Swallowing the Sun by David Park

Yet another proof that David Park is Ireland's most contemporary Irish novelist using simple uncluttered prose to explore personal and social complexities

Martin Waring is the curator of the Ulster Museum in Belfast. He is married to Alison and they have two children Rachel and Tom. Rachel is the apple of her father's eye and he is overjoyed when he learns that his daughter has acquired 10 top grades, ten stars, and is destined to be accepted into one of the great institutions of learning....Oxford or Cambridge beckons. One night both Martin and his daughter make wrong decisions the outcome of which alters their lives, in a way that I as a reader did not see, and what follows is both harrowing and heart-wrenching in equal measures. It is difficult to actually discuss Swallowing the Sun without disclosing the plot and indeed the final outcome. We learn of a tough and abusive childhood with a vicious and drunken father and a mother too weak to protect the innocence of her sons; Martin and his brother Rob. In Belfast Martin has associations with loyalist gangs and sympathizers from the early hard days of his youth. As the story progresses he finds himself drawn back to his connections in an attempt to find answers as his life begins to unravel, spiraling out of control. The ending is a stroke of pure genius as the curator of the museum struggles to make sense of what has happened, creating a space that will forever act as a reminder of his loss and pain.

The characters in this story like all of us are flawed and the repercussions of decisions taken will always have a ripple effect on members of the family. Martin Waring openly displays his frailties yet as the novel progresses I began to develop an admiration for him as both he and his wife Alison learn to cope with a heartache that will forever remain. David Park has written a sublime novel, the open wounds of pain and regret on every page and every word and expression he uses adding to the feeling of hopelessness and sadness..."where the past is cared for and preserved, where nothing is allowed to decay or be destroyed"...."So why doesn't he come in now, sit on her bed and give her some advice? Tell her the things he knows. About how you find someone to love"....."He feels only the stirring of his doubt now, a loss of confidence, wonders if she will be able to read in his body the drive of his desperation, the depth of his need"....."where the past is cared for and preserved, where nothing is allowed to decay or be destroyed"....

If I were to choose one book that is both lyrical and thought provoking my choice would be this brilliant novel by David Park. Highly Recommended.

This is primarily a character-driven novel, though the last hundred pages or so are powered by an adrenalin-tinged plot. The pages turn themselves, but there is a depth here not found in most "thrillers." David Park is not simply a storyteller, he has something to say about the world.

A word of warning, before my praise. The subject matter here is emotionally gripping. To say more is to give away too much, but this is not a "feel good" novel. Because Park is so good at evoking the sense of the moment, some moments are quite difficult for the reader. Just fair warning that this book is not light and airy.

A talented writer, David Park crafts original prose and uses telling details to set tone and mood: "...a skinny shake of a dog...", "...The boats feel like bookmarks on the pages of different types of lives...", and "...As Roberts moves to the door she watches the thin spray of crumbs fall silently to the floor. She wonders if the biscuit was soft..." His writing is evocative and tight. He describes characters and their relationships with one another in a pleasingly efficient way. (Both of the following are from early in the novel, before the Warings' own personal Troubles.)

Martin and his wife Alison: "She...tells herself that she should wait up for him to hear him say, as he always does, `Give me some of your heat,' but knows already that she is slipping towards sleep. And now if anyone were to ask her, she would say that's all that marriage is about - a sharing of heat, trying to protect each other from the cold outside."

Martin and his daughter Rachel: "So why doesn't he come in now, sit on her bed and give her some advice? Tell her the things he knows. About how to find someone to love. When you give yourself. She swivels on her chair to signal him in, but there is no one there and when she turns the music down, she hears only the sound of running water. She lifts the little glass dome, shakes it softly and watches the snow fall."

Park shifts perspective from character to character, moving almost seemlessly from one character to the next. Though this is by no means a stream-of-consciousness novel, having just finished Virginia Woolf's THE WAVES, it struck me how Park uses a similar shifting-of-perspectives, but in a much more conventional manner. Woolf demonstrated how the object of one's study can often be illuminated and understood much more fully if through the multi-dimensional experience shifting perspectives allow. Park has taken those lessons, from Woolf or whomever, and has worked them into a pleasing, revealing style all his own.

Park's book also reminded me a bit of Bulgakov's THE WHITE GUARD. Like Bulgakov's work, SWALLOWING THE SUN is very much tied to both place and outside events and, yet, not "about" the place or the political events so central to that place. The novels are both about relationships and, in particular, the relationships within a single family. I will not say that Park has achieved with SWALLOWING THE SUN what Bulgakov did with THE WHITE GUARD, but Park's ability to evoke the psychology and emotions of a time without writing about the politics of the time was, for me, reminiscent of Bulgakov. Just as you need not know or care anything about civil war in Ukraine to fall in love with the Turbin family, you need not know or care about the Troubles to fall in love with the Warings or to feel you know them.

And that, I think, is the power of the book. Park draws convincing characters with understanable motivations and psychologies. By the end of this book, you know this family, appreciate their foibles, and are a bit disappointed to have to leave their company by finishing the novel. Of course, you also learn something of the politics and, more interestingly, the psychology of the political turmoil that has scarred that particular geographic landscape, but the pleasure, the heart of the novel, is the exploration of family and the human condition.