Twelve

By AM Wednesday, August 22, 2012

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While in prison I tended to avoid novels about the Northern Irish political conflict, assuming them to be contrived or propagandist. There was the infrequent exception. Shortly after the protest ended in 1982 Brendan Hughes suggested Roy Bradford’s intriguing The Last Ditch which allowed the former unionist minister to sheath a barbed political critique in fiction. Much later there was Danny Morrison’s West Belfast, which I picked up out of curiosity to see what literary talent other than propaganda our leaders possessed. While Morrison would go on to produce better, West Belfast briefly flickered and quickly faded as a work of literature, the title being about as much as I remember from it.  Some 16 years earlier during my first day in Crumlin Road prison, there was an IRA novel left in the in the cell in B Wing. Its name I no longer recall but it had a bucket of bullets graphic on the front cover. I read in it a single session just to get through day one of confinement.
Such was the extent of my delving into the genre of the Northern Irish political novel. Towards the work of Gerald Seymour and others, with firm prejudice serving as my guide, I took a no go approach. For that reason Pat Magee, who served life for the Brighton bombing, struck me – without intentional pun –  as taking a novel approach and opted to do time the hard way, burying himself in ‘Troubles fiction.’ For his perseverance he gained a much deserved PhD.

These days I am much more promiscuous about the novels I read. Chris Petit perhaps having changed my mind once I had read his The Psalm Killer about 12 years ago. This was yet another recommended by my wife whose command of the novel has opened up a whole new literary window for me. To this day it is the preeminent ‘troubles’ novel against which all else is judged.

So what of Stuart Neville? Did he break the mould with his 2009 The Twelve? Only if the reader believes that filling the literary pot with a clump of simmering prejudices that boil to overflow is mould busting.

It is one of those novels spawned by the peace process, spiced up by IRA violence long after the descent from the heights of the armed force had taken place. It opens in 2007, the same year Sinn Fein decided to give its approval to a reformed but still armed British police force in the North of Ireland.

Whatever flows from the pages of The Twelve the sub text is one of unremitting criminality and sadistic violence. It is this novelist’s way of denuding the Northern conflict of political content and framing it as a criminal enterprise. And that criminality is personified in the characters of Bull O'Kane and Vincie Caffola. The author’s own ethical bias clouds but then it was never meant to clarify.

Gerry Fegan, the central character, is just out of jail, only to be tortured by new demons, this time out of uniform; his own dirty dozen. Each of them buried in the clay, because he put them there. But whatever seal he put on their graves it was not hermetic. The cold ground was unable to contain them. So the alcohol soaked psychotic who despatched each of them to their personal nothingness had them as constant companions. They convince Gerry that he is their jailer who holds the key to their freedom. Not only did they plague his dreams but consumed every moment of his waking day, urging him to flick the wrist, turn the key and bring to them eternal peace.

The scene is set, the die cast. One by one Gerry must send to sleep with the fishes the voracious sharks that had helped devour the lives of the twelve so that they could be set free. 

He talks to the suit attired Sinn Fein politician who has done quite well for himself out of the conflict regardless of what the party likes to say about the average industrial wage. The politician tells Gerry that McGinty never got his hands dirty. Others did the killing that had made this particular Caesar great.

Little imagination is required on the part of the reader to guess the identity behind the obnoxious character Vincie Caffola, the old Italian thug managing IRA internal security. Although unlike Stakeknife, the rib from which the character Caffola had life breathed into it, Vincie seemingly did want the Brits out and seemed none to happy with the peace process. Nor is it too hard to guess who Neville wants to portray through the character Bull O’Kane, the thug-cum-criminal par excellence here.

There is a jaundiced view that permeates and undermines the integrity of this novel. It is essentially a unionist middle class take on Provo culture. It is highly ideological with little in the way of redeeming factors or mitigation, caricature minus the graphics. That it manages any authentic lift is in part a result of the seedy outcome of the Provisional IRA’s campaign and the dishonesty of its leaders which means anybody can say what they want about them and have their allegations greeted with ‘it could well be true.’

There is a strong undercurrent that the security forces are up to their necks in nefarious activities but without the same opprobrium being thrown their way as it is when it comes to morally evaluating the role of the IRA.

The Twelve while readable enough had the potential to be much better. A novel crafted to fit the ideology rather than the ideology being weaved in subliminally, a reader not familiar with the North’s violent conflict would enjoy it more than somebody who picked it up the way I might grab a Scandinavian crime thriller. A unionist of the Tom Elliot ilk would certainly have all his prejudices confirmed by it.

For something better, less jaundiced and more grounded, the interested reader could try the work of Matt McGuire.