A Mad and Wonderful by Mark Mullholland

I need a book to leave me something, a trace of something. To do this a book has to do more than tell a story or it will vanish in the mist. It needs to present me with a character who has something memorable about him; a theme that resonates; an insight, preferably profound; and if possible all three.
This should have been a great novel. In the tradition of "All Quiet on the Western Front", it presents us with a picture from the other side, a sensitive look at the attitude of the terrorist, his life, loves and motive forces.
To me while the novel starts promisingly, it achieves little of these things. Any sympathy I have for John Donnelly is lost in a welter of ghosts, dreams, and absolute whimsy. I love Ireland and, despite the IRA's oft-time barbarity, wrongheadedness and sheer idiocy, have real sympathy for their cause. The British are trespassers, they shouldn't be there.
But Mulholland lost me, there is little suspense. The dialogue is at times superbly Irish but that's the best I can say.