The First Verse (Brandon Originals) [Paperback]

 

 

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Niall Lenihan is thrilled to have obtained a prestigious scholarship to study at the salubrious Trinity College in Dublin. A young man from the suburbs, Niall is looking forward to tasting the delights of the big city, at last able to leave his unhurried life with his parents and his innocent childhood behind. It's not that he doesn't love his mother and father; it's just that as a young gay man, the cosmopolitanism of Ireland's largest city holds such promise, exhilaration, and fun.

It doesn't take long for Niall to settle into the sacred halls of Trinity College, sampling his newfound surrounds, the lights of the big city now on his doorstep. The Dublin streets are thriving, with a gay nightlife that is teaming with erotic possibilities. Niall is immediately seduced by the potential for easy sex, "the flashing lights, and smell of aftershave, the smell of male sweat and Smirnoff Ice" and spends his nights cruising for guys and drinking in the city's various pubs, hotels, and nightclubs.

He also manages to make a few new friends along the way, especially the bubbly Fionnuala with her warm sense of companionship, and whilst he reconnects with his sturdy best friend Patrick, even ending up sharing an apartment with him, Niall mostly connects on a deeper level with Chris, a good looking Northerner, who eventually charms Niall with his clipped friendly accent, and earthy kindly ways.

However, it is to the enigmatic Sarah and John that Niall is most attracted. After saving him from a near fatal gay bashing, Niall is steadily drawn to John; it's part sexual attraction and part mystification at this cloistered, sinister world that he shares with Sarah. Both John and Sarah seek guidance from the pages of literature letting the signs and symbols, the sentences from books determine their actions in life.

Grudgingly, they admit him to their private sessions, a type of candle lit séance, where sections of books are repeated in a mantra again and again. At first, the excitable Niall treats this new pursuit as type of frivolous game, failing to take seriously this strange world of "sortes," and "synchronicities." However, soon odd coincidences begin to plague him: A strange man who knows his name sings songs at his window, and words of the song keep turning up everywhere he looks.

As Niall becomes ever more addicted and besotted, seduced by the possibility of the fullness and newness of things he doesn't know, he begins to realize that he has a strange energy that is connecting in some way with an energy of another world, a world he cannot readily see, the world in all writing and art, and perhaps also the world of the dead. The synchronicities open a channel, the domains of experience opening up a fissure where one "world" can flow into another, two mutually exclusive universes held in the balance.

Whilst Niall fanatically pulls the endless threads of meaning from tiny fragments of prose, text messages and voice mail messages from the worried Patrick and the concerned Fionnuala are left unanswered. As fits of melancholy become more deliberating, a frequent a sense of doom fills Niall, and soon he is spinning fiction - first lying to Chris, and then to his psychiatrist when he fails his first year of study. He wants to shake the sinister hold that Sarah and John have over him, but the thought of continually connecting to another more spiritual world is just too enticing for him to pass up.

Author Barry Mcrea has spun a wholly original tale of self-discovery, as he recounts with an intellectual grandeur and psychological adroitness, his young protagonist's efforts to move on, and hopefully leave the ghosts of the past behind him. Niall tries to build up a complete picture of the world that he feels is missing, but in his efforts to do so, he is in danger of alienating those who are the closest to him.

Written with layers of metaphor and meaning, and a narrative structure that is complex and multi-layered, we not only witness Niall as he transforms into a man of newly acquired confidence and worldliness, but we also witness his efforts to almost reinvent his masculinity. The First Verse is far from a coming out story - although Neill is gay, he is surprisingly comfortable with his sexuality – instead, the novel is more a trenchant study of one young man's efforts to "make an old world slowly bleed into a new one."

Littered with hip, vibrant, and, youthful characters, right on the cusp of achievement, The First Verse is a book lover's delight, a darkly ironic tribute to the world of literature, the insular world of academia, and also to the written word. Before he realizes it, Niall is plunged into a shadowy world, forced to live in a profoundly isolated nucleus, an utter disconnection from the normal outside world. Mike Leonard January 06.

Niall Leniham is a bright young student from a better suburb south of Dublin who struggles with his gay inclinations. He is infatuated with Ian, a popular school boy, whom he goes out of his way to befriend, but it seems he is never fully accepted into Ian's circle. When he wins a prestigious scholarship to Trinity College Dublin he soon falls in with a new group of friends, and also discovers the lively gay scene. His first encounter though is with the enigmatic Pablo Virgomare, who becomes an infatuation for Niall, and something of a White Rabbit character mysteriously appearing at different times throughout the book.
After a while Niall becomes drawn into the activities of an older student Sarah and bank employee John, who use random text extracts from books to make decisions and determine their lives. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Niall forces himself upon the pair following a brief encounter with their practices, for neither Sarah nor John make him particularly welcome. The fact that he has a crush on John, who earlier rescued him from an attempted gay bashing, adds to the attraction. As Niall becomes more deeply involved with what he himself describes as the "sect", it begins to take over his life to the extent he breaks contact with his family and friends, including his old school friend Patrick, his new friends at TCD, and the boyfriend, Chris, he meets in a Dublin gay bar and with whom he has the chance of building a relationship.
Following a nervous breakdown he is brought to his senses, and starts to rebuild a normal life. However he eventually has a relapse, and resorting again to consulting random texts, he rushes off to France to find Sarah and John, before coming to a final realisation.
The major part or the novel does concentrate on Niall's dealings with his obsession and the sect's activities, and it does require some effort at times to stick with it. However this is a beautifully written story and Niall's obsession is convincingly portrayed, as is his youthful enthusiasm for involvement despite the indifferent treatment from Sarah and John.
It is interesting to see how his relationship with his childhood friend Patrick matures, and how he eventually reconciles his earlier infatuation with Ian. His affair with Chris, an office worker from a north Dublin working class background and who comes over as a particularly appealing character, is heart warming, and that Chris puts up with Niall's unreliable behaviour indicates the depth of his feelings for Niall.

Barry McCrea describes in his wonderful novel "The First Verse" a story of the student Niall, who starts his studies at the Trinity College in Dublin. From this point on, his life changes in a seemingly magical way. At the beginning of his studies, he makes friends with other students; the typical relationships between students arise. The study of the young man, who just discovers his homosexuality, could have normal and successful progress.

Suddenly, the sensitive young man, however, contacts with the religious order of "Literati." He meets John and Sarah, whom him initiate into the art of "sortes". Apparently they are able to predict the future using fateful passages from old books. They are onto mystery of life. More and more the young man estranges from his previous life, his studies and his relationships. Niall becomes increasingly disorganized and aimless. His life is falling apart. He is confused by the city. At times, he is at other places, he is running around Dublin and suddenly finds himself back in Paris. He hears voices from the neighbouring apartment and embarks on a search for Pablo, who was apparently outside his window whistling a song that has a deep meaning for Niall and must remind him of his childhood. Only briefly, in the middle of the novel, it is clear that Niall obviously suffers from a mental disease. The mother of his friend, a doctor, is trying to help him. This and the passionate relationship with Chris, in which he has fallen in love seems to stabilize him, but only briefly, then again symptoms of psychosis become part of his life.

We readers experience the schizophrenia from the student's perspective and dive into the delusions, the hallucinations and the mystical world of the patient. The book is distinguished by the fact that the sensitive interior view of a person with schizophrenia is presented. Many facets of the disease are transparently presented to the reader. Already at the beginning of the novel Niall develops visual and auditory hallucinations. He sees Pablo in front of his window. He has never met him before, but he relates the song Pablo is whistling to himself. John and Sarah, who only exist in his imagination, start to gain control of his mind. Carefully the author foreshadows that these two people are not real. Once Niall leaves a pub, apparently with John, with whom he is chatting. From the reaction of the doorman, however, we recognize that the young man it talking to himself.

Later it comes to increasing social isolation of the young man. Sometimes he's pursued in search of John and Sarah, then he feels threatened and observed. In a fascinating way, the author describes the various symptoms of schizophrenia: tracking, impairment and relationship experiences, visual and acoustical hallucinations and derealisation experiences.

Finally, in Paris Niall meets an American journalist who interviews him and writes down his story. Beginning and end of the book reveal that Niall's disease occurs in recurrent phases and breaks out again and again. Therefore, the end of the book must remain open.

With the "The First Verse" Barry McCrea offers a wonderful book illustrating very sensitively the mystery of schizophrenia from the perspective of a young man concerned. Although or rather because of the author never mentions the name of the disease or looks upon it instructively he gives us an entertaining novel warmly recommended to everybody, who grapples intensively with schizophrenic psychosis, or only wants to know more about it.

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3.0 out of 5 stars A great novel? Are you seriuos?
I'm so sorry, but I have to post this review. I find this book to be very boring and dull. After reading 150 pages of it, I became frustrated. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Vitaly B.C., Moscow

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