This Human Season

November 1979, the height of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Kathleen Moran’s son Sean has just been transferred to the hypersecure H-block in Belfast’s notorious Maze prison, where he soon emerges as a young but impor­tant force in the extreme protest, known as the Blanket, that political prisoners are staging there. John Dunn is also newly arrived at the prison, having taken on the job of guard—a brutal but effective way to support a house and a girlfriend, the domestic dream.   In the weeks leading up to Christmas, no one’s dreams go untroubled. As rumors of a hunger strike begin to circulate, Louise Dean’s pitch-perfect novel places two parents, two sons, and two enemies on a collision course that ends in a surprising and deeply resonant climax.

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Incarcerated within Belfast's notorious Maze prison in the weeks before Christmas in 1979, Sean Moran emerges as a key player in the extreme Blanket protest at the height of Northern Ireland's Troubles, an uprising that is witnessed by new guard John Dunn. By the award-winning author of Becoming Strangers. 12,000 first printing.

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When the soldiers came the time before, the father went off with them. He had the same name as his son, so he went in his place. After a few days he was released. Their son was far away by then, down south.
 This time the son was in prison and they didn’t want the father. So what could the father do, except stand in the front room, in his underpants, hands in the sagging pockets of his cardigan, watching the soldiers moving back and forth between the front and back doors of his home.
 He was trying to think of something to say. His children and his wife were sat about in their nightclothes; they weren’t looking at him.
 ‘Yous think you know it all,’ was what he’d told them up at Castlereagh, the interrogation centre, when they’d come to realize their mistake. The first day they’d had him hands against the wall, legs apart, and when his knees weakened they’d shouted at him or kicked him. He’d not had anything he could tell them. Nor had he defied them. For two days they’d stopped him from sleeping, told him to sweep the hallway and when he’d sat down, they’d emptied out the bucket again and gone kicking the dust, cigarette butts, apple cores, and empty bleach bottles down along the corridor. Then they’d handed him back the broom. They let him go first thing on the third morning.
 He’d got off lightly, he knew it, when he stepped outside, turned his collar up and set off, the sky all of one colour, a licked pale grey. It was a damp morning to come home on, and no one was about. He’d had to wait for the dinnertime session for the telling.
 His son, Sean, had been inside Long Kesh for a month now. These men knew that. They were there because of the boy, because of where they lived, because they had another son and because they were Catholic.
 There was a stack of rifles on the living room floor. ‘Don’t you be touching those,’ he said to his children in a low voice with a light whistle in it, the air from the open front door catching on his back teeth. ‘They leave them there on purpose to see what the kids know.’
 From upstairs came the sound of a door being forced, once, twice, and through. His wife shook her head.
 ‘It’s true,’ said her husband. ‘They do.’
 The electric light was impotent, the daylight had taken over and so his wife got up to switch it off and pull back the curtains that gave on to their scrap of back garden–some grass, bare patches, a washing line with a pair of pants on it, legs sewn to hold pegs. To the right-hand side of the line, within the creosote armpit of a shed, was a gap that went through to the next street. The last time, she’d had a go at the soldiers when they came in, she’d jumped up to stall them, to make sure her son got away through that gap. She’d kept them then at the front door, offered them her husband herself. ‘If it’s Sean you’re after, well here he is.’ And sure enough they looked at the man in his jumper and Y-fronts and agreed he’d do. She, herself, had had him by one of his sleeves, shaking it.
 ‘Who gave you permission to come in my house?’ she said now.
 ‘We’ve got all the permission we need,’ said one, loafing by the sideboard, looking at her ornaments.
 ‘You’ve got the guns is all.’
 ‘We’re not the only ones. Show us where you keep yours and we’ll be away.’
 ‘Liam, show the man your water pistol.’
 Upstairs, they were crow-barring the floorboards, emptying drawers and cupboards. There wasn’t a house in Ballymurphy that hadn’t been pulled apart by the British Army. The soldier at the sideboard was going through those drawers, taking out chequebooks and bills, newspaper cuttings and photos. He left the drawers open, looked again, then picked up a black rubber bullet that was on the top shelf. It was about three inches long and an inch wide.
 ‘Souvenir?’ he asked her.
 ‘Is it one of yours?’ she asked. ‘One just like that was fired into the face of my neighbour’s boy. Fifteen years old. His mother’s only son and now he can’t even feed himself.’ One of the soldier’s boots came through the ceiling into the living room and a shower of brown dust came shooting down. ‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary! And what if this was your own mother’s home?’
 ‘My mother didn’t raise a terrorist,’ said the soldier by the door to the hallway, leaning back, looking casual. He was tall, his back was straight, his eyes blue. He was in his twenties, smart in his uniform, his beret poised. There was a light white powder in the air. When her husband made to go into the kitchen, the soldier told him to sit down.
 Those who’d been upstairs came clattering down the narrow stairway, one after the other until most of them were in the front room, filling it entirely, with two more in the hall. A shorter man stood in the doorway with his hands up above his head holding on to the frame.
 ‘Clear, Sarge,’ he said to the soldier at the sideboard.
 This man, their sergeant, took a last look around the living room, taking in the vases and knick-knacks on the sideboard and mantelpiece, a small pale blue Madonna, a large conch sea shell, a few dark-coloured glass vases with gilt lettering, place names, a maple-leaf shaped piece of wood with ‘Canada’ carved on to it.
 ‘You’ve got a nice home, Mrs,’ he said. ‘One of the cleanest I’ve been in anyway. Any chance of a cup of tea for the lads?’
 ‘Go fuck yourselves,’ she said.
 Her younger son stood up beside her, the shoulders of his small frame rose and fell; with his mouth open, he was like a baby bird wanting to be fed.
 ‘Starting him off young, are you?’ said the sergeant. ‘That’s what you call infantry, that is.’ He threw a look at the handsome soldier.
 Kathleen pointed towards the door.
 ‘Out, yous!’
 They were in no rush. The sergeant took another look around, clapped his hands together, strolled across to the stairwell and gave the order. His men started to move themselves, gather the guns. The last one out was the handsome soldier, who looked up at the framed poster of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on his way and tutted. He tipped the barrel of his rifle at the wife, touching her very lightly at her throat, where her dressing gown crossed. ‘I bet you were one of them who used to be nice to us, once.’
 Her cheeks flushed, Kathleen went to the front door to close it after them. She saw that the porch light had been smashed in. ‘Ach for God’s sake!’ she called out, and started to shove the jarred door with fury and hurt. ‘Harassment, that’s all it is,’ said her husband, coming up behind her, his voice growing as they watched the men going down the path and through the front gate. ‘To keep us in our place . . .’
 ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ she said, turning to him.
 He had a moment to look at her, her face backing into the new daylight, her neck stretching, a space between utterances, and he said nothing, paus

LOUISE DEAN is the author of Becoming Strangers, which won the Betty Trask Award and was long-listed for the 2004 Man Booker Prize as well as the Guardian First Novel Award. She lives in France.

Christmas is coming in bleak and lawless 1979 Belfast, but there is little cheer for the families of IRA political prisoners or for their prison guards. Alternating chapters follow the stories of Sean Moran, a young man in prison for his part in a car bombing gone awry, and John Dunn, a former British soldier and recent guard recruit. Brutality and mistrust characterize both sides of this increasingly volatile conflict. Finally, with the assistance of outside agitators, the inmates conspire to begin a hunger strike in support of their demands for more humane conditions. As inside conditions go from squalid to hellish, more human dramas take place outside Maze Prison, as Dunn finds a college-age son he never knew he had and Moran's mother comes to terms with her unhappy marriage. Drawing on actual events, Dean uses crystalline prose to paint both sides of the conflict with an equally tender and sympathetic brush. Not for the squeamish but highly recommended. Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

[Page 135]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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Set in Belfast during the Troubles, Dean's accomplished second novel (after Becoming Strangers ) is an affecting and well-researched depiction of the political and social strife of Northern Ireland in the winter of 1979. John Dunne, a 20-year veteran of the British army, takes a job as a prison guard at Belfast's Maze prison and is assigned to work in the squalid high-security block where the most hardened IRA inmates are engaged in a protest they call the Blanket (the inmates refuse to wear clothes and smear their feces on the cell walls one enterprising pair "paints" a fireplace). A newly arrived inmate, Sean Moran, imprisoned for his part in the bombing death of a policeman, becomes pivotal in the plan to take the protest to the next level. On the outside, Sean's mother, Kathleen, struggles to raise her remaining children while British soldiers routinely search her house for weapons, and John grows close with his adult illegitimate son. The possibility of violence is ever-present, especially for John, whose job makes him a target on and off the clock. Dean writes strong characters and provides a sympathetic rendering of both sides of the conflict, making for a powerful and memorable novel. (Feb.)

[Page 31]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.