In the Woods

by Tana French

Irish politics are tribal, incestuous, tangled and furtive, incomprehensible even to many of the people involved. To an outside eye there is basically no difference between the two main parties, which occupy identical self-satisfied positions on the far right of the spectrum, but many people are still passionate about one or the other because of which side their great-grandfathers fought on during the Civil War, or because Daddy does business with the local candidate and says he’s a lovely fella. Corruption is taken for granted, even grudgingly admired: the guerrilla cunning of the colonized is still ingrained into us, and tax evasion and shady deals are seen as forms of the same spirit of rebellion that hid horses and seed potatoes from the British.