Saga of exile tells of hunger, whores and hope
Sunday August 12 2007
The Law Of Dreams
Canongate, €22.34
Inspired by his own family history, Montreal-born screenwriter Peter Behrens has made a daring debut across the Atlantic with his already acclaimed novel The Law Of Dreams, an ambitious epic encased in Ireland's Great Famine of 1845-1849, winning the most prestigious prize in the Canadian publishing world, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, in 2006.
Despite the hoopla, and acknowledging that the famine is deeply embedded in the Irish psyche, 'Celtic Tiger' Ireland may have succumbed to famine fatigue, having in the past gorged itself with the proliferation of material on the subject. It now engages in a collective amnesia such is its abhorrence of reminders of the bleak poverty-stricken past.
Against this backdrop, how will The Law of Dreams fare with its recounting of the stench, starvation and struggle of the all-pervasive 19th-century potato famine?
It deserves to be judged on its own rich merits and will strike a chord because it is one of those rare books that comes along from time to time that makes you feel that you are in the presence of greatness: a gifted storyteller with a truly compelling story to tell.
The novel tracks the odyssey of 15-year-old Fergus O'Brien from the west coast of Ireland to Montreal and "the Boston States" during the Great Potato Famine.
He is the son of tenant farmers who eke out an existence on a potato crop harvested on a quarter-acre of mountainous land.
In 1846, blight strikes and the family is threatened with eviction. Yet, 10 weeks into the famine, his obstinate father still refuses to take the landlord's paltry offer and move out. Instead, they stay until finally Fergus's siblings die of black fever and his parents, ill and weakened with hunger, are burned alive in their shack.
Fergus witnesses the murder of his parents and the destruction of his home, forcing him to leave everything that is familiar and venture forth on his action-packed often torturous adventure.
First stop the workhouse. In an apparent act of charity, he is sent to this institution only to realise that he must abscond if he is survive starvation or fever.
He escapes, gets hijacked, joins a gang of young bandits near Limerick and gets revenge on his former landlord by raiding his farm.
Next, he falls in with cattle drovers on their way to Dublin from where he scrambles on board a boat for Liverpool. He ends up taking refuge in a bordello, where, to his astonishment, he is primed to work as a 'pearl boy', a prostitute.
He hits the road again, this time settling in north Wales where he gets the hazardous job of 'tip boy' clearing earth for the 'railroads' with a horse and cart. He falls in love with Molly, the "railroad wife" of the ganger, and the pair elope hastily to Liverpool.
Pooling their coins, they pay for a passage on a timber ship bound for Quebec. On board the 'coffin ship' Fergus faces hunger, fever, shocking violence and bitter betrayal. Undaunted, he is empowered by the beckoning promise of America and his dream of a new life as a horse trader for "the law of dreams is to keep moving".
This painstakingly researched novel in spare poetically charged prose depicts the indomitable spirit of Fergus in his journey from innocence to experience.
It allows the reader access to his internal struggles and to the amazing snippets of wisdom that seem to flow effortlessly from his mind. It inspires hope as it demonstrates the unquenchable spirit of the human being and its capacity to survive the worst that life has to offer.
The Law Of Dreams is a stunning, swiftly paced historical saga deserving of hefty plaudits as it conveys a credible visceral understanding of a searing experience that is indelibly imprinted in ancestral memory.
"You had to stay alive; every instinct told you. Stay in your life as long as you can. If only to see what would happen. Every breath told you to keep breathing.,
