Books Fiction: A criminal in the aviary

The Saleman by Joseph O'Connor, Secker pounds 9.99

Joseph O'Connor's latest novel centres on a dysfunctional family, but, unusually, it doesn't feature child abuse or incest. And although the plot centres on a rape and attempted murder, The Salesman is a story about forgiveness. The writer's sister, singer/songwriter Sinead, has made public her difficulties in coming to terms with the childhood traumas she endured, and her brother, after dismissing her complaints, has finally responded, albeit in fictionalised form. His message seems to be that if Sinead is unable to forgive and move on, he will do it for her. Certainly, this book seems more deeply felt than his previous efforts, and as such, it represents some kind of breakthrough. But personal agendas do tend to get in the way of the business of writing.

Billy Sweeney is a recovering alcoholic and divorce who plies a poor trade selling satellite dishes. His ex-wife is dead, and their daughter, Maeve, lies in a coma following an attack on a petrol station. Remorse and recriminations are all that keep him going. Billy's drinking destroyed his family, and the only thing that will appease him now is avenging his daughter. When Niall Quinn, one of the men on trial for the attack, escapes, Billy decides to track him down and kill him.

O'Connor structures his novel in two parts: the first is Billy's account of his wasted life, which he addresses to Maeve. It is full of aching nostalgia for Dublin in the 1960s, football games in the street, larking around with the lads. Marathon drinking sessions are interrupted while Billy courts Grace, an indomitable free spirit, exotically Jewish in the "Oirish" set-pieces characteristic to O'Connor (but which he claims he cannot abide). O'Connor exposes this ambivalence to the Irish stereotype in the development of Billy's character; his self-disgust degenerates into maudlin self-pity, and the tension necessary for a psychological thriller fizzles out, until the action resumes in Part Two.

In the pages of an ecclesiastical diary, Billy chronicles his obsession with Quinn in prose that mirrors his mental state: narrowly focused and drained of emotion. He hires a hit man to beat Quinn unconscious, then imprisons him in the aviary at the bottom of his garden. But then Billy's fatal flaw kicks in. He is weak: Grace knew it and told him repeatedly, now his story turns on it. Mental torture is not really his game, and soon Quinn manipulates his way out of the cage and into Billy's house. But Quinn has reached a turning point, too. As the journal becomes more ruminative, feeling seeps back into both men's shattered lives, and an edgy companionship evolves.

O'Connor skilfully negotiates their reconciliation. These two inarticulate, emotionally repressed men communicate through their efforts to rebuild Billy's house: "Our gaff - our gaff, if you don't mind". Their cosy domesticity is not entirely believable, but over cans of beer, they realise that their self-enforced imprisonment is not merely literal: "The truth is he reminded me of myself." If O'Connor has a schematic take on exposition perhaps it is because it is more important to him that Billy should be finally able to despatch the ghosts of retribution and face his future with a forgiving heart.