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A review by kimbofo
A Border Station by Shane Connaughton
5.0
Shane Connaughton is probably best known as the co-writer of the screenplay for the film My Left Foot for which he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1989. He’s also an actor, who has appeared in a wide range of films and TV dramas, including Coronation Street and Neil Jordan’s The Miracle.
A Border Station, his fiction debut, was shortlisted for the Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award upon publication in 1989. It has recently been republished by Black Swan to tie in with the sequel, Married Quarters, which came out earlier this year (and which I bought in Dublin in the summer and am now looking forward to reading very much).
It’s a beautiful and eloquent book set in the 1950s that follows the day-to-day dramas of a young boy growing up in rural Ireland in remote house, attached to a police barracks, that has no electricity, no running water.
We never find out the boy’s name, nor do we find out his age, but we do know his father is a fierce, bad-tempered man, a police sergeant at a Garda station on the border between the Six Counties and the Republic of Ireland.
We also know he thinks the world of his mother, a good-looking, mild-mannered woman, with whom he shares a bed, and he loves to spend his time outdoors, exploring the rolling green hills and country lanes by bicycle despite the often miserable weather.
The story, which is supposedly based on Connaughton’s own childhood, unfolds in seven interlinked chapters or — whisper it — short stories. There’s no real plot, instead we get a series of vignettes focusing on the boy’s home life. There’s nothing about school, little about friends; his world essentially revolves around his parents: the mother he idealises; the father he fears.
To read my review in full, please visit my blog.
A Border Station, his fiction debut, was shortlisted for the Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award upon publication in 1989. It has recently been republished by Black Swan to tie in with the sequel, Married Quarters, which came out earlier this year (and which I bought in Dublin in the summer and am now looking forward to reading very much).
It’s a beautiful and eloquent book set in the 1950s that follows the day-to-day dramas of a young boy growing up in rural Ireland in remote house, attached to a police barracks, that has no electricity, no running water.
We never find out the boy’s name, nor do we find out his age, but we do know his father is a fierce, bad-tempered man, a police sergeant at a Garda station on the border between the Six Counties and the Republic of Ireland.
We also know he thinks the world of his mother, a good-looking, mild-mannered woman, with whom he shares a bed, and he loves to spend his time outdoors, exploring the rolling green hills and country lanes by bicycle despite the often miserable weather.
The story, which is supposedly based on Connaughton’s own childhood, unfolds in seven interlinked chapters or — whisper it — short stories. There’s no real plot, instead we get a series of vignettes focusing on the boy’s home life. There’s nothing about school, little about friends; his world essentially revolves around his parents: the mother he idealises; the father he fears.
To read my review in full, please visit my blog.