Book Review Saturday

Today’s book review takes as its subject a book I’ve mentioned before on the blog, and one I’d been looking forward to for ages before I managed to pick it up last weekend. It’s the latest work from one of my all-time favourite authors, a writer whose books for me are always an automatic buy; I knew I’d love it before I’d even introduced my eyes to the opening lines.

So, really, this review is more of a love letter to the author.

And that author is Neil Gaiman.

Image: thesundaytimes.co.uk

‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ tells us the story of a lost and bewildered man, returning to the landscape of his childhood. As he begins to immerse himself in the lost people and places of his past, he tells himself – and, of course, the reader – a story about a pivotal summer in his life, the summer he was seven years old, and what happened to him. As he narrates, bits and pieces of his memory float back up to his consciousness; it’s like he has suppressed his memories underneath a layer of ‘growing up and moving away and making a life for yourself,’ but that summer remains at his core, a slumbering seed waiting for the right time to bloom.

The narrator is not (as far as I remember) given a name – the book is, of course, written in the first person, so this isn’t a problem for the reader. As an adult, he seems quite jaded, a little disillusioned with life, a man who has put a failed marriage behind him and whose three adult children have grown and gone and left him to deal with the trauma of a family funeral alone. Attending this funeral is the reason he has returned to his childhood home, and he drives – at first randomly, and then with purpose – through the small village in which he grew up, and eventually out onto the narrow country roads that lead to his house, the house his parents built, and in which another family are now living. He drives further down the lane – deeper into his memory and himself – and winds up sitting beside the duckpond at the heart of Hempstock Farm, the pond which Lettie Hempstock, a girl he hasn’t thought about for forty years, once told him was the ocean.

The narrator’s seven-year-old self tells us about the summer his parents took in a lodger, a South African opal miner who eventually steals their family car and, having lost all his money through gambling, decides to take his own life in it. This tragic event – and it is tragic, and sad, and described by the seven-year-old narrator with all the wide-eyed clarity of a child – would be bad enough by itself, but it is only the beginning of a horrifying sequence of events which will drag in not only the child, but everyone who lives on the lane. The miner’s decision to commit suicide has unleashed a horrifying magical force, a dark and sinister spirit which uses his death as a portal into the human world, and who takes up residence in the fields around the narrator’s house. This spirit, in its twisted way, wants to ‘give people what they want’ – the opal miner died because he had no money, and so, one day, the narrator wakes up choking, his throat on fire with pain. With great effort, he manages to pull out whatever has made its way into his neck. It turns out to be a large silver coin – a silver shilling.

This macabre and twisted way of trying to ‘help’ while hurting is the signature of this malevolent spirit. Luckily for the narrator and his family, though, the family who live at the end of the lane – the Hempstock women of Hempstock farm – are far more than what they seem. Their duckpond is an ocean, the oldest of them remembers the Big Bang, they have powers beyond description and wisdom beyond measure and courage beyond understanding. Lettie, the youngest (though that’s a meaningless term, in relation to these characters), is eleven to the narrator’s seven, and she takes him with her as she goes forth to confront the spirit. Unfortunately, they underestimate it, and their attempts to vanquish it only allow it to create a doorway into the human world, which it can use at will – and the doorway is located through the body of our narrator, our seven-year-old innocent, whose life and family instantly begins to crumble. The Hempstock women must regroup and rethink their tactics in order to fight it, and fight it they do.

This book is an expertly handled mingling of fantastical elements and minutely observed realism. For me, even as a person who adores fantasy and mythology and folklore, and particularly when they’re in the hands of Neil Gaiman, and despite the fact that magic and folklore is at the heart of this story, I felt the book was strongest when rooted in the real. The descriptions of the narrator’s family, and the ways in which this spirit attempts to worm* its way into the fabric of their home life, are so effective because we’ve already seen the love between the members of the family, which makes the coldness and hatred that starts to grow once they’ve been infected by the spirit even starker and more upsetting. The most powerful scene in the book by a country mile is the one in which the narrator’s father, overtaken by the spirit’s power, very nearly takes his son’s life – it chilled me to the marrow. It’s an unforgettable piece of writing.

Writing fantasy is no challenge to Neil Gaiman. The spirit, its manifestations, the horrifying ‘hunger birds’ who must be summoned in order to make an attempt to destroy it, the powers at the heart of the Hempstock family and the thrilling mystery that binds them together, as well as the sacrifices each member of the Hempstock family makes in order to ensure the survival of everyone else on the lane, are all marvellous. But, I can’t help thinking that Neil Gaiman can create this type of thing effortlessly – this sort of writing, this sort of thinking, is not difficult for him. It’s the touches of realism – the marital difficulties between the narrator’s parents, the relationship between him and his sister, the loneliness he feels when nobody turns up to his seventh birthday party – which elevate this book into a higher form of art.

I devoured ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane.’ I loved every word. If you enjoy excellent writing, wonderful storytelling, superb narrative framing, and a touch of scary magic topped with love, sacrifice and devotion, then this is the book for you.

Happy weekend, everyone. Read well, read often, read wisely…

*If you’ve read the book, please forgive the pun!

Book Review Saturday – ‘Maggot Moon’

The first thing I’m going to say about ‘Maggot Moon’ is this: Do not read it in a public place.

Perhaps I should clarify that.

Public Announcement: Do not read Sally Gardner’s award-winning novel ‘Maggot Moon’ in a public place if you’re anything like me, and you get deeply emotionally affected by the books you read, and you’re prone to showing those emotions, viz. through displays of tearfulness, wailing and/or clutching your napkin to your face and sobbing into it.

I read ‘Maggot Moon’ in a café, and I’m probably barred from it for life as a result of my reaction to this book. I wept, my friends. I wept, in public. Am I sorry? Heck, no.

Image: thebookstheartandme.wordpress.com

‘Maggot Moon’ is a gutsy, unashamed, powerful novel. Its dedication reads: ‘For you the dreamers, overlooked at school, never won prizes. You who will own tomorrow,‘ and that spirit of defiance and combativeness runs through the core of the story. This is a book about those who struggle, and those who make a stand against tyranny and evil, no matter what the personal cost. This is a book about bravery, family, friendship and love – and, most importantly, how not even the most brutal regime can crush these most precious and fragile things.

The book is narrated in the voice of Standish Treadwell, a fifteen-year-old boy with the reading and writing age of a child ten years younger. He is upfront about the fact that he cannot read or spell, that he sees the written world differently from everyone else, but this is far from being a ‘handicap’, or a drawback, for him. In fact, it is one of his greatest strengths. Standish has immersed himself in language, in the spoken word, and has a natural talent for understanding coded, indirect and hidden speech, even when the words he hears are spoken in another language. In his own words:

I may not be able to spell, but I have a huge vocabulary. I collect words – they are sweets in the mouth of sound. (Maggot Moon, p. 24)

His ability to understand spoken language propels him on his journey, and even saves his life. I loved Standish – the way he thinks, the way he speaks, the depth with which he loves, the courage behind the decisions he makes, and the loyal devotion to his family and friends, all make him a memorable and deeply affecting character.

Some of the phrases in this book are pure Standish – he says things like ‘hare’s breath’ when most people would say ‘hair’s breadth’, or ‘glad drags’ when the more usual way of saying it would be ‘glad rags’; reading his unique take on language made the hairs stand up all over my body. His voice opened up language for me, creating worlds within words and making me see things in a completely different way. It’s a thrilling experience, going along with Standish on his adventure – his unique language and phraseology re-makes the world for the reader, making everything seem slightly off-kilter – and, of course, this is not just for effect. Standish navigates his own world in this same slightly off-kilter way; he is different in a world where being different is a death sentence. We feel his alienation and his sense of being oppressed through the way he uses language as much as through the way he describes his life at school, his treatment at the hands of bullies and cruel teachers, and the gradual picture he builds up for us of the country he lives in, and the regime he exists under.

Many images of oppression in this book are chillingly familiar. The story is set in 1956, but it’s not the 1956 we’re familiar with. It’s an alternative vision, a world we could have lived in. A totalitarian regime is in place, with those loyal to ‘the Motherland’ in charge; salutes and jackboots are the order of the day. Physical violence is common – not only does Standish receive beatings, but there is a terrifying – and stomach-churning – scene near the middle of the book when a teacher takes out his frustration on a student, to horrifying effect. This is not a world which rewards the weak. The Motherland is about to launch a rocket into space, designed to colonise the moon and place a weapon on its surface, from whence to launch an attack upon her enemies; the Obstructors, or underground resistance movement, are doing their best to subvert it. People who show any form of non-compliance (including Standish’s parents) are regularly ‘removed’, and anyone who does not help to spread the Motherland’s propaganda is considered a dissenter. Life struggles on in the midst of all this horror – children go to school to be taught noxious lies and to be brutalised by their instructors; adults try to scrape together a living, nobody trusting anyone else, and the Motherland pushes forward with its military regime at the cost of its citizens’ lives. The world of ‘Maggot Moon’ is not our world, but it is all too easy to imagine.

Standish lives with his grandfather, and befriends Hector Lush, a young boy who, along with his parents, moves in to the house next door. The relationship between the two boys, including their plan to build their own spaceship and discover their own planet where they can live in peace, and their attempts to find a normal space in which to live, and simply be, without fear or pain, is one of the sparks behind the story; the Motherland does not permit the sort of loyalty and affection that Standish has for Hector and the other members of his small family, and so the stage is set for a showdown. As the story progresses we learn that not only are Mr and Mrs Lush not what they seem, but neither is Gramps, Standish’s brave and resourceful grandfather, and when the boys end up embroiled in a conspiracy that goes to the heart of what the Motherland is all about, they receive help from the most unexpected places.

It’s difficult to do a review of this book without giving too much away. Suffice to say that a point is reached at which Standish has had enough of the lies he is being fed, and he makes a decision which will impact not only his own life, but the lives of everyone. He is willing to sacrifice all that he is for the sake of love and family and truth, and when you read this book you’ll know which scene tipped me over the edge into full-on blub mode. I defy anyone to read it and not weep, for the sheer beauty that is Standish Treadwell is not often found in literature, and even less in life.

This is a book to read and treasure, to recommend and pass on, to remember. It is a book to celebrate. Read it, and read it, and read it again.

Happy Saturday! What are you going to read today?

In Love with Life

It’s almost the end of May, everybody. In a few short days, this month will be entirely used up and cast aside in favour of June, and I’ll have to make good on my promise to myself that my book – my ‘Eldritch’ – will be ready to start the process of finding an agent.

That’s the problem with making promises to yourself, isn’t it? You’ve got to keep them.

I’m not saying that ‘Eldritch’ isn’t ready. It’s sitting here beside me, in a satisfyingly thick bundle of paper; I’ve read it over and over again. I’ve tweaked it, and fixed it, and pulled sentences apart, and unmixed my metaphors, and checked for continuity errors, and taken out some of the millions of commas that seem to grow, unchecked, in everything I write. But, somehow, it just doesn’t seem good enough, still.

Image: moma.org

I just wish I looked as glamorous as this when going through a crisis of confidence. Actually, I look a bit more like Kathy Bates in ‘Misery’. But anyway.

On top of working slowly through The Novel, I’ve also spent the past week writing short stories. I’m trying to work through my list of submission deadlines – lots of competitions are looming, and I want to push myself to enter as many of them as I possibly can. It’s been a while since I made a big submission, and I’ve got to keep this ball rolling as long as I possibly can. However, there is a problem.

None of the short pieces I’ve written have made my personal grade. I’ve worked very hard on them, and I’ve sweated over them, and I’ve chosen words with extreme care, moved paragraphs around, deleted half the story and started again from scratch, changed titles, changed characters, changed everything that can be changed, and… I still don’t like either of the two major pieces of work I’ve completed over the last few days. Hackneyed, cloying, clichéd, boring – this is how they seem, to me. I just know they’ll never be good enough.

The first piece I wrote was a story about a little girl who, confused by something which is happening in her home life, takes out her rage and fear on another girl, a child at school, who innocently involves herself in the first child’s life. The story follows the two girls as they grow older, and shows us how, at one point, the second child has a chance to help the first, but chooses not to because of the pain she still suffers as a result of the first child’s bullying actions when they were younger. I’m not sure why this story didn’t work. It should work. I wanted it to. For a while after I’d written it I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, which is unusual for me; normally, I’m visceral about these things, and I know straight away how I feel about a written piece. But for this one, I wasn’t sure. I wanted to like it, but it didn’t turn out the way I’d seen it in my head, perhaps.

The second piece was about a shy young man and his forceful, abrasive mother, and their strained relationship. For reasons the boy doesn’t understand at first, his mother’s angry sorrow is focused on a particular place near their home. It’s a place she asks her son not to go to, but it also happens to be a popular meeting point for parties, and so – inevitably – the day comes when the young man betrays his mother’s trust, and attends a party in this strange place, sacred to his mother. When the mother discovers her son has broken his promise to her, she is extremely angry, and in her subsequent breakdown the reason for her dislike of the place becomes clear to the boy at the same time as the reader.

Again, a story I really wanted to like. But it just doesn’t work.

Because of all this, I’ve probably been feeling a bit defeated over the past few days. My energy levels are a bit depleted, maybe, and my brain seems stuck in first gear. I needed some inspiration, some encouragement. I needed a reminder of what I’m doing here, and why I’m doing it.

And, yesterday evening, I found it.

I’m not sure if you’ll have heard of a poet named Dorothy Molloy Carpenter. Sadly, Ms. Molloy Carpenter passed away almost a decade ago, just before her first book of poetry was published (two further volumes were also published posthumously). During her time of illness, when she was facing into treatment for the disease that claimed her life, she wrote a prayer of sorts, called her ‘Credo’. This prayer was printed on a card that was distributed at her memorial service, which happened to be held at the University in which I used to work. Many years ago, someone gave me their copy of this card, and I’ve held on to it ever since; somehow, last night, I happened to read it again just when I needed to. I want to quote a little bit from the beginning of the prayer, if you’ll indulge me:

The one essential thing is for my voice to ring out in the cosmos and to use, to this end, every available second. Everything else must serve this. This is being in love with life.

Every voice is needed for the full harmony.

Well.

There you have it. Use every available second. Sing your song. Make your contribution. Say your piece. Write your story. Be in love with life.

Image: insehee.egloos.com

Happy Thursday. Use it as well as you can, and remember that the world needs every scrap of positivity, every drop of happiness, and every flicker of love that it can get. We can’t all save the world from terror, but we can all do our best to add to the communal store of joy. Let’s all do what we can.

 

 

Another Week…

Happy Monday, everyone.

Today, I’d planned to write about a short story I was working on over the weekend. This particular short story was pretty much all that was occupying my mind this morning as I woke up. I was intending to submit it to a major competition, and I thought it was reasonably good; I’ve drafted and redrafted it and it’s probably, in its current state, as good as I can get it. But I re-read it last night and realised something weird: I’m not sure whether I like it, or whether I hate it. Normally, it’s obvious to me whether I like something or not. This was strange enough, I felt, to warrant a blog post.

But then I heard the early news this morning, and learned that a young man from County Kerry, in the far south of Ireland, had lost his battle for life yesterday (Sunday). His name was Donal Walsh. Here’s an article about him which has reduced me to tears this sunny Monday morning. Here’s another. If you’ve never heard of Donal Walsh, I hope you take the time to read about him, and about the courage that drove him in his last months to speak out against the scourge of suicide among the young.

Once I learned that this brave boy had succumbed to the foul disease that has destroyed so many lives, I knew that a blog post that didn’t mention him would be a travesty.

Rarely in my life have I come across a public figure that touched my heart as much as Donal Walsh did. Young people in Ireland (and across the world) have, it seems, been turning more and more to suicide as an answer to the darkness that appears to be besetting their lives, and Donal was a light in that darkness. His message – ‘look, see, this is how beautiful life is. This is why it’s worth fighting for. I want to live, but I have no choice – you have a choice’ – has profoundly impacted Ireland, and, I hope, the wider world. In recent months and weeks, he has been appearing on TV chat shows, and on other media, to talk about his illness and his battle, and his belief in the power of the young to make choices which will illuminate the world. He always looked so well and healthy; I had no idea that he was so close to the end of his journey. News of his death has taken me, I have to admit, by surprise.

For a young man to face his own death so bravely is one thing; for him to spend his last months and weeks trying to save the lives of others is a heroism rare in our cynical old world. I never met Donal, nor did I know him personally, but I am proud of him for all he did, and for all his work will mean in the months and years ahead. Long may his legacy live, and long may his light shine.

RIP Donal.
Image: irishexaminer.com

You, and I, hopefully, have another week, and another week, and another. We have many Mondays, many mornings, many opportunities to feel so tired we’re barely able to roll out of bed and many days when we’ll bounce awake, full of enthusiasm for the day ahead, many chances to do our work as well as we can, many days to spend with our loved ones, and as many moments as we could wish for to tell them we love them. We have time to achieve our dreams. In Donal’s memory, let’s all be lights in the darkness; let’s do all we can to help others to live. Let’s spend every second we’ve been given doing all we can to make the paths of others a little smoother. Let’s never forget how lucky we are to have a choice.

Have a wonderful Monday.

Horror

I’ve never been to Boston. I’ve never been anywhere in the US, for that matter. But Boston is a place which lives large in my imagination. When I think of America, I hear the Boston accent. I think of the streetscapes of Good Will Hunting, the pubs and the wide avenues and the laughing people. People who are proud of their heritage, particularly if it’s Irish heritage.

Image: blogs.uprm.edu

News footage of yesterday’s bombing of the Boston Marathon showed a fire truck parked not far from the finish line. Doctors, first responders, rescue personnel, police officers, the wounded and the terrified, thronged around it. From the ladder on the back of this fire truck a flag was flying; not the Stars and Stripes, but a flag that seemed so at home in this most Irish of American cities. It was the tricolour – the Irish flag. My flag.

The news from Boston was horrifying enough without the extra knowledge that some of the bereaved parents from Newtown, Conn., whose children were lost last December in another tragedy, were seated near the Marathon’s finish line. The twenty-sixth mile of the Marathon, as far as I know, was being run in memory of those who were killed in Connecticut. Injustice piled upon injustice for these familes, and the rest of us left to question: ‘Why? Why on earth, why would anyone do this?’

I would feel sympathetic and angry and horrified and sorry for those caught up in a tragedy like this no matter where it had taken place; my heart would’ve gone out to the victims, and to the brave medics and ambulance and fire crews regardless of where they were. But for some reason the fact that it was Boston which was visited by this terrible darkness makes it worse. The fact that a sporting event was targeted, an event in which people test themselves to find out what they’re made of, also makes it worse. The fact that it was a sporting event on a holiday in Boston, a day when families are out in droves, where children are off school and celebrating the onset of Spring, a day which should be full of joy, makes it worse. The fact that people who’ve already seen unimaginable tragedy should be caught up in it makes it worst of all.

Like everyone else, I’m trying to keep thinking about the massive response given by those who ran to help, those who ran straight towards the danger in order to find out who they could assist. I’m trying to think about the response on Twitter in the aftermath of the bombs, where people shared that they had room for a stranded runner to spend the night if they needed, or the numbers for people to call if they wanted to try to find a loved one, or how to donate blood in order to help. I’m trying to think about all the thousands of people who survived, and who will survive, due to the heroism of doctors, nurses, first responders and ordinary citizens. I’m thinking about how this Boston Marathon really showed what the people taking part in it were made of – not just in terms of their athletic ability, but in terms of their courage and compassion, too.

If there is to be any sort of ‘happy ending’ to this story, it should be that the majority of people are still good, and they still care, and they still want to help others. Their instinct is still to run towards those who need assistance, to try to think of ways they can help, to try to anticipate needs and fill them. No matter what happens, we need to hold onto this. Everyone has a role to play in making the world a more peaceful, and less horror-filled, place. Whether this is something as huge as drafting the law or keeping the peace, or simply being kind to every person you meet, makes no difference. We’ll never get there unless we are all pulling in the same direction.

Let’s all pull together on this one. Take care and have a happy Tuesday.

On Being Brave

For some reason, several people in recent weeks have taken the time to tell me how brave they think I am. I presume this means they think I’m brave for putting my dreams on the line and for following the impulse to write, or perhaps for entering competitions and submitting pieces of work for publication.

I don’t feel brave, though. Not at all. I feel like the biggest quivering chicken in the history of the world. Surely, if I was brave, I’d feel more like I was channelling Queen Boudicca instead, taking on the might of the Romans with little besides a bow and some facepaint. Isn’t that how it works?

It’s hard to feel brave when you have to force yourself to check your email in case there’s a note of rejection in there. It’s hard to realise a piece you’ve written is really not very good – and it’s especially hard to realise this after you’ve submitted it. Some of the stories I’ve entered into competition over the past while have been catalogues of rookie mistakes, and I’m learning the wisdom of the saying ‘measure twice and cut once’ – or maybe, in this case, ‘read twice before submitting’! I don’t feel brave because I’ve started this process; I simply feel like an amoeba in a very big pond, realising just how much I have to learn.

This is me. Hello!
Image: resilience.org

I feel like what I’m doing at the moment is an apprenticeship, something everyone who wants to write has to go through eventually. I’ve done things in the past which I’ve needed bravery for, sure – giving lectures in front of hundreds of people, for instance. Taking an oral examination. Going up in front of a funding board made up of six senior male professors, and arguing for the validity of the research I was doing at the time. I still can’t quite believe I’ve done all these things, because even the memory of having done them makes me quake in my boots. All those things made me sick with fear before I did them, and I felt like I’d accomplished something when I’d managed to get through them.

Submitting stories for publication feels more like a compulsion, though – and, like any compulsion, it can sometimes be impossible to resist. I feel like I have to submit something I’ve written, perhaps before it’s ready, because the urge to do it is overwhelming. It’s only afterwards when I realise ‘perhaps that piece could have done with a bit more maturation time.’ But it’s too late, at that point, to retract it. It’s almost like my enthusiasm gets the better of me and a certain recklessness gets into my blood. So, off the story goes. Submit in haste, repent in leisure!

This isn’t to say that the pieces I’ve submitted haven’t been my best effort at the time. I feel like there’s something of value in everything I’ve entered into competition, and I’ve done my best. But it’s the same with everything; after the fact, you wonder if you could have done better, and what you should have changed to make the piece stronger. But if you followed that logic to its extreme, you’d never submit anything. You’d spend the rest of your life tweaking your first piece of writing until it’s beyond recognition, and nobody else would ever read it. The process of writing and submitting and being rejected is a terrible crucible, but it’s absolutely necessary. I know I have to go through this process of learning in order that something I submit, somewhere, someday, might meet with approval.

So, I don’t feel like it’s brave, as such, to send things away for other eyes to read. It’s horrible and I don’t like to do it – but I don’t think it’s the same thing as being brave. However, there’s a certain amount of facing your fears involved in living through the days afterward, when you’re waiting to hear the results. You may never hear how you got on, of course. There are a lot of voices clamouring for attention, and I know it will take a long time before my words will warrant any recognition. The process is somewhat analogous to shouting into a hurricane – your small contribution is swirled up into the whole and becomes lost. But the value of it still lives inside you. You know that you tried, and did your best, and over time the process gets easier (hopefully, at least.) In my case, it’s even true to say that every submission makes me feel a little better about myself – at least, until the doubts start to creep in. But I don’t think doing what you have to do is brave, really. This is a process I have to go through, and I’m just doing what I must. It does make you feel vulnerable, and it’s not entirely pleasant. But, given the choice between doing what I’m doing and trying to live any other life, I’d happily choose what I’m doing.

I do appreciate being considered brave, though. I try to remember it every time I’m faced with the prospect of entering another contest, or laying my work out in front of someone else like a merchant laying out her wares. I remember it every time I have to check my email, or every time I wonder ‘should I enter something into this contest?’

Maybe that’s what being brave is all about, though – taking a chance on something even though you’re not sure what the outcome will be, and hoping for the best. In that case, every one of us is brave.

I’ll never be as brave as this lady, though. Let’s hope it’s never up to me to stop the onslaught of a tyrannical Empire…
Image: listverse.com

A Time for Remembering

As well as being my favourite time of year, November can also be a time when people spend some time remembering their lost loved ones. In Ireland, in the tradition in which I was brought up, November is the month of the dead; names of lost loved ones are placed on church altars, and they are commemorated and fondly recalled at every Mass. I always felt it was a lovely tradition, and it feels fitting that we should do this as the year slows down, and as we begin to prepare ourselves for the ending and rebirth that is part of every winter. I was brought up to believe that remembering our dead in prayer benefits them, and I still believe this; I definitely feel that taking time to remember the dead benefits the living in many ways, too. It’s not good to cut off grief and refuse to feel it, despite the fact that it seems much easier to deny it than to face it – it’s better, I think, to take the time to go through your sorrow, and honour the memory of those you’ve lost. Setting aside a particular time which is devoted to honouring those who’ve gone before us seems like a wise and kind thing to do, in my mind.

On Sunday, I watched some televised footage of various Armistice Day celebrations. This is always something that moves me very deeply, particularly as I watch the servicemen and women marching past the Cenotaph in Whitehall, in London. Their quiet dignity and pride – pride in their country and their fallen comrades, as well as the values for which they stand – makes me feel their losses and understand, in part, why they choose to fight. Personally, I abhor the very thought of war, and I wish there was no need for armies, navies and air forces, but I admire the self-sacrifice and courage required to do what you feel you must in order to bring about the betterment of the world, or your country. It takes bravery far beyond anything I possess to put your life on the line, day after day, in the service of others, and anyone who does make that choice has my respect.

In this country, we have a tortured history with relation to the World Wars and those who served and died in them. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom at the outbreak of WWI, and so many Irish people signed up to serve as part of the British war effort. Due to Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World War, Irish people who chose to fight with the Allies at that time had to join the British Army, which was seen as a form of treason. Horrendously, their courage was seen as a choice to turn their back on their own country, and not as a choice to do their best to make the world better for everyone. The families they left behind were often ostracised, and their grief was belittled and ignored. It’s only now that we’re beginning to commemorate those who fell, and pay the proper respect to their memory – it’s like a huge wound has begun to heal, and it’s a wonderful thing. Over the last few years, gravestones have been erected to mark the final resting places of over 200 servicemen and women in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin; all these noble people fell in the name of justice and right during the World Wars, and their graves had, until recently, been ignored by all but their families and descendants – and even, sometimes, not even them. It often happened that people served under false names, in order to avoid bringing shame to their loved ones, which makes their resting places harder to trace now; as well as that, some families refused to admit to having veterans from the World Wars among their number for a variety of reasons, including political.

The wearing of the poppy during late October and November, with which most people in the United Kingdom (at least) would be familiar as a mark of respect to the war dead, is still controversial in Ireland. Some people refuse to wear it due to the long struggle this country went through to gain its independence from colonial rule, and the poppy was considered, for a very long time, to be a mark of adherence to a regime of cruel tyranny due to its connection with the British Army.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row…

Ireland has a painful history in relation to the British Army, and it is true to say that, in the past, the British Army did not always act honourably in Ireland. The truth of the history of my country fills me with horror and sorrow, at times, but I do feel that we – as free, democratic European citizens – owe everything we prize to those who fought, and it’s up to us to bring about the peace that they died for. I do find it terribly sad that someone would refuse to wear a poppy for reasons which aren’t directly connected with remembering the war, and to my mind the actions of the British Army in Ireland, while sometimes reprehensible, are not connected with the war dead. The poppy commemorates those who gave their lives so that we could be free, a sacrifice I cannot imagine having to make, and because of that I find no difficulty in wearing one.

I would be happy to see Ireland owning her war dead, and remembering them with pride, instead of overlooking their existence because to remember them is too painful. I think this has already started to happen, and it makes me glad to think that, one day, we might be able to heal the wounds opened by the wars so long ago. Facing up to our troubled past, and laying the pain to rest by honouring those dead who were laid to rest without fanfare or ceremony all those years ago, is a worthwhile challenge for us to take on. We owe it to those who fell in battle. If they were brave enough to die for us, shouldn’t we be brave enough to live for them?