“He lit the tobacco and told her between puffs that he had liked how she stalked into the pub with a dirty big cross on her forehead. That he liked that she hadn’t looked away when she caught him watching her in the mirror. That he liked her in the Lyric, when she was standing by the ledge, trying to look nonchalant. That he especially liked that she cried when he mentioned her father. That he loved her.
“If you’re saying that you’d better mean it, she said.
“I do. You’re supposed to say it back.
“Another time. I’ve been doing all the running.”
A claustrophobic tale of illicit affairs and cross-religion relationships during the Troubles, "Trespasses" follows a young teacher and barkeep who falls in love with a married barrister. Cushla initially idolizes Michael, but gradual disappointment bleeds in, until she senses the danger that he is courting by representing suspected IRA members.
“Jesus, said Cushla. All he did was walk down a street?
“It’s not about what you do here, he said. It’s about what you are.”
From a technical standpoint, the book's lack of quotation marks can be a bit off-putting and make dialogue more difficult to follow. Catalog this as a minor observation, but one that can break flow a bit.
The denouement is stunning despite its inevitability, but Louise Kennedy finds beauty in the tragedy. "Trespasses" captures Ireland's identity crisis at a crucial moment in history, allowing Cushla and Michael to serve as the microcosm of the hypocrisies and needless suffering involved.
“... Leniency, for that’s what it was; in a place like this, no deaths was a gift.”
