INVENTORY

An Irish journalist’s memoir of his complicated years growing up in Derry, Northern Ireland, in the 1970s and ’80s—and the inevitable family of ghosts and victims.

In intimate, beautifully allusive vignettes, Anderson guides readers through his youth, when he was beleaguered by the perpetual violence within his Catholic working-class neighborhood. Despite the turmoil, the author effectively captures moments of charm in the early years—e.g., when he discovered the mysteries of radio, which is all the family had until TV arrived in the ’80s. He also conveys his admiration for his bodybuilding, blues-loving father, whose job as a gardener and groundskeeper in the local cemetery was misunderstood at the author’s school, where he was considered a “gravedigger.” Gradually, the innocent depictions grow more extreme. As conditions between the British and Irish continued to deteriorate—the military had the ability to spy on the locals via radio, and there were frequent bomb scares and armed checkpoints—Anderson felt the peer pressure to act out more outrageously and to partake in the panacea of choice, alcohol. Then the author breaks the narrative into “Da’s Folks” and “Ma’s Folks.” The former delineates grandfather Joseph’s humiliating legacy of desertion from the British army during World War II and later self-drowning in 1963 (his wife followed him into the river some years later). In “Ma’s Folks,” Anderson explores the life of his maternal grandfather, Anthony, a navy man who, though pro-British, “changed his smuggling habits” when the Germans occupied Ireland. Simmering violence bubbles underneath the entire text, often boiling over, and Anderson ably plumbs the salvatory theme of how his peaceable father, despite his mysterious past, helped break the cycle of violence for his son. Though different in mood and tone, this thoughtful memoir will appeal to readers of Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, among other chronicles of the Troubles.

An impressively pensive, impressionistic work from an attentive writer.