Peter Murphy (1) (1968–)

I started to read this as I sat down to my lunch; that was a mistake, the narrator John Devine is fascinated by worms and parasites and provides in the opening pages many a lurid description of the subject of his interest. John Devine lives with his mother in the house she inherited from her parents. He is something of a loner but feels hemmed in by the Irish small town attitudes. When John is in his sixteenth year the hip and articulate Jamie moves into town and makes a friend of John on show more the spot, instantly confiding in him. John's life is suddenly opened up by this new friendship.

But John has his problems to cope with, a bombastic domineering local spinster, Mrs Nagle, intent on moving into and taking over John's and his mother's life; a local and possibly corrupt Guard officer; and some local heavies with criminal tendencies. He has to cope also with his own inner turmoil, troubled by dreams dominated by a large black bird, an old crow; what does it mean? But his biggest worry is his chain smoking mother's failing health, and as he tries to care for her needs he gradually learns of her past, and his origins.

The story covers John’s life from his very early years to his mid teens; it is eloquently told and beautifully conjures the troubles of youth. Into the fabric of the main story Murphy ingeniously interweaves other short or very short stories. John quickly engenders one’s empathy, and as the story entwines and unfolds towards its mournful yet ultimately positive conclusion one’s heart will ache for our young hero.

I did not much enjoy my lunch, but I did immensely enjoy John the Revelator; its humour, its re-creation of small town Ireland, its portrayal of friendship, but above all its evocation of the turmoil of youth. show less

Like a river, a narrative has its course and wends its own particular course to its end. Like a traveler on a river, a reader may not see the turns coming, the cross-currents underneath or the rocks on the river banks on which the journey may be interrupted, or even abruptly halted. Reading Peter Murphy's The River and Enoch O'Reilly is like undertaking a rocky river journey.

Young Enoch is fascinated by the homemade radio transmission system his father has built in their basement. Not much show more else goes on in his miserable Irish town. The river rose and kept rising during the last onslaught, so much that it appears God broke his promise to Noah. People are lost, animals killed and property damaged. Enoch, listening to his father's radio, hears a transmisison that changes his life. It's the Holy Ghost Radio with fire and brimestone and the spirit of Elvis. Enoch plays with the settings, trying to keep up with the transmission, but loses it. Enoch's father is furious. The cellar door is locked and further transmission beyond Enoch's listening. He leaves town, heartbroken.

Most of Enoch's next years are the stuff of fable or street gutter. We see only one actual event -- a chance chaste encounter with a young lady -- and are left to decide for ourselves what's under the murkey surface waters. What did Enoch really do all those years? Did he travel the backroads of the American South? Did he wander from pub to pub in Ireland? Does it matter? Would it have made a difference? We don't know and it probably doesn't matter.

Enoch makes his way back to the old hometown and talks his way into a weekly radio show. It catches fire not when he is earnest but when he goes all McCarthy-holy roller preacher on his audience. Each week, they cannot wait for the scandalous rumors. But just when it appears the river of this narrative will take delicious twisty turns and be a dark journey, the story hits some big rocks and flounders.

Murphy shows what can happen when all the elements are in place for a unique work of fiction -- setting, premise, characters that could yield complex motivations and undergo great change, but not this time. The story deflates just when it looks like it's going to inflate and then inflate some more, perhaps bursting, perhaps getting right to the point just before it bursts. It's a great disappointment.

So at least the reader who perseveres can feel empathy for Enoch after hearing the wisps of a truly great narrative that gets lost. Their journeys are similar. show less

In this debut novel by Irish music journalist Peter Murphy, John Devine faces the typical problems of a teenager, including awkward moments with women, experiments in substance abuse, evasion of parental controls, and a complicated friendship (complete with an opportunity for betrayal). But beneath the surface of this conventional bildungsroman, John’s story is refreshingly unique thanks to powerful supporting roles played by several eccentric characters from the small Irish town in which show more John lives, including John’s chain-smoking, Bible-quoting, mysteriously ill, single mother, his Rimbaud-obsessed friend, and a chocolate-addicted busybody who won’t move out of the house until John threatens to shoot her with a crossbow.

Adding to this odd brew, John suffers from cryptic and unsettling dreams involving a God-like figure who takes the form of a giant black crow (described as "omnipotent but impotent") and including haunting end-of-the-world scenes like this one:
"Two blokes wearing billabong hats carry a cross improvised from railroad girders to the shore and lay it flat on the sand. A third man in a too-tight suit lies across it, his comb-over unwinding like a turban in the sea wind. They nail him through the wrists and ankles and raise it up. He hangs like a side of beef, bawling his head off, but they haven't planted the cross deep enough and it tilts slowly forward and hits the wet sand, the sounds of his torment muffled, mouth clogged up with silt."

This excerpt is a nice example of how Murphy’s prose, by turns coarse and poetic, creates beautiful and haunting images out of ugly things and inelegant words. Over the course of almost 300 pages, the effect is quite stunning.

Counteracting this novel’s brilliance is a fundamental infirmity of structure, primarily arising out of too many loose ends and a protagonist who’s less well-drawn than the supporting characters. Some of the book’s most distinctive elements—John’s unsettling dreams or his friend’s short stories—drift through the story like flotsam, untethered to the rest of the action and thus lacking in impact. Murphy is undoubtedly gifted as a novelist, but John the Revelator needs some structural refinement. I expect great things from this author in the future.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License. show less

An amazingingly compelling read that covers a whole range of topics, amongst them being love, loss, religion, betrayal , humour and sadness. Set in Ireland it made a wonderful quirky read that for me was a page turner and I couldn't put down until I'd finished it. There are some slightly queezy passages about John's weird obsession with worms and maggots, but they are strangely fascinating, too. I loved this book but have a feeling it is going to be one of those 'Marmite' reads and will have show more a varied response from its readers. show less