Wild with All Regrets
Though the Great War ended ten years ago, Irishman Lucas Connolly still struggles with his memories of the war and the loss of his best friend, Jamie. Through chapters that skip forward and back through the years of their friendship—from an instant boyhood bond to an unexpected reunion in a Dublin pub eight years later, from their shared Dublin flat to the trenches of war-torn Belgium—Deards tells a story of love, of sexual awakening, and of forgiveness. As Lucas recounts a thorny home life, a childhood shattered by abuse at the hands of a trusted adult, an adolescence trying to make sense of his feelings for other boys, and an adulthood secretly pining for his best friend, he shows us love in all its iterations.
Although set against a backdrop of early 20th-century Ireland, both time and place remain as backdrops. Deards’ debut is less about history and more about characters. Although at times this can feel like a missed opportunity, especially when it comes to Ireland’s political history and queer history of that era, Deards succeeds in creating multifaceted and expressive characters. Lucas is a strong narrator, one to sympathize with as he struggles with abuse, with his sexuality, with loss, and with guilt compounded from all three, and to cheer on as he nonetheless perseveres. Deards chooses to focus on internal conflicts for Lucas. He is only minimally worried about prosecution for his sexuality or about the danger of the trenches, but he carries guilt for surviving a war that Jamie did not, pain for never telling Jamie how he felt, and loneliness for being without the man he still loves. A thoughtful novel.
