Trespasses by Louise Kennedy: book review
Overview: It's Belfast during the Troubles. Cushla lives with her mother who is an alcoholic, still drowning in grief after her father's passing years before. Her brother runs a pub, and she teaches at the Catholic school, picking up shifts at the pub afterwards. Over the course of a school year, Cushla meets a married Protestant barrister in the pub and begins an affair, and she connects herself to a struggling family of a boy in her class, her efforts to help them drawing both herself and the family into more problems. Cushla is genuinely just trying her best in the backdrop of a difficult, scary time. Overall: 4.5
Characters: 5 Cushla is twenty-four and teaches a group of seven-year-olds in P3. She's openhearted and so kind but feels somewhat adrift in her life. Her world exists between her older brother, who holds himself as the head of the household even as he has his own young family to contend with, and her mother, who requires more mothering than Cushla receives back these days. She goes out sometimes with her fellow P3 teacher, Gerry, but there isn't a spark. Instead, she finds that with Michael, the married barrister who's made a name for defending IRA members, usually young boys. Her relationship with Michael is always strung between the immense relief of how much he makes her feel and the deep self-loathing seeing a married man creates within her. At the same time, she finds herself becoming more interwound with Davy, a boy who's held like an outcast in her class who she tries to help after his father is the victim of an attack. It is in the scenes with Davy where Cushla's deep determination to be good comes through, and it's heart wrenching.
Davy is also such a precious character. He plays that typical innocent child role that contrasts so sharply with the world around him, but this is done with such subtlety that it doesn't feel tropey. Davy is just Davy. More thoughtful and sensitive so put down by his peers, he stands out in the class of kids. He becomes the central heart of the book, a grounding force in Cushla's life.
Plot: 4 I honestly wasn't sure where all this was going in the first half of the novel, but the second half was incredibly tightly plotted and suspenseful. This is obviously justified as we have to know the characters and the context of the time and place they live in well for the payoff of the ending to work. It still took me by surprise as the writing was strong enough that I was fine with it continuing to wander along with a certain aimlessness. Cushla says at one point that she felt for the book that her life was running on parallel tracks, her affair with Michael and her devotion to Davy's family, and that's how much of the beginning of the book feels before the paths are forced into one another. It's hard to say much about what makes the plot of the book so fantastic without spoiling it, so I'll simply leave it at that.
Writing: 5 I read a lot of Irish literature, but I'd never actually read a book set during the Troubles or in Northern Ireland in general. My illustrious history education never thought to mention it, so I only had a vague notion of the setting that informed the book more than anything. I'd seen reviewers say reading about the time period ahead of reading the book would be helpful, but I'm impatient, so I read about 50 pages before caving to do some research. I can't say that I did the world's biggest deep dive, but I did read the full Wikipedia page and then also happened upon a critical review of Say Nothing and its recent adaption into a show that also provided additional context that helped. While having a sense of the main players and general idea of the conflict is helpful, the book gave such a rich portrayal that I felt really improved my understanding of the Troubles overall. Kennedy does a fascinating job of depicting the vast emotional inner life of a single twenty-four year old woman while also capturing time and place. Cushla's life is undeniably shaped by her world, as are all the characters in the novel, and it will truly twist your heart. There's a moment towards the end where I nearly cried, and that was what cemented the brilliance of what the novel had managed to create for me.
I will say, my one lasting critique is that I didn't love the epilogue. The book opens with a prologue and concludes with an epilogue, all set in 2015, which is many decades after the close of the novel. I thought the prologue was very effective in creating a sense of mystery and intrigue for the story to come, especially since the opening chapters didn't hold as much tension on their own as the rest of the book. It planted seeds. The epilogue, however, did the opposite for me. I thought that the conclusion of the main text felt fitting and complete. It was open ended, as any novel where the characters lives will continue after is, but it tied up the necessary details enough to be satisfying. Then tacking on the flash forward that takes place right after the events of the prologue, it all feels too neat. It confirms too much and packs in extra details that are beyond the scope of the story. It just felt like Kennedy was too desperate for a fully happy ending (or as much of one as a story of this nature could offer) by zooming us towards the later years of Cushla's life when more definite assertions could be made. I wish the story had been left alone.
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