Natural Selection

Manchester 1867 and three Irish Fenians are executed for killing a policeman. This execution triggers a cycle of violence. McBride, an Irish American veteran of the Civil War, is recruited to stage a high profile assassination in retaliation. O’Connor, a Dublin policeman and reformed alcoholic, runs a network of Irish informers to undermine the Fenian plots.

The first half of the novel is a cat and mouse contest between the two men, fought out in the streets of Manchester. So far, a familiar narrative of police procedural and violent thriller – but exciting and compulsive as the personalities, flaws and tensions of both men begin to fray and McBride’s planned atrocity nears fruition.

McGuire has drawn the reader into his Nineteenth Century world. We care about O’Connor with his tragic past and his attempts to do the decent thing. We learn also about McBride and the events which have shaped and brutalised him. But then the story takes a very unexpected turn: the Irish have always been convenient scapegoats in English history and this story is no exception, and if the guilty Irishman is unavailable, the nearest one will do.

The need for retribution takes O’Connor to America and to one of the most unexpected, shocking and bleak endings I have experienced in fiction. Yet there is a realistic truth in the ending, however upsetting. The intention to do the correct thing for all the right reasons has only limited force in a random, impersonal and cruel world. Where ultimately is justice?

There’s an old rebel song – The Smashing of the Van – that tells the sorry take of three Irishmen who tried to spring two Fenian leaders from a prison van in Manchester in 1867. Because they “chanced to kill a man”, the three Irishmen were hanged from a gallows outside Manchester prison.

This is where The Abstainer takes up the tale.

The three martyrs were the best recruiting call the Fenians could have hoped for. Irishmen up and down the land were willing to rise up and claim their freedom. The Manchester brigade were willing to think big, and they had invited Stephen Doyle, an Irish-American, to cross the Atlantic and pull off a coup that would make the Brits sit up and take notice.

On the other side, Leading Constable Jimmy O’Connor – drafted across from the Irish Constabulary to sort out his personal demons and drink – ran a network of spies to infiltrate the Fenian movement. This was organised intelligence in its infancy.

So, for two thirds of the novel we have cat and mouse between O’Connor and Doyle in a fairly routine historical police procedural. There are some wonderful scenes – particularly a meeting of the Fenians in the pub to welcome a new member. I’m not completely convinced by the dialogue; some of the characters seemed to use modern idiom that might have made the characters feel more identifiable, but also reduced some of the historical edge.

Then, at the two thirds point, things get very surreal. It would be a spoiler to explain why, but there is a major paradigm shift that causes us to question what we already knew, and causes us to wonder whether we are reading a police procedural at all. It reminded me more than a little of Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.

Then, right at the end, there’s a coda set in the US that feels almost as though it belongs to a different book. No easy answers, no happy ever after.

Gosh, it’s weird.

The Abstainer is a deeply immersive tale that pits two Irish emigrants each other, one an alcoholic cop, one a Fenian sympathiser seeking to raise revolt against the British. This isn’t a period i know much about, but Manchester in the 1860s comes alive in McGuire’s dark and gritty novel. With spare dialogue, believably flawed characters and a general sense of doom for every character you start to feel anything for, this book is the equal of McGuire’s previous “The North Water’.