eBook A Border Station epub

The stories found in Shane Connaughton's collection A BORDER STATION are undoubtedly autobiographical -- it's hard to imagine that he would so vividly recreated the experiences of the young narrator if he had not lived them himself. The setting is mid-20th century rural Ireland, and the times are hard. The boy's mother comes across as tender and loving, but necessarily strong -- and, when it comes to her husband, understanding and forgiving of his sometimes brutal behavior. The father, a village police sergeant, obviously loves his family, but their assignment to the border station of the title, 'this cursed hole. Civilisation as far away as the dark side of the stars', as his father describes it, weighs heavily upon him, as it does them all. The father's anger and frustration are too often visited upon his wife and son -- and woe to anyone else who gets in his path when he's 'in a mood'.
I would have to say, upon reading the entire book, that the boy's treatment by his father at times ventures into abuse. The man's mood swings are wide and unpredictable (although the boy can usually see them coming), and are probably a sign of depression -- a diagnosis that would be made today, but not at the time when the stories took place.
The story that touched me most deeply here was 'Out', in which the boy is thrust into close contact with a neighboring family in order to obtain a regular supply of milk for his home. He is familiar with the most visible member of the family, simply called Conlon, a man resigned to lifelong bachelorhood. Conlon lives with his aged mother and his brother, Harry, whom the boy has never seen until his first visit to the farm. Harry is 'a twisted man', as the boy describes him, shocking in appearance, a victim, we learn, of infantile paralysis. His walk is uneven, he has a hump on his back, his speech is all but indecipherable. As the events of the story transpire, the boy, at first horrified by Harry, learns some very important lessons in what is truly valuable in a human being. The story is told in a direct, almost brutally honest style -- but is very heartwarming in effect.
That direct, brutally honest style pervades this entire book. The characters depicted here are very real -- they are sometimes touching, they are sometimes rough and mean, they are sometimes aloof and detached. I'm sure that every one of them has their basis in fact -- and I'm equally sure that the microcosm of rural Ireland on display here is an accurate one. I don't get the impression that the author has attempted to 'pretty up' any of these characters.
It's an ojus collection, and you've got your share of it...

by the author of "The Dream of the Decade"

"By cripes, they knew what they were doing when they drew that Border!' mutters the policeman father in the autobiographical and episodic A Border Station. He is gazing across the 'lost part of the world' of southern Irish marshes and bogs to the lush farmlands of the Six Counties. Confined to a round of duties and petty crimes, he dreams of a murder case to solve, thinks back to his days as a detective at Dublin Castle.

The border as a meandering frontier, and the border as a symbol, broods over the lives of those in its shadow, not least the policeman's son as he grows up in Cavan. Patrolled by British soldiers and officers, it is crossed to and fro by tinkers, soldiers and officers, even a Methodist family, preaching in vain to hostile Papists, in whose company he himself eventually traverses the frontier between belief and unbelief, childhood and adolescence.

It is an old theme - of a growing child torn between irascible father and warm-hearted but subdued mother; the urges of the flesh and the restraints of the brain; the church teachings of sinfulness and a burgeoning sexuality - but told in tightly organised prose (a tautness which sometimes sacrifices depth).

The second of the seven stories which make up the book won the Hennessy Literary Award. It may be a sign of the times that some of the stories have been used twice over (like a Lloyds' asset!), once as self-contained stories and now as part of a book. The focus is on the boy's relationship with his mother and father, but the border pulsates through the narrative as a constant reminder of a colonial past, a nagging presence driving the father to pathetic and sometimes mean acts of defiance.

When the boy says of the wealthy Anglo-Irish grand dame whom they visit - and of her kind - 'I'd stick them to a tree with six inch nails and set them alight,' he is exaggerating the sentiments of his father. But the frustration is real enough. And there is confusion when his father announces when they are in Eire and when they are not, as they cycle along the border.

The author is anxious not to cast the Troubles as the shaping influence over the lives he depicts. His bildungsroman is set in a rural backwater, cut off from the great world outside. But, ironically, the sectarian troubles emerge as the pervasive and even dominant feature of his haunted frontier landscape.

While by no means a household name, writer Shane Connaughton is an accomplished artist. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his written work on My Left Foot, and he wrote the screenplay for the underrated film The Playboys, which starred Albery Finney and Aidan Quinn. With 1989's A Border Station - shortlisted for the GPA Literary Award - Connaughton has written a heartfelt and moving account of life in rural Ireland. The author was raised in the Irish midlands, not far from the Northern Ireland border, and this too is the setting for the book. Presumably, the book is autobiographical, as the book's seven stories are seen through the eyes of a young boy whose father is a policeman. (Connaughton's father was a sergeant in Ireland's Free State police force). A Border Station consists of seven stories, all of which have a vivid, very authentic quality. One story is truly memorable. Titled Arson, it's a hard-to-put-down gem that finds the book's protagonist, and a young friend, acting as stow-aways on a trip to the Donegal coast. The boys' goals: To eat slab toffee and to see if a Holy Communion wafer will bleed if stuck with a penknife. While there are several interesting and unexpected plot twists in Arson, A Border Station is more interested in characterization than plot. And that's the book's real strength. By the conclusion of A Border Station, you'll have come to know - and won't soon forget - an intelligent and highly inquisitive young boy who is struggling to know and love his ever so different parents and the provincial world that was rural Ireland of the mid 20th century.