Criticism, fiction and other writing
I’ve written about the fiction of Caoilinn Hughes twice in my newsletter, Talk about books. I was very enthusiastic about her short stories, but was less satisfied with the two novels she had published up to that point, particularly the second of these, The Wild Laughter (2020). As I wrote at the time:
… the setting — impoverished, crisis-stricken, rural Ireland — and the themes — cancer, family resentments, cruelty and the absurdity of rural life — were too familiar. I was sure I had read too many similar stories back in the 1970s … and it was territory I didn’t want to revisit. It all seemed terribly out of date, and best left in the past.
After a second reading, I had moderated my criticism a bit, but I still had reservations:
I saw, as I hadn’t first time around, that the retrograde feeling was a deliberate choice: the point was that the crash of 2008 had blasted parts of the country right back into the 1970s, or maybe even into the 1950s.
I’ve now read the novel a third time and I suppose it’s growing on me, though there are still aspects of the climactic court case that I’m doubtful about. I said in my post about the novels that I might write separately on my personal site about the ending of the story and particularly the legal aspects — and here we are. (From this point on, I’ll be discussing elements of the plot that you may not wish to know about if you haven’t read the book but plan to do so in future.)
Hart, his brother and mother are put on trial for assisting the suicide of the Chief, Hart’s and Cormac’s father. Cormac is represented by Cáit, their barrister cousin, while Hart and Nóra have their own barristers on legal aid. When the three are brought before the District Court after they’ve been charged, Cáit is described as “Cormac’s solicitor” (p. 135), but that’s probably just Hart’s confusion. It would be normal for an accused person to be represented by a solicitor at that stage, and Cáit is performing the same function. As the trial goes on, Cáit speaks freely to all three of the accused, though she’s representing only one of them. At one point, Nóra’s counsel mentions this:
“I’d ask that you refrain from addressing my client. While I doubt this eleventh-hour counsel is ill-intended, it’s causing Mrs Black undue stress. (p. 160)
It’s possible that it’s inexperience that is leading Cáit to behave as she does: she hasn’t handled a case of this importance before and both she and her parents refer to the fact that her practice hasn’t been busy. On the other hand, she seems to have a good strategic grasp of the issues in the case and generally to know what she’s doing. At any rate, if a conflict of interest were to arise between the accused, Cáit’s freedom in addressing them as a group could become an embarrassment.
And a potential conflict of interest does indeed develop. In open court, Nóra brandishes an envelope, saying that it contains evidence. The document in the envelope is described as a “Statement of Wish to Die”, signed by Manus Black. Nóra says she will offer this as evidence on condition that Hart will plead guilty. The expectation is that the DPP would then drop the case against Nóra and Cormac. But I’d be surprised if it’s open to Nóra to withhold evidence conditionally like that. If the statement is relevant, the court could direct that it be produced and admitted as evidence.
Hart had not been told anything about the existence of this statement and understandably feels at first that he has been kept in the dark while his brother and mother plot and scheme against him. It’s not the only fact that he’s been kept in the dark about. He’s pressured by his own counsel to agree to the deal, but he wants to hear it from Cáit.
Hart does, in the event, plead guilty. He’s expecting to be sentenced to five years. Was it in his interest to agree to admit the offence? Probably, marginally. He wouldn’t get as much credit for the plea as he would have got at the start of the trial. If conviction was all but inevitable, he’d be right to plead, even at that late stage. And conviction was looking very likely.
So far as Hart was concerned, he had no reason to want to let either Nóra or Cormac off the hook. He hated Cormac, who had always treated him like an idiot, and didn’t feel any more warmly towards his mother. So we can assume that his plea is based on his assessment of his own interest rather than on any desire to benefit his mother or brother, though they will benefit from it.
I don’t really see why Nóra’s production of the Chief’s Statement should increase the pressure on Hart to plead guilty. Hart’s counsel points out that the maximum sentence for assisting a suicide is fourteen years, whereas the likely sentence for manslaughter would be five years. But this is to compare the maximum sentence for one offence against the “going rate” for the other. That’s not a meaningful or useful comparison.
The implication is that if Nóra hands over the Chief’s Statement to the prosecution, they will be able to amend the charge to aiding a suicide, and Hart can expect a much heavier sentence than he would get if convicted of manslaughter. I don’t believe that this is true; in any case it’s at odds with what Cáit tells Hart. She implies that it’s in Hart’s interest for Nóra to give the Statement to the prosecution because it shows that Hart didn’t have the necessary intent to be convicted of murder.
I have to say that, even after a third reading, I’m still confused as to what is going on in the negotiation over Hart’s guilty plea. Of course, that’s partly because Hart, who is narrating the story, is himself bewildered by the unexpected turn of events. His understanding isn’t helped by the fact that he’s just learned that Aleanbh (whom he calls Dolly after the character in Bailegangaire) has had his child.
What the reader discovers about these characters all comes through Hart, and we know that he is not all that bright. His education was cut short, his experience is limited and there are significant gaps in his general knowledge. In a very illuminating interview with Kevin Barry (see the video below), Caoilinn Hughes has said that there are things about Nóra’s character that don’t come out in the book because Hart “so dreadfully fails” to understand her. Later in the same interview, she added that her narrator doesn’t see how funny his mother is.
In the end, the reader has to accept that there are significant aspects of these characters and their situation that we have no way of knowing.
Posted by Art on 01-Sep-2024.