The Quiet Whispers Never Stop - Olivia Fitzsimons

There have been an impressive array of new voices coming out of post-conflict Northern Ireland now looking back on an era that is still proving hard to come to terms with but is providing rich ground to explore. Aside from Phil Harrison's fascinating The First Day, it's women's voices - Michelle Gallen's Big Girl Small Town, Michèle Forbes' Ghost Moth and particularly Anna Burns' Milkman - that all find unique and personal ways of looking at the circumstances of women struggling to escape traditional roles, social expectations and the religious conservatism of the province. That is undoubtedly more prevalent or at least harder to escape in the small communities outside of Belfast, as Olivia Fitzsimons describes in the Downpatrick setting of The Quiet Whispers Never Stop.

That's not just for young women who step out of line, like Samantha Malin, a 17 year old preparing for final exams in 1994 against the backdrop of the final bloody years of the troubles that have been playing out through the whole of her life. Sam is difficult and rebellious against the world and everyone in it; her father, the nuns of the Sisters of Perpetual Soccour at her school, and has taken up with local handsome bad boy Naoise, ten years her senior, a known drug dealer in the community. Her father Patsy, despite being a Catholic farmer of simple ways and religious beliefs, is also subject to gossip around town on account of the disappearance of his wife Nuala in 1982. Despite postcards coming from Africa, there is still talk, quiet whispers and rumours about his failings, speculating on what made his wife run away, leaving behind her two children Sam and PJ.

When you take her mother's disappearance into consideration, it's undoubtedly going to be a major factor contributing to Sam's rebellious character. It may be in her nature, something she has inherited from her clearly wayward mother - as we soon find out - but her problems and emotional attachments are inevitably going to be affected by an uncomprehending sense of abandonment. Combine those problems with the complications of identity defined by being a Catholic in Northern Ireland and you've got quite a mix of hangups and issues to work through.

The Quiet Whispers Never Stop divides its outlook between Nuala in 1982 and Sam in 1994, but if you think it's a simple matter of analysis and working through questions of identity and finding one's place in a country beset with political and religious conflict, it's really not that easy to pin down. Mother and daughter, Sam and Nuala, are two women who don't fit neatly into any box - certainly not any conventional social model - and can't be labelled as one thing or another. Unpredictable and temperamental they may be, but they are subject to wild self-destructive impulses that even they can't comprehend. They know what they do is going to lead to trouble but are unable to resist and don't even want to. Their self-abandon ironically even seems to come from a longing for constancy and reliability in a world with people who can't be relied upon, who disappear, who leave and die. Both are somehow looking for a new world to come and take them out of this one.

"There is something seriously wrong with everyone here. The whole of Northern Ireland needs therapy, so no one discusses it", Sam ponders at one stage. If the author is trying to make some kind of connection between these women's problems and the troubles in Northern Ireland screwing up everyone's lives, for the most part it doesn't really look as if this is going to hit the mark. In all other aspects of the society they are a part of, Fitzsimons does however make a thoroughly convincing case for what has disturbed or made life difficult for the two women. That's perhaps a more necessary goal to achieve, describing incidents that women everywhere can relate to in their own personal experience. The writing gets to the heart of it, shockingly direct and explicit in almost staccato short sentences once moment, escaping into flights of poetic reverie fuelled by desire and lust the next.

Even then, when you think that you know where this one is going - and revelations to come are hinted at from very early on - The Quiet Whispers Never Stop still manages to arrest you and overturn expectations. The fact that it's not just Sam and Nuala who are screwed up by the past and the society they live in becomes increasingly apparent by the time we close the book, and Fitzsimons does actually successfully integrate the political troubles into it in a far more subtle way, drawing together events in 1982 and 1994 that cast a long shadow in both personal and historical events with not a hint of contrivance. It's almost impossible that the void left by one person can be equated to the shattering of all lives by the troubles, but Olivia Fitzsimons manages to get across a sense of how deep it goes, and crucially, just how hard and necessary it is for real meaningful change to take place.

Reading notes: The Quiet Whispers Never Stop by Olivia Fitzsimons is published by JM Originals (John Murray) on 14th April 2022. Reviewed from advance proof provided by the publisher.