Trespasses by Louise Kennedy was published in 2022 and it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2023. The book begins in 2015 but swiftly moves back in time to Belfast of the 1970s.
Cushla is 24 and a Catholic primary school teacher, but she also helps out as a barmaid in the family pub. That’s where she meets Michael, he’s a 60 year old barrister who is happy to take on any legal cases, be they for Catholics or Protestants, including IRA members. Cushla is immediately attracted to him despite the age difference, religious difference and the fact that he is married.
Cushla is still living at home with her alcoholic mother, her brother Eamonn doesn’t realise how out of control their mother is. He runs the pub and is married with young daughters and he is totally unaware of his sister’s relationship with Michael.
As often happens with teachers of young children Cushla becomes involved with the family of young Davy, one of her pupils. He’s looked down on by the whole class because his mother is a Protestant, and as they live in a Catholic area she can’t hang washing out on the line as the charming neighbours pelt the clean clothes with shit. It means that her children’s clothes have absorbed all the smells of her cooking and mustiness as they take so long to dry indoors. Davy is a poor wee soul, looked down on by his classmates, and particular the nasty school priest, but Cushla befriends the family which only leads to more problems for them.
There’s only going to be one sort of ending to this tale, a sad one, but a very common situation back in those days.
I was a bit trepidacious about reading this book as I’m of an age to remember the beginnings of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, and then the common bomb scares which disrupted simple shopping trips for years. Then there were the genuine bombs when we moved close to London in the late 1970s, but this was a good read.
I was puzzled by one thing though. Cushla’s lover’s name is Michael, a Protestant lawyer. As I grew up in the west of Scotland which at that time had a very similar Catholic/Protestant ‘tradition’, names were descriptive things and anyone called Michael would definitely have been a Catholic, so it seemed a strange choice for a Protestant by the author.
Thankfully there have been so many ‘mixed marriages’ over the last few decades that have gone a long way to the demise of that toxic sectarianism, in Scotland anyway.
I didn’t really care for this although recognized it was well done and certainly convincing. Also, the cyclical aspect of Cushla’s interest in the family causing more harm was well done.
I was not all that convinced of Michael’s appeal to Cushla but maybe it was a combination of father figure and boredom?
I prefer Joan Lingard, although it was certainly an interesting contrast.
Constance,
I had forgotten that you had read this one. I so agree about the Michael character, even if she had just made him 50 instead of 60 it would have seemed more believable.