Wee Rockets, by Gerard Brennan

I've been a bit remiss about getting around to reading Wee Rockets, mainly because it just takes me longer to get around to ebooks than their paper counterparts. What can I say? I'm old school. Also, I work in a bookstore.  But as I've very much enjoyed Mr. Brennans' work in the past, I have persisted and think it's high time I wrote a few thoughts on the matter.

When I first heard about Wee Rockets, which I learned would be about a bunch of young kids in hoodies in Belfast, I must say that I didn't know they would be such tough characters. I was maybe thinking more along the lines of the Artful Dodger and other beloved street urchins.

But these are not those kids. When we come into the story, Joe Phillips' crew is just setting out to mug an old lady, and this is not their first crime, even though, as the story tells us, none of them is over fourteen years old. (And some are a lot younger.) And the community has begun to notice.

For this reason, and not because of any crisis of conscience, Joe, who is the tallest of the bunch and therefore the most conspicuous, is looking to leave the gang behind him. But not before Stephen McVeigh, after trying to rally the Beechmount community behind him, decides to go after the gang as a kind of lone vigilante. In essence, these two fateful decisions propel the book. Well, that and the surprise visit of a long lost relative.

Never having been a pre-teen boy (and they are all boys, there is nary a girl in sight, though Joe seems to have a healthy enough interest in grown women), you might think that this violent and sometimes brutal tale about boys stealing to gain access to cheap cigarettes,booze and weed would hold little interest for me. But it's perhaps exactly the inside view that makes it so interesting. How many books have you read about what it's like to grow up in a working class Catholic neighborhood just as the Troubles are starting to recede? Yeah--same here.

Brennan has many strengths that makes this not just another crime story. He has a great gift for structuring a story, for one thing. There are a lot of characters in this short book, and a lot of plots to keep whirling in the air, but he manages this in a very understated sort of way. You don't really realize how difficult it is until you stop to think about it. The book has humor despite its darkness, and I must say that though I'm sure the author drew on some autobiographical details to write his characters, I have to hope that his obvious talent for thinking up criminal activity all went on to the page and wasn't tested in the real world at an earlier time...   

There are elements of the story that could be told here in Santa Cruz, which though affluent and mostly calm, does have its gang problems. But as I've stepped back from the story a little, I think there is a lot about its particular milieu that leaves these kids with too much time on their hands. It's not just absent fathers and working moms that are the problem. This story is set in the aftermath of a war, and the power vacuum that came in the wake of that is evident. Who does have authority? is one of the questions the book asks. The fact that young kids can rush around mugging people with impunity means that the social fabric is pretty tattered.

There is a telling sentence fairly far into the book. It's almost a throwaway. Joe is sitting in a car parked near Queens' University, though he doesn't know precisely where. "He'd never been in this part of the city. Hadn't thought he ever would."

Hadn't thought he ever would. It was fairly stunning to me to read that, but it made the over the top behavior of the kids seem more credible to me. It isn't just that these young Beechmont hoodlums don't expect to go to college. They don't even expect to visit its vicinity. It's not just transportation that's stopping them. It's that as much as they identify with their Beechmount neighborhood, they are also limited by it.

In one scene far into the book, one character takes another out to dinner. When the woman starts yelling at her date, he tells her that her Beechmount is showing. "This is a classy place, you know."

The woman has the pride to walk out on him, but, tellingly she doesn't have quite enough self-confidence to stare the other diners down and have her meal anyway.

Now frankly, most of this book's target readers aren't going to be reading it for these sorts of sociological reflections. They're going to be reading it for the fast paced, gritty and sometimes shocking little tale that it is . And I say, have at it!

Smoke, by Nigel Bird and The Point, by Gerard Brennan

Bit of a problematic blogpost, this one, but I'm going to do it anyway. I happened to read these two novellas, both nominated for the Spinetingler Award, one right after the other, and found the parallels striking enough  that I thought I'd do them together, rather than separately. Unfortunately, in the time that's elapsed between now and then, Smoke seems to have been withdrawn from circulation for the moment, due, I'm guessing, to some larger troubles at the press it was published by. That's a can of worms that I don't really want to get into here, but I'm going to assume that Smoke will be made available again soon by one means or another.

I read Smoke in ebook form, while The Point I read as a physical book. I think I enjoyed reading in the old school form marginally more, but with novellas, it isn't a terribly large issue either way, and I actually think novellas are highly suited to the ebook format.

Smoke begins with a simple enough school incident. Our hero, Jimmy, gets pantsed by the school bullies and as he of course decides to take his revenge, events soon spiral out of control. I was a little slow on the uptake here, but Smoke actually continues on from a  fine short story I read in the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8 called "An Arm and  a Leg", and I wish I'd reread that one before reading this story. If republished, I think including both in one volume might work rather well.

The community is Tranent, a working class British community where let's just say a lot of illicit activity is going on. I don't know that you'd call it tight knit, but it's the kind of place where everybody knows everybody else's business, including what's hidden under Nan's bed. There are a lot of skillfully interwoven story arcs to this brief tale, and everyone is pretty much after everyone else's loot, or even life.

Gerard Brennan's The Point focuses on another working class community, this one a  rough Belfast neighborhood. When brothers Paul and Brian find themselves needing to lay low, though, they head for Warrenpoint, a  seaside resort town that they remember as idyllic from their otherwise not so idyllic childhoods. There they meet Rachel, a girl with some troubles of her own. The encounter of the three of them, not to mention the various thugs that they inevitably get involved with, leads them to their own madcap festival of mayhem. I liked the brief titled chapters of this one, which helped keep things moving right along.

I still find myself a bit surprised to be reading crime fiction that centers on so much violence, boozing, drugs and sex. Not to mention dog fights. These are "guy books" in a big way, so I think it's fair to say straight off that they might not be for you, if I have any idea of who the typical readers of this blog are. Which, actually, I don't. If you're looking for fast paced gritty thrillers with more than  a bit of edge, these are just up your alley. I admire the talent and craftsmanship of both writers and will continue to read more.

While you wait for Smoke to be reborn, why don't you check out Nigel's short pieces on Smashwords? Oh, and did I mention that he is in the probably all too often mentioned here Grimm Tales as well? In fact, he won first prize in the original story contest for "Sing a Song of Sixpence".   

And once you've read The Point, which won the  2012 Spinetingler novella award, you can then go on to Mr. Brennan's Wee Rockets, which I have ahead of me as well.

Award nominees and a miscellany of other news

As I'm reading several things at the moment and getting to the end of none of them soon, I thought it might be fun to mention a few exciting things in the book world.

First, two authors I think are terrific, Declan Burke and Alan Glynn, are on the shortlist for the Irish Book Awards, which you can vote on HERE. I haven't gotten to Bloodland yet, but I've read two other books by Glynn and  so I'm certain he is worthy of consideration. Burke's Absolute Zero Cool, which I have read, is super. And this says nothing at all about the other nominees. Why not check out the site and at least make a list for your TBR pile?

A flukey surprise of going to the site is that I discovered Anna Carey who was once a part of a reading forum I participate in, is up for another Irish Book Award in the children's category for The Real Rebecca. I have bought it since finding out, but haven't got a chance to read it, but knowing her through the virtual world as I did, I am sure this book deserves to be on the list.

Two more books from Irish or more specifically Northern Irish writers are not up for awards yet, but that's because they are barely or not even out yet. Gerard Brennan's The Point is getting heaps of praise before it's even hit the streets and I am super excited that it is probably being lofted my way even now. And you too can now order it from Book Depository now.

And the one I have read, although in not quite final form, is Adrian McKinty's The Cold, Cold Ground.
I loved this book, even unfinished. It's not going to be out till January, but you owe it to yourself to preorder it here and now. You know how January is. The holidays are over and the resolutions fade fast and you have nothing much to look forward till at least spring. Treat yourself to this now, and you will have a very pleasant surprise waiting for you just when you think there is nothing much left to live for.