- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; New edition edition (3 April 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743240022
- ISBN-13: 978-0743240024
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 345,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
The Telegraph
'Nothing short of astonishing'.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Observer
'This Human Season is a novel that confirms the arrival of a significant voice in British fiction'.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This novel set in Ulster at the Xmas time just before hunger strikes were commenced by IRA prisoners in the Maze is a very well written and researched novel of two stories run in parallel. The one is of a Catholic family whose oldest son has just gone "on the blanket" in the Maze prison and the other is of an English ex-soldier who has returned to live in Northern Ireland to be a prison guard in the Maze and the son who he has never met coming to visit him shortly after.
The skill with which the two stories are developed alongside each other by the simple structure of alternating chapters between the two stories and neither story ever interacting even at the end (though events such as a prison visit bring them in proximity) is a masterful technique I have not seen used before in a novel and
allows a true panorama to be created.
The evoking of that period with the capturing of all its historic emotion for both catholic and protestant communities and the spot on depiction of endless abusing of events by different factions for their own personal selfish ends is what makes this novel so memorable.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A friend from Ballymurphy recommended this to me, a novel that takes place around Christmas 1979 as seen through two characters who never meet: Kathleen Moran, a West Belfast mother, wife, and weary at the age of 40, with one son contemplating the looming choice to go on hunger strike in Long Kesh prison. There, guard John Dunn, a veteran of the British Army who has already done three tours in the North of Ireland, decides to work for the increased pay given for such hazardous duty, not only on the inside, but as a target outside the walls from both embittered Loyalists as well as hostile Republicans.
Dean tells these two tales well. She avoids cliche, does not show off an overly literary style, preferring to keep more inside, via indirect narration, the perspectives largely limited to Kathleen and John. As the novel progresses, we begin to see more about their partners, their pasts, their relatives, and the reasons they both choose to endure the North rather than flee for less embattled, more leisurely, climes. The alternation, every chapter, of their two stories helps avoid melodrama or predictability. By no means a "Troubles thriller" or a hackneyed hand-wringing liberal plaint, the author--as her acknowledgments show in the appendix, has by interviewing and listening to the real people who lived through this time been able to mix their experiences into fiction that passes for fact, as limited to two frail people recognizably very human.
While I in turn recommend this book, a few very minor points prevented it from earning a full five stars. Twice the names of Cardinal O Fiach and the first name of Eamon[n] are misspelled--this shows a shortsighted editor; the misspelling of the area of Twinbrook, again a miniscule slip, again makes me wish a bit more attention had been paid to such telling details so that they rang as true as possible. Some of the supporting characters, such as Lingard's wife, the priest Father Pearse, Brendan the Sinn Fein publicist, and O'Malley the IRA OC, perhaps based on real folks, do not always share the same depth as the main characters, and therefore leave the reader a bit let down. Finally, there is what seems to be a half-visible subplot about Loyalists having been attacked by the guards and the resulting backlash from those on the outside against John and his colleagues that remains too vaguely developed.
In closing, this book effectively avoids what I thought would be the pat ending, and Dean, nearly to the conclusion, manages to freshen up what has by now decades on become its own often all too predictable genre of British literature. The pace does weary just short of the finish line. Yet, the two leading characters, by their refusal to become either plaster saints or evil figurines, earn the reader's trust and empathy.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Many books today present the reader with a confliction of ideas or two opposing sides battling it out for a conclusion. Then when this conclusion passes, the reader more or less feels coerced into jumping on board with that outcome.
'This Human Season's' conflict however stays with you after the last few pages, and even after the few weeks following the end of the book. Louise Dean writes with such eloquence and yet morbid flattery that it becomes reminiscent of Alexander Trocchi - forcing the reader into seeing the beauty behind the repulsive. This is in fact theme of the book - the beauty of the IRA: the families and communities surrounding the organisation and their imprisoned loved ones. We, as the reader, want to be repulsed by their bombings and selfishness yet see a silver lining on this most dark of clouds. The IRA is then set against the life of a prison guard in Northern Ireland, John Dunn, and his problems at home with a son he never knew he had and a partner he seems to mire toleration in. Yet Louise Dean never falls into the trap of making a novel that defends the IRA, which would too easily rely upon its controversy to be noticed. Her writing is far too personal and breathtaking, as we almost look entirely beyond the two sides and into a grooup of lives with problems and loves and hurts.
Presented in opposing chapters, 'This Human Season' constantly twists our allegiance until we finally realise that we shouldn't be seeking to take a side, but to simply see and breath in the two sides of the coin.
'This Human Season's' conflict however stays with you after the last few pages, and even after the few weeks following the end of the book. Louise Dean writes with such eloquence and yet morbid flattery that it becomes reminiscent of Alexander Trocchi - forcing the reader into seeing the beauty behind the repulsive. This is in fact theme of the book - the beauty of the IRA: the families and communities surrounding the organisation and their imprisoned loved ones. We, as the reader, want to be repulsed by their bombings and selfishness yet see a silver lining on this most dark of clouds. The IRA is then set against the life of a prison guard in Northern Ireland, John Dunn, and his problems at home with a son he never knew he had and a partner he seems to mire toleration in. Yet Louise Dean never falls into the trap of making a novel that defends the IRA, which would too easily rely upon its controversy to be noticed. Her writing is far too personal and breathtaking, as we almost look entirely beyond the two sides and into a grooup of lives with problems and loves and hurts.
Presented in opposing chapters, 'This Human Season' constantly twists our allegiance until we finally realise that we shouldn't be seeking to take a side, but to simply see and breath in the two sides of the coin.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
"You're already involved, aren't you, just by living here; so you...
Set in Belfast, this novel by Louise Dean focuses on the sectarian violence between Republicans and Loyalists, Catholics and Protestants, which reaches its irrational peak in the... Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2007 by Mary Whipple
An education
I would not have chosen to read this book had it not been for a friend at our book group. However, I found it a real education and the discussion it provoked was in the main... Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2006 by A. Bennett
Christmas 1979, in & out of Long Kesh
A friend from Ballymurphy recommended this to me, a novel that takes place around Christmas 1979 as seen through two characters who never meet: Kathleen Moran, a West Belfast... Read more
Published on 21 Mar 2006 by John L Murphy
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