Iris, another poet, is driven to leave by a gargoyle-ish entity (one of several evil versions of children, as in the film Don’t Look Now, a reference point for the book). This is the 70s London of “Clockwork Orangies kicking Irish tramps to death … and no-warning bombs killing children”.ĭark powers also occupy the commune’s temple of peace and love, perhaps connected with Dan and Una (he speaks at one point of “the old Fogarty magic” mesmerising Troy). There Una meets her “blue-eyed boy”, the poetry-spouting Troy McClory, her love for him the broken heart of the book. In time, the ruined Dots abandons Dan and Una, who, when grown and homeless, end up in a Kilburn squatters’ commune. The family flees to hungry London, where Dots becomes a sex worker in Soho under the wing of Auntie Nano, another exile from their beloved Currabawn. Padna arrives with a mob one night at the “inbred” Fogartys’ cabin, declaring, “A curse has come upon this land,” and saying the nuns would come for Dan and Una’s mother Dots unless they left. Through fractured prismatic recollections, we learn that their family was driven from Ireland in the 1950s at the instigation of local priest Monsignor Padna, victim of a humiliating supernatural incident. Its narrative is mainly spoken by Dan Fogarty, who attends upon his 70-year-old sister, Una, who has dementia and is in a care home in Margate. His career since has shown a willingness to experiment in a wide range of forms and styles, climaxing in this verse novel, Poguemahone, from crowdfunding publisher Unbound.īroadly, Poguemahone is a story of possession – of hatreds, obsessions and souls – and of what cannot be possessed, such as friends, lovers, children, even a home. A major Irish writer of the postwar generation, Patrick McCabe is best known for his early novels The Butcher Boy (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (1998), both shortlisted for the Booker prize and filmed by Neil Jordan.
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