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THE DRIFTING MOMENTS

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A novel by Paddy Carroll

 

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ISBN: 978-1-917242-19-6 (H/B)

 

Price:  € 25.00 plus P&P (Irish Address)

 

 

 

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About the Book:

 

At this novel’s heart is the spiritual quest for love and

the consequence of capricious fate.

 

Filled with astute insights in to human behaviour and motivations and written in a distinctive, stylish prose with psychological depth of characterization, it is a most memorable story about love and friendships, some passionate, the drifting moments captured in vivid set pieces.

The story moves between Belfast and America in the 1950’s and 1060’s, a time of change and upheaval... Our hero, Stephen MacAlindon known as Maca, is a boy of unknown parentage brought up by his loving adoptive parents. Maca is intelligent and ambitious but has a wild streak which makes him kick against the traces in the conservative Catholic community he lives in. He gets to a prestigious Catholic grammar school and is doing well, but a reckless act results in him being sent to a borstal. He has a hard time there but his tenacity enables him to get a scholarship to Queen’s University and the chance of a degree.

Given the opportunity to go to Boston, young Maca takes it and using his Belfast connections gets a job in an investment bank.  All those qualities – intelligence, daring, drive and ambition – that got him into trouble in Belfast, enable him to thrive in America.  He rises in the bank and soon gets a promotion to the Stock Exchange floor in New York, a chance he is eager to take because it gets him away from a failed love affair.  Freed from the oppressive cultural environment of his youth, religious and political, Maca on discovering the American way gains the confidence to find and express his true self. In New York he finds his niche and a woman who loves him.  He settles in and becomes an American citizen. However, he cannot escape Belfast and news from there, like the death of his father, calling him back.  Maca resists until loyalty to a friend gets him into trouble too big to gloss over as attempts to cover his friend’s mistake lead to ever increasing losses for the bank that cannot be hidden forever. Reluctantly Maca goes back to Belfast and picks up the threads of his old existence, just as unrest in the city is about to come to a head with violent consequences…

 

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Curious:  I’ve just picked up a copy of your new book, flipped through it.

Author:   Oh yeah! Let me know what ye think.

 

C:  This guy Maca… is he really Patrick Kavanagh’s son?

A:  He’s the son I gave him in Borrikeen. You’ve read Borrikeen so you know he never found out he had a son. Throughout this part of the story Maca doesn’t uncover the truth either.

Who his real father is. It’s when he applies for his passport that he learns he was adopted.

And the name of his birth mother.

 

C:   Why all the progenitive mystery?

A:   As Kavanagh himself wrote “My fathers strung for me/No genealogic rosary”.

 

C:   Highfalutin stuff! Surely Maca would want to find out?

A:   Initially he’s shocked… remains curious.

 

C:  But you haven’t enabled him pursue his curiosity in this book. Why not have him track down Agnes McMahon, his birth mother.            

A:  Look! He’s eighteen years old when he applies for a passport… a chisler concerned with making the best of any opportunities that come his way. Maybe in later years he would do so, or Agnes might seek him out. I didn’t want cluttering up the work with that particular backstory. The book is a stand alone, ten years in gestation.

 

C:  What? Ten years!

A:  Well… perhaps not quite. I suppose concentrated writing was concertinaed into a lot less time than that.

 

C:  Why the procrastination?

A:  Distractions… the vagaries of life. Having to get on with things.

 

C:  As in… what?

A:  As in the minutiae of day to day living.

 

C:  Looks like laziness to me. Or lack of drive… lack of belief in what you were about.

A:  Fuck off! Life is not all about writing.

 

C:  Unless you make it so.

A:  Well… maybe I choose not to make it so.

 

C:  So! What were these so called distractions?

A:  More time for self… for family. More time for friends. Missing absent friends. Hanging loose… doing odd jobs that no one else would or could take on. I’m not complaining. In fact I find manual work therapeutic… relaxing. 

 

C:  Excuses! Seems to me you couldn’t be bothered getting on with the task in hand. Odd jobs!

      What kind of odd jobs?

A:  Upkeep of house and home… the land… forestry. Working with nature.

 

C:  We all have to do the best we can in that regard. We just get on with it. Why are you making such a big thing of it?

A:  It is as it is.

 

C:  I understood you to say that this work is book two of a trilogy. Is book three also to have a gestational period of ten years? You had better get down to writing it straight away.

A:  I’ve started it… about thirty thousand words on paper.

 

C:  Right! Have you the stamina to finish it? What? Another seventy thousand words or thereabouts.

      Will Maca’s progenitorial curiosity get the better of him?

A:  I’m not going to finish it. The story ends with this book.

 

C:  No trilogy! The old imagination drying-up on you is it? Doesn’t that just leave your readers high and dry? What are they to make of this arbitrary decision?

A:  Arbitrary me arse. It’s the right decision. The mass of readers, if I have any, are victims of entertainment. At the end of this part of the story Maca’s life could take any of four, maybe more, different paths. I inserted an Epilogue so let the reader fill in the blanks.

 

C:  Sounds like a cop-out. And what will you do with the thirty thousand word draft?

A:  Burn it. What else?               

   

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About the author:

 

Paddy Carroll is a lawyer educated at University College Dublin and lives in Dundalk, Co Louth.

 

Also by Paddy Carroll

 

Glassdrummond

 

BORRIKEEN, Unmasking Patrick Kavanagh