DOONEEN

A writer travels from his London home to a literary festival in his native Dublin, where he finds all hell breaking loose.

Both the title and the framing of this audaciously inventive novel evoke “The Cliffs of Dooneen,” a traditional, pastoral Irish song about saying farewell to the seaside cliffs. Yet this is mainly a tale of two cities and two men, a pair of lovers, “their names being Mahmoud Habib, and Bartholomew Port. Known to each other as Mootie, and Mew.” Mew is the ostensible writer of the pages that follow and Mootie his intended reader. But Mootie might be dead, or maybe Mew is. Anyway, they are separated and cannot reconnect. The plot commences when Mew follows a stranger into a London park and somehow emerges into the heart of Dublin. This is where he came of age and where his family still lives, but much has changed. There is no traffic, no private vehicles. Trams and “the clickers,” which are apparently some sort of moving sidewalks, now transport the populace. It’s a populace that finds itself ill-served by the government and powers that be, exploited economically, treated brutally. Mew gets hints early on that the city is poised for political revolt, which strikes a chord of familiarity with him. He sympathizes with the protestors, but mainly he misses Mootie. Amid his plans to attend the festival, he becomes enmeshed in the protest, in league with those plotting revolt, entrapped in various loops of time and ghosts and history. If this is a dream, it extends beyond Mew, encompassing the thoughts, conversations, and actions of others who might be dead. He has trouble distinguishing friend from foe, reality from imagination, military vehicles from monsters.

Given all that is up for grabs, the novel does a masterful job of sustaining narrative momentum and suspense.