Trey Reddy is now 16 and mixing with other teenagers. She is finding her own place in the community. There is some stability in her life. Weekdays with her mother and siblings. Weekends with Cal woodworking and Lena learning about life.
Unlike the other residents of Ardnakelty, Lena is reserved. She is content to live alone and enjoy a companionable intimate relationship with Cal. She rarely joins in the Ardnakelty passion for gossip. Not for Lena to pass on or create or embellish a rumour.
She is astute in recognizing Trey is becoming a young woman seeking new relationships and contemplating an apprenticeship to a professional woodworker. Cal is dismayed. It had taken him years to feel comfortable in dealing with a young teenager. Now he must start over again.
The rhythms of fall in Ardnakelty are broken when Rachel Holohan, a young woman of about 20, is found drowned. The villagers and farmers contemplate her death. There is a collective complex assessment of whether she died accidentally or by suicide or by murder. As in the earlier two books of the trilogy the people of the townland will reach their own conclusions and take their own actions. They reject officialdom deciding what happened. In a uniquely Irish approach one of the farmers in the pub provides their verdict by singing a cappella a haunting song of death with the other patrons joining him by humming.
Rachel was going out with Eugene, the smarmy son of local big man, Tommy Moynihan. Tommy is adept at using the levers of power to get his way.
The complications never end. When the cause of Rachel’s death is determined the same process of communal review is applied to the reasons for her death. The analysis is wide ranging and the gossip often vicious.
Trey and what in North America would be called her squad get involved.
On the pretext of delivering a jar of homemade blackberry jam Lena speaks to women she has not spoken to in 30 years. This time she will not let the community reach the convenient resolution.
As readers of the first two books would expect, Cal leaves the sidelines when there is a plot to cast a blame with which he cannot abide. At his core he needs to fix things.
Rachel’s Catholic funeral draws the community to physical proximity though at the funeral and the “afters” at a local hotel the mourners separate into their proper group. There is no communal emotional togetherness.
Lena’s decades of resisting involvement in local matters is dissolving and she is slotted at the hotel with the “girls” of her teenage years still living in the townland.
Words flow as easily among the women as among the men and all are experts at saying nothing. Still there are nuances to the conversations that the expert local interpreters pick up.
French has created characters to fill the townland. It is amazing how many men, women and children have roles in the book. Each has a personality.
While we all know the wicked exploit vulnerability the virtuous can also be ruthless. The reaction of the townland feeling threatened is primal and set the hair rising on the back of my neck.
The response to the reaction of the townland is calculated and dangerous especially for Lena.
And then there was a counter to the response. Contrary to centuries of rumour being the method of attack, all the conjectures are brought into the open in the pub leading to a dandy “roola-boola” in Mart’s words..
Mart, ever the realist confides in Cal that they can win the battle but progress and development are powerful foes. Ireland has a history of fighting for lost causes.
The ending was dramatic in ways thrillers cannot match. There is the subtlety of real life. There is loss and regret and reconciliation. Imperfect justice prevails and life in Ardnakelty carries on in the second quarter of the 21st Century. It is a satisfying end of the trilogy.
****
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