Word: northerner
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...chance to slip off with his friends. Yet all is not serene in this seeming pastoral; each crossing of the clear and shallow brook is a violation of the law. The narrator lives on the border of the Irish Free State, and the river hems him into his native Northern Ireland...
Furtive infrequent forays into the Free State aside, the narrator spends most of his days in less resplendent parts of Northern Ireland than stream's edge. His is a rather drab, traditional world, where the Catholic Church is the final arbiter of any question, but where religious allegiance must be downplayed to avoid the attention of the Protestant authorities, who are especially vigilant in the years following World War II in which the book is set. Old grudges are fresh in this society, and memories of the not-so-distant rebellions are almost more vivid than the events of daily...
Although the novel certainly does center on the travails of the narrator's family, in no way does that limit the interest of Deane's far-flung vignettes. Within the framework of the controlling mystery, Deane comments on everything from Catholic School to the violence plaguing Northern Ireland to this day. One of his most disturbing but beautiful scenes occurs when the narrator watches the men of the neighborhood set bonfires to burn rats out of defunct air raid shelters. Imagine the wonders he can work when satirizing a sadistically strict math teacher or when describing the ghost...
Rejectionists are taking their second shot at Northern Ireland's peace agreement today after having failed to stop it in May's referendum. Dissident Republicans signaled their intentions yesterday by detonating a car bomb near a police station in Newtownhamilton, but anti-agreement Unionists are relying on the ballot rather than the bullet. Protestant hardliners led by Reverend Ian Paisley hope they can win enough seats in today's election for the new Northern Ireland Assembly to gum up the works. "They say they're out to defend the Union," says TIME London bureau chief Barry Hillenbrand. "But that...
...Peace in Northern Ireland [WORLD, June 1]? I'll believe it when I see it. Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, may have changed his tune, but others have not. Ask me 30 years from now whether this was a watershed or just another "Sinn Feint." FLASH FIASCO Mannheim, Germany...