When I began reading this book, though, I cared not at all about the cover.  It was late at night and my wife was away.  When that happens I find I have a difficult time going to bed, no matter how tired I am.  To induce sleep, I’ll often read and find myself falling asleep after only a few pages (it is, as I said, very late).  But this book kept me going.  As it grew ever later, I knew I should put Lies of Silence down and go to sleep, but the book had woken me up even more than before.  Plus, the IRA was breaking into a private residence in the middle of the night – who can sleep with that?  I’m not sorry at all that it left me sleep-deprived the next day.

Lies of Silence concerns the moderately successful (by his own estimation) luxury hotel manager, Michael Dillon.  He and his wife, Moira, live in Belfast, a place he despises and has wanted to leave for years.  He and his wife are unbelieving Catholics and know that Protestants have discriminated against Catholics for years; still, neither sides with the IRA.  Unlike her husband, though, Moira doesn’t want to leave Dublin.

When the book opens Michael is driving past a school, taking note of the graduates he sees.  It’s that time of year again, and all of the activity will make his hotel a very busy place for the next few days.  Suddenly he starts thinking about Andrea, his young girlfriend from Canada who celebrated her own graduation in the not-too-distant past.  She is now working for the BBC in Belfast.  Michael and Andrea have been having an affair for a few months, and Michael has decided that it is time to tell his wife, attain a divorce, and move away with Andrea.  We find him entering his driveway the night before he plans to tell his wife:

He drove back down the Antrim Road and re-parked in the entryway.  The light was now on in their bedroom window.  Perhaps he could stay downstairs until she went to sleep?  These last months he had found it easy to deceive her.  She was the enemy of his freedom.  But now he was sure he could not conceal his new happiness from her even for one night.  Now she was no longer his enemy.  She was his victim.

Michael’s relationship with Moira has never been good.  He recognizes that his love for her has been self-deception.  She’s beautiful, and he desired the power that came with her looks, the way walking around with her instantaneously put him on a perch above most other men.

It’s hard to read the chapter that narrates Michael’s arrival at home, his attempts to send his wife to bed so he can sit alone in the dark, her knowledge that something is wrong.  Of course, this being a thriller, things only get worse.  In the middle of the night Michael awakens to find his home invaded by a troop of young, masked, armed IRA “volunteers.”  Why his private home has been taken over by these boys, Michael begins to understand.  He’s heard of the IRA planting bombs in private citizens’ cars.  Perhaps they have come for theirs.  Soon he realizes, though, that he was targeted: he’s a hotel manager, and the next day a prominent and outspoken Protestant minister will be speaking at his hotel.  As suspected, they want him to drive his car, park it, and leave it to explode, killing the Reverend and anyone else unlucky enough to be around.  If he doesn’t do this exactly as planned, they will kill his wife.

Though quite a bit of setup has happened before Michael’s home is even invaded, Moore has instilled suspense in the buildup.  We know something is coming because of the foreboding language, language that is clear and precise and never out of control or heavy-handed.  And even during some of the most suspenseful passages in the book, Moore is able to keep the focus on the mental state of the protagonist, in all of Michael’s vacillation.  Here is Michael, dissatisfied as ever, driving the car and the bomb to his hotel in the morning:

He had not known then that degree day was not a passport to freedom, but the end of freedom.  He had not found the teaching job he wanted in England, in Europe, or in some faraway exotic place.  His grandfather had run pubs and a hotel, his father ran a hotel and he had ended up, like them, a servant of sorts, arranging to feed people and pour their drinks and provide beds for them.  Unlike his father and grandfather, he did not even own the hotel which he was now on his way to destroy.

Astoundingly, when the bomb explodes, we still have well over half of this book left.  The suspense is in the aftermath, in the fear Michael feels every time he is alone, in the guilt he feels over his decision, and especially in the way this event affects his personal relationships.  And it’s still suspenseful because we don’t know if anyone is out to kill Michael as he tries to pick up the pieces and restart his life.

In this superbly written book, Moore has shown how to write a book that is intelligent and thrilling.  I can see I have many more good reading experiences ahead as I work through more Moore.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne takes place in Belfast in the middle of the century.  Miss Hearne is just over forty.  She was raised to be the wife of a wealthy man, though none have ever paid her much attention.  To make things worse, when her aunt was growing older, Judith sacrificed her most eligible years in order to take care of her.  Her powerful aunt didn’t give her much choice in the matter.  But for Judith, this might just have been a good way to excuse away the fact that at forty she is not married, has no prospects, and has little skills she can use to earn some money to pad her meager annuity.

This may sound familiar.  We’ve encountered women in this situation before.  This is similar to the fate left to Lily Bart, though at least Lily was beautiful and had some pride; she had many chances and could blame society for much of her downfall.  Judith lives with the repressed knowledge that she’s unattractive to men.  Judith’s mind has developed all sorts of ways to delude herself.  She also gets comfort from the protection and love she receives from two figures given life by her imagination; these figures also render judgment.  It’s horrifying, really, and the first few paragraphs lay the horrors out nicely as Judith moves in to a new flat.

The first thing Miss Judith Hearne unpacked in her new lodgings was the silver-framed photograph of her aunt.  The place for her aunt, ever since the sad day of the funeral, was on the mantelpiece of whatever bed-sitting-room Miss Hearne happened to be living in.  And as she put her up now, the photograph eyes were stern and questioning, sharing Miss Hearne’s own misgivings about the condition of the bedsprings, the shabbiness of the furniture and the run-down part of Belfast in which the room was situated.

After she had arranged the photograph so that her dear aunt could look at her from the exact centre of the mantelpiece, Miss Hearne unwrapped the white tissue paper which covered the coloured oleograph of the Sacred Heart.  His place was at the head of the bed, His fingers raised in benediction, His eyes kindly yet accusing.  He was old and the painted halo around His head was beginning to show little cracks.  He had looked down on Miss Hearne for a long time, almost half her lifetime.

Moore begins the book perfectly!  Not only is his writing captivating but in a few short paragraphs we get a sense of how damaged Judith is as well as the a glimpse at some of the elements that hold such strong power over her.

All of that is superbly done, but the book is made even better by the additional damaged characters.  The home Judith has moved into is ran by Mrs Henry Rice.  Mrs Henry Rice’s son Bernard is a fat drop-out with long curly hair who believes he is the next great poet.  His greatness gives him license to live off his mother, which she doesn’t deny.  In another softly horrifying scene, Judith goes downstairs to find Mrs Henry Rice washing Bernie’s hair in the living room, Bernie half naked by the tub of water.  Those two characters are terrifying forces who eventually set themselves up against Judith.

The reason they come against Judith is Mrs Henry Rice’s brother, James Madden.  Madden has recently returned from America.  Thinking Judith must have some money, he pursues her interest for business gain.  She, of course, misunderstands — or is misled.

Her busy hands flew, unpacking the linen sheets, putting them away in the dresser drawer.  But she paused in the centre of the room.  He noticed me.  He was attracted.  The first in ages.  Well, that’s only because I’ve been keeping myself to myself too much.  Go out and meet new people and you’ll see, she told her mirror face.  And the face in the mirror told it back to her, agreeing.

When Madden learns that Judith has no money, he stops.  There’s worse to Madden, though, and this is tied to an ugly secret he shares with Bernard.  Bernard wants Madden to leave, so he convinces Judith that she should pursue Madden more directly.

If it seems that I’ve given away a lot of the story, I can assure you I haven’t.  There’s much more to it.  There is also more to this book than the sad story alluded to above.  Moore’s writing is exceptional.  There are multiple perspectives, all clearly defined.  He describes the setting in such a way that the reader can feel physical discomfort:

There, under the great dome of the building, ringed around by forgotten memorials, bordered by the garrison neatness of a Garden of Remembrance, everything that was Belfast came into focus.  The newsvendors calling out the great events of the world in flat, uninterested Ulster voices; the drab facades of the buildings grouped around the Square, proclaiming the virtues of trade, hard dealing and Presbyterian righteousness.  The order, the neatness, the floodlit cenotaph, a white respectable phallus planted in sinking Irish bog.  The Protestant dearth of gaiety, the Protestant surfeit of order, the dour Ulster burghers walking proudly among these monuments to their mediocrity.

And there are may echos of James Joyce, from the actual syntax and diction, where we often catch a glimpse of “stately plump Buck Mulligan,” to the interior dialogue, to the blur between the physical and mental world.

No, she said, smiling at the bottle. You’re behind the times.  There is, she told the bottle, no earthly reason to feel sorry.  Because there is no heavenly reason to feel guilt.  At least, nobody has shown me that there is.  And I’m waiting to be shown, dear bottle.  I’m waiting patiently.  It’s five o’clock already. / Too much, the black bottle said.  Nearly empty.  You are drunk.  You drink too much.

Drunk?  And why not, nobody’s to mind, nobody minds if I’m anything.  Nobody, not a single soul.  I’m free.  I’m — falling.

The bed, not mine at all.  The hotel.  The drink spilled on the bedspread.  I’ll have to pay, who cares?  Only money as Dan Breen used to say.  Only money.  And meanwhile, as long as I’ve fallen on this bed, I might as well sleep.  My shoes, I should take off.  Off with my shoes.  Sleepy shoes.

Sleepy smiling shoes.

Sleep.

This book actually took me quite a while to read.  At just over 200 pages, I expected to breeze through it, but it demanded that I slow down — in a good way.  The language and the cadence of the story, at first delicate and then raucous, made it impossible to read quickly.  The best thing about this book is not the cover.