In the Season of the Daisies

If civil war is the most cruel kind of human conflict, this powerful novel, the Irish-born author's first to be published here, serves as a searing illustration of its horrors. A harrowing dissection of the legacy of internecine conflict, its central character is Seanie Doolin, nearly mute, crazed and living like an animal on the periphery of a rural Irish community for more than 27 years. For some, his condition is a mystery. For others in the village, he is the living manifestation of a collective wound so deep and vicious that they are still reeling from its consequences three decades after it occurred. The central event, an IRA military maneuver that went horribly wrong, unfolds in flashback through the voices of various players, exposing not only a tragic, needless death but also the evil and hypocrisy of those who perpetrated and then conspired to hide it. The story that emerges, involving Seanie's twin brother (in neat but not blatant symbolism) is a patchwork of cruelty and betrayal engendered by misguided political fanaticism and the homicidal tendencies unleashed in its name. An emotionally overloaded narrative of deliberate repetition and meticulous detail, written in uncompromisingly tough language, the novel can be difficult to penetrate at times. But as the origin of Seanie's pathetic condition is revealed, we are drawn not only into the nightmare of his existence but also into the story's universal relevance. (Nov.)