Himself: A Novel
By: Jess Kidd / Narrated By: Aidan Kelly
Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
Intense, beautifully written, oh so ugly but lovely lovely lovely
I’d just come off TransAtlantic and was thinking that, what with its finely-crafted turns of phrase, it was my best listen of the week. And then I listened to the first dark, oh soooo dark, five minutes of Himself, Jess Kidd’s debut novel, and I was hooked.
This is a brutally well-written book, and before I started this review I checked out what other people were thinking: And the most popular review? Well, that person said they could NOT get over the over-the-top animal cruelty. You see, kittens are drowned, and a dog is killed, and yes yes yes they could see how it furthered the story, but they simply couldn’t get the imagery out of their mind’s eye.
And that, dear Accomplice, is so very true. As I said? BRUTALLY well-written…
-BUT- It does indeed further the plot, and you KNOW I’d be pitching a nasty old hissy fit if I didn’t think so as I abhor violence and cruelty done to the Lesser of God’s Creatures. But if you’re looking for a neat and tidy listen, if you’re just looking for sweetness and light, oh good friend, run! run like the wind AWAY from this book because the opening has violence done to our fellow man.
The story? Mahony is a no-good layabout, too charming and good looking for his own good. Raised from infancy in an Irish orphanage, he’s spent his entire life thinking that his mum simply didn’t want him and dropped him there. An old photograph and hastily scrawled words hint that this mightn’t be so, that his dear old mama met a bad end, and he’s off to the tiny village of Muldeerrig to suss things out.
Naaaaaaturally, he turns the town upside down what with the women dying from his smoldering hot looks and easy charm, and all the men wanting to drink a pint with this fine young specimen of manhood. The pious? The village priest? Oh gosh how they DO want him GONE and gone now! It’s up to no good, he is.
Soon, Mahony is in cahoots with old Mrs. Cauley, a fading actress and director of the annual parish charity play, and soon every single eccentric character is making him/herself known. The town, it has secrets, and Orla Sweeney, Mahony’s ma, and her fate have been tightly kept under wraps these 26 odd years. It’s ugly, ugly business, and soon Mahony is receiving pipe bombs through the letterbox, and a lovely ginger cat is poisoned, all these warnings: Keep out of what is not your business, get out of town, things are left unsaid for a reason.
Alternating between the 1940s of Orla’s girlhood and pregnancy, where she spread her legs for food and money, for sheer spite, for power; and the 1970s with Mahony in wide bell bottoms as he and his crew try to figure out who his father was, this is a cleverly and skillfully woven duo of stories. Chock-full of hearty characters who are never sentimentally quirky or glib, I loved how well-written, how deftly crafted and developed their personalities were. Whether it’s the crazy cat lady, doomed to be set designer when she’d rather be the play’s ingenue, or it’s Mahony’s savior and sidekick, the most lovable 7-year old girl (And oh yeah: She just happens to be very very dead), or it’s the cantankerous Mrs. Cauley as she wheels and deals, shakes and shimmies even as her wig is knocked askew, each character really came alive with Kidd’s easy hand.
This is simply glorious writing at its very best, where the woods are deep and dark and hold MONstrous secrets even as they hide a reclusive veteran of the war, where the town’s priest is a conniving man who holds sway and wields power as he damns his congregants to Hell, where a young girl can love Mahony even as she knows that, were he to love her back, it’d be clipping his gorgeous wings, dooming him to a life of the boring, the everyday. Where a grieving mother, having buried a child, can find herself awake and alive once again, with skin aching for Mahony’s sizzling touch.
Where a 16-year old girl who never had anything and hates all she knows can find herself the proud mother of a most cherished son. Where that girl has to run for her life, outrun the mob with its righteous fury. A spellbinding look at small town Ireland, small town thinking, small town values that crackle, simmer, kill.
Where Colum McCann writes beautifully, writes epic, but still comes out with no story, here Jess Kidd takes the whole wide world, the Other Side, crushes it all together in one unforgiving clap of the hands, and gives us a story, MANY stories, of lives lived, lives done and gone but still hovering on This Side, lives sometimes without a future, lives with maybe a Tomorrow worth walking towards. I can’t tell you how brilliantly written this is, a stunning debut that’s dark and mysterious, that’s brooding and menacing, that’s warm and loving; a dead little girl finding joy in a newly dead dog. So twisted, but oh so lovely.
And from the get-go, narrator Aidan Kelly knocked my socks off—from brains being bashed in to Mahony petting a drunkard’s ferret, from little dead Ida lolling the word: Yo-YO! off her tongue, to crotchety Mrs. Cauley breaking down and beaming with love and pride, Kelly managed each and every character, navigated the ever-increasingly mystery-driven story with such ease and perverse humor. He has a lovely voice, down and dirty, sweet and funny. I don’t have ANY other performances of his in my Library, but you’d better believe that NOW I’m scouring the available audiobooks out there. Magnificent, and Bravo, Sir!
Not quite 10 hours that had me speeding the narration up, in spite of the heavily-accented banter, cuz I just neeeeded to know what was going to happen, then had me dropping back so I could savor the gorgeous ending, this was one dazzler of a debut. I think Kidd did better with the supernatural in this one than in Mr. Flood’s Last Resort with its talking saints and such all. No, this one had poignant and all too human ghosts swirling amongst us, and…?
…And…?
It was lovely, simply lovely. The dead are sad, but they can be beautiful too.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.