Thirsty Ghosts
Like ploughshares into swords, Emer Martin’s novel transforms storytelling and bearing witness into powerful weapons against cruelty and oblivion.
A sequel to Martin’s Cruelty Men, Thirsty Ghosts assembles a magnificent cast of characters from Irish history that recount their sufferings in memorable, highly individual voices. Ireland itself, in the person of the hag, gets to have her say. The numerous colourful strands of the narrative—alternating between violent assaults by the British in the past and the post-EEC Republic—come together in a richly patterned canvas that lays out before the reader a beautiful, albeit painful, portrait of the country. It adds to the profundity of the novel that the speakers are marginalized personalities, extending from murdered villagers of previous centuries to servants ill-used by the rich, and from the girls exploited in the Magdalene Laundries to Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. But modern Ireland, too, enslaves. Parents sacrifice the welfare of their children to their political convictions. A former convent inmate, victimized by criminals, turns into an addict.
As the passages set during the remoter periods of history bring to light the string of atrocities committed by the British on Irish soil, they serve as the backdrop for the contemporary story that recounts the interconnected fates of two dynasties, the Dublin-based O Connails and the rural Lyons. What makes Thirsty Ghosts particularly special is that in contrast to many other Irish novels, the Troubles are not only depicted from the Catholic perspective, but from the viewpoint of Jewish family members, whose outlook tends to be objective and cosmopolitan. In the end, though, they, too, fall victim to the vicious cycle of crime and retribution that continues to plague Ireland. Might the only hope lie with the young who are able to escape what for too long has been deemed the destiny of the Irish?
