This review was written for and first published by Bookmunch.
The protagonist of Stations is a young Irish woman, Róisín McCaffrey, who harbours an anger that continually colours just about every aspect of her life. The story opens in the autumn of 1982 when she delivers a letter from a classmate, Tina Doyle, to a boy she hadn’t previously met, Red Camelin. Red and Róisín hit it off immediately, triggering a relationship that will endure but at considerable cost.
Róisín’s anger stems from her family situation and the unhappiness this has caused her. She is an only child who was uprooted from the north of Ireland to the south in a failed attempt to help her father whose work stress changed him radically. He left Róisín and her mother anyway, adding financial difficulties to the shame of marriage breakdown. Róisín struggled to fit in at her new school, her loneliness exacerbating the bullying endured.
Although enjoying Red’s company and conversation, his friendship comes with significant baggage. He too has issues with his parents, the details of which he won’t discuss with Róisín. The author depicts these teenagers well, their self-centred outlook and not yet matured emotional intelligence. When Red is banished from the country by his father, after getting into trouble with the law for yet another misdemeanour, Róisín is still too naïve to fully understand what has gone on.
Róisín and Red next meet up in London where he is living in a squat. From here his life spirals ever downwards although she remains unaware just how badly. Her own life has stalled, anger driving her to blame both her mother and father for her stasis and unhappiness. Despite the heavy drinking and drugs imbibed, she doesn’t mess up as badly as some who now surround her.
The parts of the story set in Ireland and then London depict how this group of Irish teenagers moved from dissonant schooldays to a sort of desperate survival as young adults. The story then jumps forward from 1989 to 2007. Róisín is now back in Ireland, still angry with her father but carrying a desperate guilt from the way she has treated just about everyone she has ever been close to. She has lost touch with Red. Following an encounter with his mother she sets out to try to find him again.
These bones of the story are not unusual in Irish literature: messed up young people, loneliness, family conflict. Stations, however, offers so much more. It somehow captures the zeitgeist of its various settings and characters. These offer a depth and empathy that is rare when writing of young people whose internal lives have been so monumentally affected by the old Irish culture.
Somehow, the story being told, while disturbing at times, is not depressing. There is humour within these pages. The behaviour and tastes of those with money are rendered to ensure any thoughts of success through this are tempered. Tina’s brother, who also lived in Red’s squat for a time, may have turned his life around but freely admits he has swapped certain addictions for others. At forty years of age, Róisín still drinks and smokes heavily even if she now has some of the outward trappings her mother can boast to acquaintances of.
What is clear in all this is that the teenagers still lurk within the minds of the adults. They are living with the results of their many choices even as veneers have been forged to enable them to navigate whatever life they have since constructed. Róisín can now understand better what Red was suffering but can do nothing about the trauma she ignored while dealing with the fallout from her own abiding anger.
The denouement is skilfully managed, retaining each of the character’s backstories in how they behave, while offering a decent ending. Róisín’s mother comes into her own in the final section, a reminder that as children it is hard to regard parents as anything more than this role.
Any Cop?: A book that is well worth your time, the author’s best yet and that is high praise. It is so much more than just another novel by an Irish writer, good though so many of these may be. It offers plenty to chew through but this never detracts from what is a page turning read.
Jackie Law
