An audio book. Charlie and Maurice are at Algeciras ferry port. They're in their 50s. They banter. They made big money shipping drugs into Ireland from Spain. They had to separate and go into hiding (Spain and rural Ireland). We're first given Maurice's backstory - how he invested his drug money in property, developed a drug habit (heroin and cocaine), had a child, Dilly, tried to distance himself from dangerous Charles, how the property deals went wrong, how Charles slept with his wife, Cynthia, how he nearly committed suicide, taking his 4 y.o. daughter Dilly with him.
They're still at the ferryport. They talk about death.
We flashback to see Maurice and Charles through the eyes of a Dublin barman. Maurice knifes Charles in the knee, cutting ligaments.
Dilly Hearne, 23, arrives at the port. She's on the way to Tangers with a consignment of false passports. She recognises the men, but they don't recognise her. She thinks about approaching them. She'd left Ireland after her mother died. Her mother's last words were "Never come back." She had wandered around Spain, plans to go to Morocco, live in the desert.
Not long after the suicidal thoughts, Maurice spent 5 years wandering Spain, "trying to coax a pattern from his days". He slit his own eye. Back in Ireland his mother visited while he's in a mental hospital. Charles became his room-mate. Charles told Maurice that Dilly might be his daughter. Maurice knew.
We learn that when Cynthia knew her disease was terminal, she walked into the sea.
The end fades. The 2 men agree that Dilly will be ok anyway.The default style is lyricism. I don't like "the days as cold as evil" but I'm happy with "their voices fell into conspiracy above the river's voices" and "they whispered and tunneled together to the bottom of the night and lay there dazed".
Other reviews
- Alan Warner
- Goodreads
- James Lasdun (for a little too long it trades on archetypal gangster-character tropes — dangerous volatility, sentimental tenderness — without constructing situations that justify their display ... Back story is where novels often sag, but in this case it’s where the book hits its propulsive stride)
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