It is my personal opinion that if her presence on the curriculum had consisted less of accounts of the bleakness of Irish peasant life at the turn of the century and more farmers’ wives cuckolding their husbands with corpses possessed by the devil, the Irish language would be in rude and glowing health today.
TW: gore, rape, necrophilia, profanity, death of children, graphic depictions of cannibalism, alcoholism, unhealthy relationships, animal death, and people having their faces eaten off by dogs
After reading The Burial Tide, I of course had to pick up Sharpson’s work; that was a unique choice with this book. It is definitely a stranger (and gorier, and more horror-filled) book, and I will admit that I did not expect this plot. It does have an interesting take on some lesser known parts of Irish folklore; for instance, I did not know about féar gortach, or hunger grass, which is a truly unsettling aspect of the Great Famine. (Aside: other than a truly creepy scene and introducing a part of Irish history, I don’t quite know how the “hunger grass” scene fits into the plot of the book.)
Ah, but this is Ireland,” said the jeweler softly. “There’s more of the pagan in us than we might like to admit, isn’t that right?
The secret of of Ashling and her twin Niamh came out of left field and yet alternatively, I should have seen it coming a mile away. It does also bring fresh takes on the “Fair Ones”, the Devil, War Goddess Morrigan and the shapeshifting Puca; if you’re expecting Harvey, this Puca is not him. There are two main threads running throughout Knock Knock, Open Wide: how truly shitty mother/child (but especially daughter) relationships can be,
Ah, there was the word. “Family.” It was an old Irish word. It meant: “Do nothing. Challenge nothing. Change nothing.” Ireland was a rocky garden, dig a few inches deep and you found stone; solid and impassable. And carved into its face, as like as not; the word FAMILY.
and the everlasting joy of Irish Alzheimer’s, where you forget everything but the grudges.
It didn’t matter that neither Feidhlim nor his neighbors could remember the details of his great-grandfather’s transgression. Memory was ephemeral. Hatred was a rock.
And also how you really can’t trust the News, the Government, or the Clergy; they’re all either evil entities ruining peoples’ lives, or they’re humans who are fine with being complicit as long as they’re not inconvenienced. One of the things that I love most about the two Sharpson books I’ve read is that he writes incredibly realistic characters; Betty and Ash are both needy, mildly emotionally damaged, trying to get through life the best they can women, the type you’d meet on the street. (I suppose if you want another Pop Culture equivalent, I would say they’re a both Caucasian version of Maggie and Nina from Good Omens the show I’m still not over the really bad ending of.) Etain is a bitter, drunk, damaged woman who, unfortunately like life, lets her damage echo throughout the rest of her life, poisoning all her relationships, even if there is some spark of a decent woman underneath. There are several questions I have that never get answered: who is the young man that placed the call? Why does Ash sleepwalk? What did Ash and Ellis talk about when Betty left the room? What exactly was that last chapter? Once again props to Sharpson for, for the most part, not providing translations for the Erse dialogue. (And for writing the word in the good old Irish pronunciation of “hoor”.) I suppose if I knew a bit more about kid’s television shows, especially Irish or English ones, I might have a better frame of reference, but all I could think of was an evil Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, only with Black Phillip the Ever-hungry instead of Daniel Striped Tiger.
If you like Irish folklore, or if you’re like me and have a television set in your room and want to desperately regret that decision until the day you die, I would recommend this book. Not that it’s all terrifying; you do get one of the greatest reconciliation scenes in literature, thanks to a nightclub, U2’s “With or Without You”, and the choreography of a DramSoc production of Romeo and Juliet with a gay Mercutio and Tybalt. Oh yeah, and the endless “found it” jokes thanks to the art installation over the door advertising The Vagina Monologues. Or as he says:
In other words: yes, Virginia. There really was a giant papier-mache vagina.
