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Louise Dean

This Human Season Paperback – 3 April 2006

by Louise Dean (Author)

39 ratings

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It is December 1979. Kathleen's son Sean has been convicted of a crime on behalf of the IRA and sent to Long Kesh prison - newly renamed the Maze. John Dunn has just taken up a job as a prison guard after leaving the army. Both will be shocked at what they find. Both will try to do the right thing, and fail. Neither will ever be the same again. Louise Dean's sensational new novel deals with one of the most explosive and morally complex incidents in recent British history. THIS HUMAN SEASON is a powerful, confronting, humane, and blackly funny examination of the lives of ordinary people when placed in the vice of history.

Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Simon & Schuster UK
Publication date

3 April 2006
Dimensions

13 x 2.3 x 19.8 cm
ISBN-10

0743240022
ISBN-13

978-0743240024
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Product details

Publisher : Simon & Schuster UK; New e. edition (3 April 2006)
Language : English
Paperback : 384 pages
ISBN-10 : 0743240022
ISBN-13 : 978-0743240024
Dimensions : 13 x 2.3 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 816,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 66,572 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 78,433 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
39 ratings

Product description

Synopsis

It is December 1979. Kathleen's son Sean has been convicted of a crime on behalf of the IRA and sent to Long Kesh prison - newly renamed the Maze. John Dunn has just taken up a job as a prison guard after leaving the army. Both will be shocked at what they find. Both will try to do the right thing, and fail. Neither will ever be the same again. Louise Dean's sensational new novel deals with one of the most explosive and morally complex incidents in recent British history. "This Human Season" is a powerful, confronting, humane, and blackly funny examination of the lives of ordinary people when placed in the vice of history.

About the Author

Louise Dean lives in France with her husband and three children.

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5 star		43%
4 star		31%
3 star		22%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

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Donny Rock

Belfast, 1980s

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 February 2020

Verified Purchase

The lead=up to the infamous hunger strikes and deaths in Long kesh through the eyes of a Catholic family, an English prison guard working in the place and also some of the inmates. This is a very well researched novel and told with sublime accuracy showing the injustice of the system, the intransigence of the people, the lack of care and conscience in the prison and, above all, the absolute futility of so-called religious struggles.
This is a strongly recommended read.

Helpful

Alison

Authentic for such a difficult subject.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 December 2020

Verified Purchase

The author did her research and the writing is so authentic, I am from the southern part of Ulster and the I can hear how they speak. The storyline is not one that is written about a lot. I found the different POV believable and easily got inside their heads, and there was a lot of empathy in the writing for both sides.

Helpful

A gritty evoking of an emotional time

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 February 2006

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.

8 people found this helpful

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Cartyan

Horrific

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 February 2020

Verified Purchase

How she managed to write with such knowledge and balance about these awful times is amazing. She brought the horror and humour together to keep this reader entranced. A first class writer whose other books I'll now seek out.

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Debbie Evans

Due credit

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 February 2021

Verified Purchase

Credit to the author for tackling a difficult subject, pulling it off incorporating very believable characters with authentic voices. Disappointed that main strands did not quite converge, and the peppering of commercial devices was an unnecessary evil.

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2017

Verified Purchase

Enjoyed

Helpful

John L Murphy

1979, Christmas, Long Kesh or back in E/W Belfast

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 March 2006

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.

17 people found this helpful

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