“It was 2019 and a funny time to be Irish. At no time in Ireland’s history was it not a funny time to be Irish.” Life has moved on for the characters of Lisa McInerney’s award-winning debut, The Glorious Heresies. The backdrop of her third novel, The Rules of Revelation, charts a different kind of Ireland in the wake of two seminal referendums, a place of hope and change, which is vividly captured by the Galway author in her inimitable way.
The style of the new book is in keeping with her previous work – bold, busy and energetic, with the swagger necessary to maintain a narrative that switches between five characters, all of whom will be familiar to fans of the author.
Mel (the artist formerly known as Linda) is back from Brexit Britain to play guitar in up-and-coming band Lord Urchin. Also returning to Cork is pariah and former drug dealer Ryan Cusack, now the frontman of the band. His ex-girlfriend Karine D’Arcy, meanwhile, is still not having sex with him even when she’s having sex with him. In another part of Cork, former prostitute Georgie hides out in a mobile home as she prepares to tell her story to a mercenary journalist.
The book’s final narrator, Maureen, mother to a local gangster, is on a mission to rewrite the story of the city’s unsung heroines. Through this subplot and others, the social and cultural issues that have defined 21st-century Ireland come to life.
As with her previous books, McInerney is attuned to matters of class, gender and race. Among other inequalities, she considers what it means (and what it takes) to create art without financial or social supports. Elitist feminism is another interesting narrative strain that sees some female characters marginalised due to class or sexual preference.
Despite these central preoccupations, the book is never preachy in tone. The storytelling is bright and inventive, the dialogue funny, sharp and revealing of character. A deliberate excess in the prose style works well for description: “Tara was impulsive, flirtatious, hyperactive, spiteful, insincere, a lot of things you didn’t want your mother to be.” There is something wonderfully Irish, and yet also unique, about the character sketches that double as putdowns: “He’s so rough you’d want a Garda escort visiting his house … She thought of conspiracies, a woman so unpopular that a whole estate let her vanish.”
Light on plot
For all its narrative voices, each one vibrantly different to the next, The Rules of Revelation is surprisingly light on plot. Most of the meatier scenes stem from action in previous books, the consequences and repercussions of earlier events. As such, there is a retrospective feel to proceedings that affects pace. It is an issue particular to sequels – how to balance past and present, how to appeal to fans and new readers alike.
Those who haven’t read the first two books will struggle in early sections. The care taken in The Glorious Heresies, for example, to ground the reader in the world, to meticulously paint the backdrop, to build the mysteries, is missing in the new book. Admirers of McInerney, and she has many – her debut won both the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Award – will find plenty to keep them happy, but those coming to her for the first time would be better off starting with book one.
The second book, The Blood Miracles, won the Encore Award for second novels and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Together the two titles have sold more than 150,000 copies. The author has also been commissioned by ITV, in conjunction with RTÉ, to adapt her books for a six-part TV series, so now is undoubtedly a good time to read the source material.
McInerney’s writing has been compared to Kevin Barry and Colin Barrett, and it’s easy to see why: the violence and verve and ingenuity with language. Other contemporary touchstones include Elaine Feeney’s captivating debut, As You Were, and the bright, fizzing prose in the novels of Caoilinn Hughes.
In The Rules of Revelation, most of the characters are dealing with tough pasts that have eventually caught up with them. McInerney’s skill is to find humour and light in the bleakest of scenarios. The unfolding of Ryan’s traumatic encounters with Tara is particularly affecting. While the pursuits of his band form the main plot, it is his love for Karine that gives the book both its heart and structure.
Chapters are broken into track titles that show the history they have shared, which ultimately has kept them apart. The history of a couple is hidden in the history of a city, or as Karine memorably puts it: “She thought of a lean, dark dragon parting cirrus waves, breaking into the lower atmosphere and laying waste to everything beneath him. She thought of Cork in flames.”
