| The Globe and Mail - Books 19-01-02 A tale of abuse and enlightenment The Confessions of Nipper Mooney Author of the Amanda Greenleaf series of children's books, Newfoundland writer Ed Kavanagh sets his first adult novel not far from his St. John's home, in a rural town named Kildura. There, in the summer of 1962, well before he's old enough to shave, Nipper Mooney loses his father to cancer. Within a few hours of Dad's death, the farmhouse is filled with mourners and cases of beer, and a yeasty-breathed uncle is advising Nipper he is now "the man of the house." Told his father is in heaven, he doesn't doubt it. In Nipper's world, a boy might be stolen by fairies, or suddenly become a spaniel, or not be a tangible thing at all. Conscious of mysteries, he nonetheless has a sharp eye for sacred contradictions, thinking it absurd that the nuns in his church school "were so covered up, when Jesus, nailed to the wooden crosses hanging on their chests, was just about naked." In class one day, Nipper's friend Paddy asks a visiting foreign missionary why God gives them proper houses and enough food while He lets people in Peru starve and die in earthquakes. The young Peruvian nun is willing to engage the issue, but once she's offsite, Paddy's audacious challenge to faith earns him only a strapping and a week's detention. Nipper finds more enlightened spiritual guidance in Brendan, a gnarled old man who years before was banned from the local church for posing heretical questions. The two tramp through the woods to a clifftop overlooking the sea, where they offer sensuous prayers to Brigid, patron saint of farmers and poets, "milkmaid of the smooth white palms . . . of the clustering brown hair . . . ever excellent woman, golden sparkling flame." Later, the charms of a more palpable Brigid seduce Nipper into puppyish rollabouts in the hayloft. President Kennedy is shot; the Beatles begin to dominate the airwaves; there is a housefire and a child's funeral. Just as the narrative begins to feel too reliant on easy sentiment, it raises the ante, transporting Nipper to St. John's and a dayschool run by the notorious Christian Brothers. Mercifully for all concerned, All Angels School (a wry misnomer) seems to lack practising pedophiles, though the brothers do insist on ritual servings of other abuse. Recycling saintly martyrdom on their young charges, they scar bodies and minds, sometimes permanently. Kavanagh's style is brisk and engaging, blending gentle humour with ruthless portrayals of men twisted into monsters by the shackles of their piety. The book offers some of the least "writerly" prose I've seen in some time, spinning its tale from character and incident, with a simplicity that conjures vivid pictures in the mind. - Jim Bartley is The Globe and Mail's first-fiction reviewer |