Almost 14% of Ireland is bog: vast swathes of moss-carpeted land, below which layers of\u00a0ancient history have been compounded into mulch-black turf. Captivated by their otherworldly beauty, Seamus Heaney wrote some of\u00a0his finest poetry about bogs \u2013 and the bodies discovered, perfectly preserved, in their eerie depths.<\/p>\n
Sheila Armstrong\u2019s exquisite second novel, The Red Mouth, also centres around two bog discoveries: the \u201cmonstrous, bog-black antler\u201d of\u00a0a\u00a0great Irish elk, and the mutilated body of a girl who comes to be known as Belroe Woman. From here we follow the intersecting lives of those haunted, both literally and figuratively, by these\u00a0excavations and the uncanny landscape that yielded them.<\/p>\n
There is Patch, a recently returned \u00e9migr\u00e9 nursing a bone-aching loneliness, which is tempered only by the rescue dog that leads him to the antler in the earth. And there is Maeve, a socially anxious scientist sent to conduct environmental assessments of the bog, only to find there a \u201cseeping dread, the dull acceptance of death\u201d. Decades previously, Tom\u00e1s, a turf-cutter, is trying to support his young family even as the march of progress threatens his way of life. He meets Professor Liam Fleming, an archaeologist whose relentless obsession with Belroe Woman comes to define his career, while the women around him \u2013 his estranged partner, his troubled young daughters \u2013 fall apart.<\/p>\n
Armstrong\u2019s acclaimed debut novel, 2023\u2019s Falling Animals, also began with two discoveries \u2013 first a dead seal, then a dead man on a beach in County Sligo \u2013 before expanding outwards, each of its 18 chapters told from a different point of view. In The Red Mouth, we keep circling the same characters over time: troubled young daughters become troubled adults; Belroe Woman becomes a museum exhibit and a symbol of an Irish history that may or may not exist; bog\u00a0becomes managed wilderness becomes national park.<\/p>\n
double quotation markThe tension between the ancient past and one\u2019s immediate present sits at the heart of today\u2019s climate conversations<\/p>\n
Time is a preoccupation for the characters too. Tom\u00e1s, for example, muses on the word \u201cdevelopment\u201d, since \u201csurely the development has already taken place, over hundreds of\u00a0thousands of years, the press and formation of the blanket of peat across a rock singing to itself in the middle of the Atlantic\u201d. And yet, Tom\u00e1s also finds himself returning to Fleming\u2019s mantra that \u201cthere are no experts in this, only us, only now\u201d. This tension between the ancient past and one\u2019s immediate present sits at the heart of today\u2019s climate conversations \u2013 and indeed, much of today\u2019s climate fiction. How can we foster an appreciation for deep geological time while also recognising the particular urgency of our current, catastrophic moment?<\/p>\n
In the hands of another novelist such concerns could become abstract\u00a0or heavy-handed, but the remarkable strength of Armstrong\u2019s writing ensures this is never the case. Out on the bog we find \u201cquiet green matrices of sphagnum\u201d and \u201cgrown-over sods arranged in uneven mounds that mimic the droppings of some great beast\u201d; above is the \u201ctwisting sherbet sky\u201d and \u201cthe buttery August light\u201d. The prose throughout is peppered with scientific terms, ancient folklore and snippets of the Irish\u00a0language.<\/p>\n
This vivid lyricism calls to mind other Irish writers such as Paul Lynch or Sara Baume (Patch and his dog, in particular, echo Baume\u2019s gorgeous debut Spill Simmer Falter Wither<\/a>). Looking farther afield, the reading experience resembles that of Samantha Harvey\u2019s Booker-winning Orbital, where another handful of individual lives and private concerns are set against a vast and sublime beauty \u2013 only this time we are not up in the heavens, but down in the dirt. Just as with Harvey\u2019s novel, some readers of The Red Mouth might bemoan the lack of dialogue or explicit plot. There are no big epiphanies: time unfolds in quiet increments; new losses are accrued; mysteries are set up only to remain unanswered. However, as Brigit, one of Fleming\u2019s daughters, comes to realise, such is life: \u201cthings happen, one after the other, and there is no smooth parabolic curve that can connect all the checkpoints \u2026 uncertainty is the only certainty\u201d. In Armstrong\u2019s meditative and profound novel, such uncertainty, so exquisitely rendered, is more than enough to sustain us to the end.<\/p>\n