BALLITORE, Co Kildare has a real, and eminently respectable, Quaker past, but in this reflective, passionate novel John MacKenna creates an imagined past for the Ballitore Quakers - and a totally convincing one at that. His protagonist, Elizabeth Hallward, has returned to Ireland after many years' absence. She is struggling to set down on paper the details of a love triangle - rectangle, if you count her infatuation with the woman of the trio - dating from half a century earlier; she is battling, simultaneously, with terminal cancer. It may sound like one large helping of doom and gloom, but Elizabeth, don't forget, is a Quaker - spirited, independent, still on her bicycle at 80 years of age. Her sharp, observant humour and highly-developed sense of justice drive the narrative forward even as her illness threatens to bring it to a brutal halt; combined with MacKenna's seamless interweaving of past and present, a haunted, haunting physicality and the occasional startling change of pace - "Death is terrifying. I wonder if it's shy?" - it adds up to a highly satisfying whole.
THE BOOKS PAGES ARE EDITED BY CAROLINE WALSH, LITERARY EDITOR
