For the Good Times by David Keenan review – brutality in 1970s Belfast

This powerful novel brings a fresh literary approach to the Provisional IRA, but does it reflect on our intoxication with violence, or celebrate it?

Northern Ireland came to the fore last year with outstanding books by Anna Burns, Wendy Erskine and Michael Hughes. Now David Keenan, author of 2017’s accomplished and original debut This Is Memorial Device, and a Scot with Irish roots, enters the territory with a novel set in the Ardoyne area of Belfast in the 1970s and centred on members of the Provisional IRA.

The loquacious narrator, Samuel McMahon, tells his story, apparently to an investigative reporter “or some other do-gooder”, while incarcerated in the Maze prison. His self-described “happy days” make up much of the novel: a frenzy of beatings, shootings, extortion and robberies with his friends and fellow Provos Tommy and Barney.

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from Books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2sWWICK

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