CROWE'S REQUIEM

Irish writer McCormack’s first novel (after a story collection, Getting it in the Head, 1998) makes good use of his finely honed sense of the macabre, but this tale of a strange boy, raised by his even stranger grandfather, is unable to sustain the promise of its beginning. Shorn of angel’s wings in his fall to earth from on high, the newborn infant Crowe is so upset that he wails nonstop for three days. His grandfather, resident dark force in their remote western Irish village of Furnace, recognizes a kindred spirit and takes over his parenting, a job he does mostly by letting the precocious boy ask whatever questions he wants, reveling in the chance to instill his apocalyptic vision in one ideally suited to receive it. Years of neglect in public education fail to tarnish Crowe’s unique brilliance, so when he takes the university entrance exam, not even aware of what it is, he passes easily. The moment he puts Grandfather and Furnace behind him, however, he begins to lose his bearings, wandering hopelessly around Dublin looking for the university and even running full tilt into a street sign as he gives a passing girl a second look. This last act gains him the compassion and companionship of the girl, Maria, a postgraduate who tends his bloodied face and gives him a new perspective on life. Eventually they become lovers, and for a time all is blissful—but then Maria learns she won’t be allowed to graduate unless she pays her bill, and slips into a veritable Slough of Despond. Desperate to have her back as she was, Crowe valiantly earns the money she needs by taking part in a medical experiment, but complications from the test make his triumph a hollow one. Dark energy generated by Crowe’s fall crackles through the first pages, but details of the love story ultimately prove pedestrian, damping a bright vision into one fairly unremarkable.