Reading Diary.

In short:

This is a bleak, blunt novel about the criminal underbelly of Cork. It deals out blows of merciless brutality to its believably multi-dimensional characters, and in doing so, reads as uncomfortably realistic. Not a beach read, but a worthwhile one.

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McInerney opens a window into the intersecting lives of five Cork natives struggling to get by: Ryan Cusack, the protagonist and drug-dealing minor, Tony Cusack, his abusive, alcoholic father, Georgie Fitzsimons, a girl forced into prostitution, Maureen Phelan, the mother of Cork’s worst gangster, and Jimmy Phelan, said gangster. They all face different obstacles rooted in circumstance. Poverty, poor health and meagre means determine their place in Cork’s pecking order early on, and, as I read, I hoped they would make it out alive. Despite not being hooked until well into the novel, I still kept reading for the sharp, breathless and highly inventive prose. I kept reading through the unlikely twists and turns of the plot, too, until I couldn't stop and had to know what happened to Ryan - In the end, I wasn't sure if I was better off knowing or not.

After finishing The Glorious Heresies, I looked up Lisa McInerney’s other works, and found that she’s written a sequel to her debut, focusing on the further course of Ryan’s life. Having witnessed firsthand McInerney’s unsparing - if realistic - way of handling her protagonists, I’ll first have to work up the courage to once again descend into the Cork underworld, and to hope against hope that Ryan is okay.