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 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. ( )

britain-ireland, autumn-2013, net-galley, e-book, published-2013
Read from September 26 to 28, 2013

netgalley: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/ Mariner Books

Description: In 1984, the river Rua overflows its banks near the Irish town of Murn. When the rains have stopped and the waters receded, nine bodies are found. What took them to the river?

Claiming to be just returned from America, self-made minister Enoch launches a radio show he calls The Revival Hour. After a short but spectacular run, it ends in disaster and he’s forced back to the family home. There, he finds clues to a mythic connection between the dead—this brotherhood of the flood—the natural rhythms of the earth, a secret language called Riverish, and his lost father.

In this fever-dream of a novel, Peter Murphy issues a shaman’s call to conjure together various traditions—the gothic, the Irish, the Southern, the infusion of music into language, the infusion of myth into music and life, the search of a lost son for his long-lost father, our deep connections to our homelands and the cycles of nature. He establishes himself here, firmly, as one of Ireland’s newest literary wonders.

Dedication: For Paula

Front quote is from The Book of the Secrets of Enoch

Prologue: Winter 1984

Opening: Enoch O'Reilly and the Holy Ghost Radio

Deep inside the bowels of Ballo Manor, Enoch O'Reilly sits in a swivel chair in his father's cellar, staring gloomily into the flickering screen before him.

Who doesn't like a metaphysical read set in the rugged wilds of the Scottish Highlands, or Wales, but especially Ireland. My book shelves are full of such stories, yet this one does not belong there, it doesn't have the right bhraitheann (feel). Competently written and at times lyrical, however this was not a book I particularly enjoyed.

Crossposted to GoodReads, BookLikes, aNobii, LibraryThing, NetGalley

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