Acts of Allegiance
This is the story of Marty Ransom, Irish landowner and diplomat, on the one hand Establishment to his well-polished boots, on the other, the son of a gambler and conman from the back streets of Waterford whose cousin makes bombs for the IRA. When asked by the Dublin government to act as a go-between, Ransom is confronted by agonising moral choices. As he tries to negotiate between his conscience and his patriotism, he reflects on his life, recalling the conflicting influences that have made him who he is.
Cunningham is an elegant writer, particularly when describing the landscapes of County Waterford, and his story is well-crafted, with a final, disconcerting twist which the author keeps carefully hidden to the end. At times, he is reminiscent of John Le Carré. Yet the novel does not quite work. Ransom is a somewhat humourless, self-pitying narrator to whom I did not warm. When he is funny, in, for example, his descriptions of his father’s family, the humour is leaden and predictable. The family comes over as stock eccentric Irish rather than as an assemblage of real people. There is an excess of scene-setting, which gets in the way of both the action and character development. The two women in Ransom’s life are very under-developed, which makes it difficult to care what happens to them.
The history of Ireland in the early years of The Troubles is absorbing, and may have a new relevance as the consequences of Brexit unravel on that island, but there is better writing about it than this.
