Somewhere over the rainbow

Fiction: 'Daimons are not demons. Demons are nefarious creatures that skulk and rage in the dark

Fiction: 'Daimons are not demons. Demons are nefarious creatures that skulk and rage in the dark. Daimons are radiant beings that impart a pattern to people, animals, plants, and places."

The difficulty, of course, is that people, plants and places have no sense of this design and the struggle of life is to discover one's own unique and peculiar pattern, or fate, or destiny.

Certainly in Nina Fitzpatrick's latest novel this is the difficulty confronting the assortment of eccentrics and Irish oddities brought together to live on the imagined isle of Uggala, off the west coast of Ireland.

Biafra O'Dee is the undiscovered Irish songwriter who writes of the trials of being a sexually unfilled male on a small island. Father Francis is the new priest and his faith is sorely tested when an American called Clare, with her desire for, and knowledge of, extraordinary sexual gymnastics comes on the scene. Danny Ruane is writing a book of philosophy and poetry and meditation. It is a book that will make manifest the connectedness of all things: the human, the natural, and the spiritual. His work - like the novel, Daimons, itself - is a heady blend of Eastern mysticism and Irish myth and folklore. His lover, Ethna, has returned to Uggala, pregnant with twins, after having been away for seven years. One of these twins - before, during and after his birth - is the narrator of the book.

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The opportunity for much fun that this situation and these particular characters afford is enthusiastically taken up by Fitzpatrick. The foibles of an Irish world, played out on the miniature emerald isle of Uggala, making the transition from the comfort of marginal obscurity to the demands of Celtic Tiger economics is the main object of focus. Uggala is earmarked for that all-pervasive 1990s signifier of Ireland's uneasy relationship between its past and market forces: a heritage centre. The satire here is wide-ranging. As the cast of characters implies, all aspects of Irish culture can be packaged and sold - poetry, history, music and tradition - and, in this novel, it is sold.

For all the humorous intent, though, there is a haunting sadness discernible beneath the sparkling surface of bubbly joie de vivre. Finn, our narrator, is a surviving twin and, as in all postmodern fiction, the twin acts as a means of expressing our sense of disconnectedness to the world and to others.

The surviving twin never feels fully complete and yearns, therefore, for such wholeness.

The idea of the "daimon" acts in a similar way in the novel: signalling our homelessness in a world where, only occasionally, does our pattern become marvellously clear and we catch a glimpse, or fleetingly experience, the calm and the joy and the wonder that can be our lot on this planet.

This novel is a return to the merriment that marked Fitzpatrick's first fictional endeavour, Fables of the Irish Intelligentsia. Like that earlier work, Daimons punctures any grand or highfalutin' notions we may have of ourselves. And yet, there are moments of clear-sighted wisdom and brilliantly spot-on descriptions of the absurdities of Irish life.

Sometimes, these pearls have to be worked for, as we are forced to trawl through too many characters' stories and perspectives.

In its own disguised way, perhaps, Daimons is about the sad fact that this has to be the last novel by Nina Fitzpatrick. It has to be because Nina Fitzpatrick is the pseudonym under which Nina Witoszek and the late Patrick Sheeran published fiction.

It is a fitting final piece of work that is shot through with the recognition of the ephemeral nature of all types of partnerships. It holds out the hope, however, that in some place over the rainbow - "otherWheres" in the language of the novel - we may never have to be alone again.

Derek Hand is a Lecturer in English in St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra. His book John Banville: Exploring Fictions was published by the Liffey Press last year