Proud Patrick by Michael Aloysius O'ReillyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It took me a few pages to get into Michael O’ Reilly’s novel because there is a constant see-sawing of events between Patrick’s present and his memories, both as a young child and as an adult when he lived in Whipple Street, Chicago. The narrative does not always prepare the reader for these changes of the viewpoint, either with appropriate word clues or with indicators through the format or punctuation. This did irritate me for quite a while as it became quite confusing to suddenly find new and strange characters on the page when you were waiting to find out what was going on in a different time and place.
However, on the plus side Proud Patrick is a powerful story of a family who appear, in the main, to be dysfunctional and violent in the extreme but who possess a deep bond of understanding and filial love between siblings. Patrick Sullivan is a middle-aged salesman who can fulfil his desire for alcohol all he wants through the product he sells – wine. He is constantly travelling to different countries and the physical distances involved together with a regular alcoholic haze allow him to put his terrible family and childhood events far behind him. There is a paradox to constantly bother Patrick about his parents’ drinking and violence that comes to a head when he loses his temper at a family gathering and strikes out at his own adult son, Martin Luther. The reader is given the impression that the name was chosen deliberately by Patrick to send a barbed and challenging message towards his strongly Irish-Catholic parents.
Patrick is not the only member of the large family of boys and girls to wind up as adults with strong feelings of guilt and shame, even fear, about Barnaby and Bridget, his dad and mum. Such usual tokens of affection are rarely used by their children and the emotions of the siblings (and their partners!) are skilfully displayed by the author. I ended up full of admiration for the fast moving but always lyrical style of writing used by Michael O’Reilly throughout his novel. I was grabbed by it to such an extent that I grew to ignore any gripes I had about the formatting and so on. When the book ended I was disappointed and wanted more. I wanted to know more about the Sullivans after the distressing incidents and trauma that Mr O’Reilly revealed during the semi-climax of the Golden Wedding anniversary held, in Ireland, for Barnaby and Bridget. If you enjoy strong, non-judgemental, tales about the complexities, horrors and emotions that can befall a family then Proud Patrick is the book for you.
I received a copy of this novel from the author in exchange for my honest, non-reciprocal review.
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