Sunday book pick: The rippling tragedies of North Irish conflict in Louise Kennedy’s ‘Trespasses’

No news is good news, goes the saying.

But the day at primary school near Belfast begins with prayers and a news bulletin. The news, brought by the pupils, is a bulletin of horrifying events. Killings, shootings, beatings, bombings, riots, hunger and poverty. It is the time of the Troubles, and there’s no respite from the news.

The children are familiar with the vocabulary of wartime, phrases like “boobytrap, incendiary device, gelignite, nitroglycerine” roll off their tongues. 24-year-old Cushla, their teacher and the protagonist of Louise Kennedy’s debut novel Trespasses, is protective of her students, often going the extra mile to protect them from the awfulness of the times in whatever ways she can.

In times of war

The news, of course, does not come on its own two feet. The three-decades-long violence has seared itself into Irish hearts and minds. Faith has become the business of the state and violent clampdowns are imposed, dispelling any doubts of normalcy. Cushla, a Catholic, lives with her widowed mother, Gina, in a predominantly Protestant town in the 1970s. We meet Cushla as an adult who keeps the company of children, and through her, the reader sees just how terrifying and unfair the circumstances are.

Cushla is most protective of Davy McGeown among her pupils....

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