: on the Italian habit of kissing on both cheeks: “Twice the kisses – half the sentiment.” A certain hotel is “like being on holiday in England only with better weather”. She has a keen eye: “A boy in uniform sits on the church step eating a half moon of melon as if he is using it to wash his face.” But what is most striking about this work is its sympathetic engagement with personal alienation and the disconnected self. The juxtaposition of this individual alienation with the collective unfeeling that was European fascism make this beguiling novel a profound and interesting work.
Katy Hayes is a novelist. She was the writer in residence on the MA in Anglo-Irish literature and drama in UCD for 2008-09.
* Christine Dwyer Hickey takes part in the Dublin Writers Festival at 2pm today in the Project Arts Centre