Conspiracy: Irish Political Trials by Myles Dungan

Conspiracy: Irish Political Trials By Myles Dungan, RTE & RIA, €20, 350pps


DURING the so-called "long 19th century" Ireland wasn't so much governed as contained. During his trial, for example, Roger Casement claimed that Ireland was being treated as if she were a convicted criminal; convicted and condemned without a hearing. Just how perverted and prejudiced were those hearings is highlighted here in seven notorious trials beginning with Robert Emmet (right) and winding down to the leaders of the Easter Rising – who were not even granted a hearing. How the outcome of those obviously perverted trials merely deepened existing divisions between the Crown and its Irish subjects is also dealt with here. For example, on the execution of the 1916 leaders, George Bernard Shaw wrote: "I am bound to contradict any implication that I can regard as a traitor any Irishman [who fought against the British] which was a fair fight in everything except the enormous odds my countrymen had to face." Trials also include those of the Invincibles and Countess Markievicz who is reported to have said: "I am only a woman and you cannot shoot a woman." Oh yes they can. Of course they can. Didn't they shoot Mata Hari for spying? That said, though, they were French.


Disguise By Hugo Hamilton, 4th Estate, £8, 260pps


HAMILTON'S latest novel on heredity and identity (a continuing theme; his mother is German, his father Irish), tacks across four decades but begins with a specific event. During the Allied bombing of Berlin, a child is killed and his grief-stricken mother becomes a refugee. Her father comes up with a substitute child. When the pall of war lifts, he impresses on her, she should tell her husband, should he survive a Soviet POW camp, that the boy is his. The disguise of the title is the one involuntarily worn by the boy of the story, Gregor. In time, he digs up just enough information to suggest he may not be German at all, but Polish and Jewish. In time, he marries Mara who becomes "the archaeologist of his life" and finally excavates the full truth from Gregor's mother. It's thoughtful, with some fine writing, but Hamilton should move on now.


Darkest England By Christopher Hope, Atlantic, £10, 280pps


David Mungo Booi, a young member of a South African bush tribe, is chosen by a congress of tribal elders to travel to Britain on behalf of the Society for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of England. His mission has never before been attempted by humanity: to assess whether England is a suitable place for settlement and to discover if the natives are a friendly bunch. What he finds during this fraught trip is a sad, self-centred people living on their memories of their great past, who are hostile, snooty, and irritable, always going on about the weather. ("When it rains for more than a week, our attendants declare a flood and feared for their huts. If no rain fell for a fortnight, they declared a drought and stopped washing.") Did these much-travelled people really build Jerusalem on their green and pleasant land? Wonderfully subversive.


Drood By Dan Simmons, Quercus, £8, 800pps


DICKENS was nearing the completion of his novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood when he died on 9 June 1870 and, much to the consternation of his fans, inconsiderately left not a clue as to how the novel was to be spun out. Dickens's daughter had her theories as to what really happened to the unfortunate Edwin, inspiring many attempts to complete the novel and unravel the riddle. Here, Simmons goes one better. Who better to finish the novel, he suggests, than the gothic novelist Wilkie Collins, Dickens's chum. So Collins (Simmons) takes up the yarn from the point where Edwin Drood walks out into a storm and comes a cropper. Or does he? The energetic pace of the book would have found the approval of Dickens. Pungently atmospheric, particularly the scenes in the opium lairs and the cruises through the sewers.


Wetlands By Charlotte Roche, 4th Estate, £8, 229pps


IS THIS art or porn? Caused quite a few waves when it first came out and you have to wonder what all the fuss was about. While she lies in a hospital bed, following an "intimate" accident when shaving (she was messing about with her bum), Helen mulls over the "finer workings" of the female body. And other things, I should add. Such as peeing into your coffee cup. She ponders snot, vaginal discharges, pus, her sphincter, haemorrhoids, pubic hair and mucous membranes. A measure of her intelligence is revealed when she smells gas and turns on the light. I'm surprised she didn't light up for a fag. So is it art or porno? Neither, it's just bloody silly and gross. It is supposed to be a diatribe against hygiene hysteria. But surely there are more effective ways of achieving that. Look, take my word, give it the bum's rush.