SQUINTER: A question gets asked and left with no answer
ANYONE expecting an answer to the question ‘Can Ireland Be One?’ by the end of Malachi O’Doherty’s new book of the same title is destined for disappointment. This is no audit of the economic pros and cons of ending partition and nor is it an analysis of the sometimes shiny and sometimes grubby new realities that have rocketed the question of unity to the top of the political agenda. Indeed, Brexit and the Protocol – the two issues which have moved the ground and redefined the terms of the unity debate in a six-year blink of the eye – to all intents and purposes never happened, so seldom are they referred to and so lightly are they passed over. What we have instead is a largely personal series of discursions in which Malachi addresses not those real-world developments which are so rapidly and utterly changing the island’s political landscape, but themes and subjects that will be familiar to those acquainted with his broadcast and print output: a Riverdale Catholic loses his religion and ponders gravely, regretfully and seldom hopefully the age-old question of why we don’t get along. The relegation of the Protocol from leading role to bit part in what could well prove to be the final act of the partition drama would be surprising enough, but there’s also a curious reliance on people writing and working in a time before ATMs and colour television, never mind mobile phones and the internet. Hubert Butler’s 1954 work ‘Portrait of a Minority’, for instance; professional nice bloke Sam McAughtry, who was telling stories on the wireless when Squinter was learning to drink in the Hunting Lodge; Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ 1970s book ‘Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics’. If there are nuggets of contemporary relevance in these blasts from our grey past, Squinter failed to find them. Malachi’s best and most engaging writing comes in describing for us the rich foliage of his spreading family tree. He’s obviously fascinated and entertained by the contradictions and anomalies thrown up not just by his forebears’ cross-border mobility – as are we – but also by the historical heft of names maiden and married.
