The Vogue by Eoin McNamee

My review of Eoin McNamee’s latest (Faber & Faber) in today’s Sunday Business Post Magazine. Here’s a short excerpt:

Eoin McNamee’s novels dependably evoke a very specific mood. Imagine a lonely man living on the outskirts of a provincial town – perhaps somewhere near the Northern Irish border, perhaps in the English midlands. The weather is bad. The few buildings nearby have long since succumbed to decay. The man carries a heavy burden of secrets.  He moves furtively through a world of mildewed archives and one-night cheap hotels, waiting for a signal from his past. He works for a secret organisation, official or otherwise.  There is a mystery. The mystery might be solved – but don’t hold your breath.

Very few Irish novelists – John Banville comes to mind – have marked out their fictional territory so clearly and with such single-mindedness of purpose. Like Banville, McNamee is a stylist. He lavishes attention on his sentences, frequently working miracles, sometimes (the bar is set very high) falling flat. You don’t really read McNamee for his plots – though he is superbly good at them, and can nudge a gripping conspiracy thriller to life with just the right touches of jittery menace. You read him for his sentences – and for the downbeat mood that they so vividly evoke.