Martine McDonagh

I really enjoyed Martine McDonagh’s debut novel 'I Have Waited and You Have Come', which was a dystopian psychodrama, so I was very happy to read her second novel – but it couldn’t be more different to her first.

It’s Christmas, December 1973, and we meet the Jacobs family: lefty hippy parents JJ and Katherine, son Phoenix – just back from his first term at uni, and fifteen year old daughter Penny. Phoenix is overjoyed at having persuaded his parents to get him a motorbike for show more Christmas. Penny did well out of that too, getting the record player she was desperate for. Cut to New Year’s Eve – partytime at the Jacobs house. Phoenix has a fumble with Penny’s best friend Jackie – she’ll not let Penny know who she did it with. Cut to the New Year – January 1974. Phoenix is dead – his too big helmet slipped, he lost control of his motorbike and hit a van.

Katherine and JJ are catapulted into freefall in their grief. Katherine blames JJ for persuading her to let him have the bike. She can no longer talk to him. JJ responds by giving her the space she appears to want – he retreats into his shed, his home office where he writes his newspaper columns, eventually moving in there completely. It’s left to Penny to carry on as normal and look after things, as her parents’ relationship gets worse and worse. Then one day Katherine snaps. She realises she needs help and signs herself in to the local psychiatric hospital – it’s the beginning of the long road to recovery.

This book is raw. Between Katherine’s breakdown and JJ’s compassionate yet silent disbelief at what happened, this novel needs the life goes on attitude of teenager Penny to give some breathing space. That’s not to say that Penny doesn’t feel grieve for her stupid brother Phoenix too. Each of the Jacobs family members has to find a way to deal with it separately before they can begin to come together again. JJ the hermit, throws himself into his work; Katherine gradually restores her sanity; and Penny gets fed up with Jackie, and makes new friends.

On an aside, in the early 1980s and in my twenties, I had a motorbike for around five years, and I had my fair share of hairy experiences. I came off it twice, but I had spent out on all the gear, and I was lucky. I never told my parents about the bike until after I’d sold it. So, I can understand Phoenix’s desire for the bike. It was a cheap and affordable option for independent transport in those days. I can also understand Katherine’s reaction and grief. I’m very glad that my daughter will want to learn to drive a car.

With each chapter titled after a pop hit of the day, the period details in After Phoenix were spot on – I remember it well. The regime in the hospital too was horribly as expected. Despite beginning with a tragedy, this book is never entirely without hope though and is a powerful portrait of grief and how time heals. Powerful stuff. show less

Set in a near future where global warming has wreaked Mother Nature’s revenge on the Earth and made large parts of the globe uninhabitable due to rising water levels, Rachel lives alone in a old mill in the Yorkshire Dales. Jacob used to live with her but he left. Rachel still keeps his study as he left it though, as if he might walk through the door again one day.

Without Jacob, Rachel survives, taking no joy from life. Rachel grows vegetables, keeps chickens and takes more care of them show more than herself. She had wanted children, but Jacob said they wouldn’t survive being brought into this world and persuaded her it was a bad thing – she can’t help being broody though at her age. She used to be an artist, but that’s fallen by the wayside too.It’s an effort to do anything, and her nearest neighbours are a short trek away. She prefers to keep to herself, remaining hidden within the walled compound of the mill except for her visits to the market run by Noah…

"I duck into my favourite doorway, which I use as a lookout to check the coast is clear before going down to the market. Today of all days it is important I have Noah to myself because what I am about to do is something I would once have considered rash.
An intense, yellow, off-kilter stare from the opposite doorway jolts me back into the present. I step forward, whooshing air through my front teeth, and stretch out a hand to attract the attention of the mange-ridden but still charismatic ginger cat. But he fancies himself as a sphinx too disgusted with humanity to even acknowledge my existence. I straighten up and disguise my intimidation by fumbling in my jacket pocket for the scrap of paper I put there; unfold it to check its eight-number inscription is still legible: 68.36.21.51. Rachel. I refold it and pin it to my palm with my fingernails.
Reassured now that Noah is alone, I step out into the precinct. Hel-lo. One syllable per footstep, I rehearse my grand entrance."

Noah is the only man Rachel knows, and she’s plucking up courage to ask him out. Meanwhile a new man is on the scene – Jez White. He suddenly starts cropping up when she expected to see Noah. She begins to feel as if she is being watched, or is she getting paranoid? She needs to find out more about Jez White.

This novel manages to combine the nightmare of a post environmental apocalypse with a psychological thriller and throws in a few overtones of Margaret Atwood’s classic The Handmaid’s Tale for good measure. Rachel being an outsider and aloner, her refusal to want to belong to any of the remaining isolated communities, makes her tough yet fragile. You aren’t quite sure how reliable she is as the narrator, and the growing sense of unease as the story progresses adds to the tension.

She is a survivor though, and that thought inevitably led me back to a favourite TV series of mine from the 1970s – Terry Nation’s Survivors, (the original, not the more recent TV remake). In this series, a killer flu epidemic wiped out 95% of mankind, leaving the remainder to fight it out, keep the species going, and impose a new world order.

McDonagh’s novel is a fine example of the spec fiction genre, the changed world she has created seems eerily real. I enjoyed reading it very much. At the moment, it is her only novel, but I do hope she publishes more. show less

A bleak prediction of the consequences of rising sea levels, McDonagh's book is set in a nightmare vision of Cheshire in the not-too-distant future: "When we first came here the golf course was a progression of green velvet swirls. Later it became the makeshift burial ground for the first wave of victims."

Rachel lives alone in a semi-fortified mill, where she is subject to the attention of a sinister stalker, who makes use of the fact that there are still – for the time being at least – show more functioning phonelines to breathe down. The most disturbing dystopias are those which feel closest at hand; and McDonagh indicates how swiftly society reverts to tooth-and-claw primitivism, though the plot follows a fairly predictable course – it seems inevitable that Rachel's unwanted admirer should keep a graphic, masturbatory journal which she finds and reads. Fans of post-apocalyptic parables will be well pleased; and there is something to be said for a deluge that does away with Kerry Katona and all those Wags' palaces round Alderley Edge.

A deeply atmospheric, dystopian or ‘spec fic’ novella that is part environmental disaster story and part psychological thriller.

Rather than looking at the bigger picture of the disaster the author presents a very intimate look at one survivor’s struggle to cope with her environment, the loneliness and an increasingly deteriorating mental state.

Relentlessly grim, full of mud, & never ending rain that reminded me a little of The Road.

A compelling and strongly written debut and I will look forward to reading more from this author. show less

I picked this up on a shopping trip in Edinburgh, it promised darkness and obsession. It delivered an alienated wash of rain and mud and isolation, some great descriptions, and a main character that was hardly a character at all. It was wonderfully atmospheric, but the atmosphere of solitariness was not one I wanted to be reading about at this particular point in time. It didn't chime deeply enough within me to be recognition, but wasn't far enough away to be a dream.
Interesting but grey show more rather than dark.. show less