During the mid-20th century, young people growing up in a rural environment in Ireland faced a stark choice. Emigrate, leaving your loved ones behind for an uncertain future, or stay, knowing that every day might be exactly the same as the day before and the boy or girl you had your eye on in school is the one you’ll probably end up with.
Chloe Michelle Howarth’s powerful second novel, set in 1965, follows the fortunes of the O’Leary siblings, Tom, Anna, Jack and Peggy, who eschew both these options and do something rather unusual, relocating from their hometown to Ballycrea in Co Kerry, a moment of internal migration that leaves their new neighbours speculating on what might have brought them there.
The narrative moves between the first-person voices of the three eldest siblings and Betty Nevan, a kind and popular woman who, along with her equally sympathetic husband, Bill, helps the family find a footing in the town, a decision that has consequences for all. Tom, adopting the role of patriarch, is a Holy Joe, obsequious in his dealings with the locals and so desperate to be liked that he’ll humiliate himself to achieve this goal. Jack is nursing a grief slowly revealed and conflicted by his guilt over developing feelings for someone new. Peggy is just a child, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by the Nevans that she’s badly in need of proper parenting. But it’s Anna, in her late twenties, who holds the central role. It’s her actions, both in the past and present, that propel the novel forwards.
Howarth makes the unusual choice of having each of the O’Learys address an unnamed person in their chapters. It would be a spoiler to reveal who they’re talking to but it’s the same person, revealed early on to be deceased, and the skill with which she keeps the reader guessing how this death came about is to be admired.
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The O’Leary household is not a happy one, summoning images of siblings from that period who found themselves cohabiting from cradle to grave, never finding a lover, and growing increasingly resentful of each other as they aged. There is, however, a sense of transience about them, a feeling that they’re not entirely committed to this new life. They never even bother to buy beds for their rented cottage, sleeping in mattresses on the floor, and when the Nevans come to visit, for one of the most awkward dinner parties ever committed to page, they can’t help but recognise how unwelcoming the place is.
The relationship between Tom, Anna, and Jack is carefully drawn and driven with tension. Tom’s sanctimoniousness is betrayed by the story of how he treated their mother when she became pregnant with Peggy – nine years after her husband’s death – which makes the hypocrisy of his evening rosaries all the more evident. When he’s offered an opportunity to escape Ireland, he longs to go, and the reader wants him to go, but he uses his siblings as an excuse to stay, insisting that the family couldn’t possibly survive without him. And this is on the night of his 30th birthday party, when they’re all still young and their entire lives are still before them.
As the relationship between the troubled O’Learys and the kindly Nevans grows, things change dramatically. Most of us have probably experienced a moment of obsessive attraction in our lives, and when that moment comes for Anna, it’s as good a depiction of that unhealthy fixation as I’ve read, blending moments of cringe-inducing embarrassment with heartbreaking desperation. I turned the last 60 pages of the novel rapidly, as the secrets of the past were finally revealed, and the dread of what might be about to come deepened.
Howarth was highly praised for her debut novel, Sunburn, and for a young Irish female writer to buck commercial trends and return to the more repressed characters that populated an earlier era of Irish writing is refreshing. It reminds us how far we’ve come as a country and serves as a warning never to return to the authoritarianism of the past.
There’s really nothing to criticise in Heap Earth Upon It. It’s an outstanding depiction of repression, obsession, loss, and grief, and a fascinating study of four people who would be better off apart but are stuck together by circumstance and simply can’t figure out how to break free.
John Boyne’s latest novel, The Elements, won France’s Prix du Roman FNAC
