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The Truth Commissioner (Hardcover)

by David Park (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
Price: £11.49 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; First Edition edition (4 Feb 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0747591296
  • ISBN-13: 978-0747591290
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.2 x 3.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 147,667 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

'It's a magnificent novel and I can't stop thinking about it.'
--Joseph O'Connor


Product Description

Henry Stanfield, the newly arrived Truth Commissioner, is troubled by his estrangement from his daughter, and struggling with the consequences of his infidelities. Francis Gilroy, veteran Republican and recently appointed government minister, risks losing what feels tantalisingly close to his grasp. In America, Danny and his partner plan for the arrival of their first child, happily oblivious to what is about to pull him back to Belfast and rupture the life they have started together. Retired detective James Fenton, on his way to an orphanage in Romania with a van full of supplies, will soon be forced to confront what he has come to think of as his betrayal, years before, of a teenage boy. In a society trying to heal the scars of the past with the salve of truth and reconciliation, four men's lives become linked in a way they could never have imagined. In a community where truth is often tribal and partial, the secret they share threatens to destroy what they have each built in the present. David Park pieces together these individual stories to create a powerful tale that transcends both time and place. Moving, insightful and utterly involving, The Truth Commissioner is an important novel from one of Ireland's greatest writers.
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The Truth Commissioner
94% buy the item featured on this page:
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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Waiting for the angel..., 15 Feb 2008
A truly excellent book.

A fictional Truth Commission is set up to examine Northern Ireland's troubled past. It is headed up by a particularly unsavoury character whose main aim is to get the job done, get out of Northern Ireland and then reap any benefits which may come his way. A retired RUC officer, a government minister with an IRA past and a young man living in America all have links to a missing boy who vanished during the height of the Troubles. Each character has attempted to put their past behind them and create a new life. However, the formation of the Truth Commission means they are now called to account for the past; a past which they had hoped had vanished also. Each character is shadowed by guilt, fear, self-justification or the need for atonement to a greater or lesser degree. Will the stirring of the waters bring freedom from a terrible past or simply a muddying of the waters? This book provokes many questions and not just in the context of Northern Ireland; you need no knowledge of or interest in the place to be dazzled by this book.

All of David Park's books are brilliant and thought-provoking. There is a simplicity in his style of writing that belies the power behind his work.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A book of this time, examining the place of truth as Northern Ireland deals with its past, 12 Feb 2008
By Alan Meban (Belfast, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
David Park has struck it lucky. Northern Ireland is sitting at the painted give way line waiting to drive out onto the roundabout of dealing with our past. Yet everyone is wondering what exit to take, what road we should journey down to try to uncover the truth behind events in the conflict. It's a good moment to be reading David Park's latest novel The Truth Commissioner as it rehearses one of the possible ways forward.

After learning about the four main characters, the book enters it's well-paced final section where the best laid plans in the truth process come unstuck. So many fragments of Northern Ireland's past: informers, the Disappeared, bugging, securocrats.

The book asks questions about truth. What it is? And at what price? It's a great book. A book of this time and of this place, Northern Ireland. Well worth reading for the story, as well as the ideas that will encountered in society at large over the next couple of years.
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10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A subtle, human novel, 11 Aug 2008
By Mister Hobgoblin (Edinburgh, Scotland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
David Park is a much underrated writer, and it was no surprise to see The Truth Commissioner passed over by the Booker Committee. But it was nevertheless sad - The Truth Commissioner is a subtle, human novel that adds enormously to the oeuvre of Northern Ireland literature.

The Truth Commissioner focuses on four people whose future lives depend in different ways on the handling of a truth and reconciliation hearing into the death of Connor Walshe, a 15 year old truant who sold tittle tattle to the RUC. It would be easy to play this as the Commissioner; the Sinn Fein Minister; the ex-RUC man; and the "On The Run" Terrorist. It would have been easy to focus on what had happened in the original incident; on the police investigation; on the immediate aftermath on the lives of the Walshe family. But David Park takes a much more subtle approach, drawing careful portraits of the four individuals - from different backgrounds and with different perspectives - in great detail. We see four people set in the here and now, their pasts hidden beneath layers of denial and layers of later experience.

The first half of the text appears to be simple pen portraits of these four, relatively unconnected lives. They are finely crafted, and David Park is able to evoke a sense of place just as much as a sense of person. The inherent dampness of the Belfast air seeps into the pores. The concrete corridors and warm forests of Romania lift effortlessly from the page. And the inherent melancholy and loneliness of all four protagonists cuts through the various settings and stories.

In the second half of the novel, the forthcoming hearing brings the characters together. We see political intrigue; we see the lies and manipulation that have been second nature to the various sides of the Troubles shining on into the peace process. The irony is that everyone claims to want the truth, but in fact, very few people want it at all. And at heart, the truth is unknowable anyway. Too many people have too many perspectives, and the real truth is almost an irrelevance underneath all the hopes, expectations and prejudices.

If there is a criticism, the ending does stray a little into cliché. The novel might have been stronger if it had ended as the hearing ended, and leave the story hanging. Alternatively, there might have been more pathos if people had just gone home without incident, leaving the past as a festering, but increasingly irrelevant wound. Whatever, the drama wasn't really needed or expected. But it shouldn't detract from what is a masterpiece of sensitivity and understanding in unfolding a scene of unremitting hopelessness.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars I liked it, but with qualifications
I enjoyed reading this book. It is really well written, with believable characters and makes important and perceptive points about the human impact of the move from conflict to... Read more
Published 19 months ago by P. Morrison

4.0 out of 5 stars Somehow slightly unsatisfying
Don't get me wrong. It's a very good book, but I wanted another ten pages to expand on the ending, which was rushed and chaotic, a reflection of the way the book ends... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Ms. M. Moules

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