Going down in Derry
THE year is 1988; the scene Troubles-ravaged Derry. Conn Doherty and the James Joyce- obsessed Myles Corrigan, heroes of the extremely anti-type in Derry author Colm Herron’s latest offering, sit drinking away their nights in the Drunken Dog. A couple of never-were types, they have become mired in the rut of a life.
Conn teaches at All Saints, a secondary school run by a dictatorial Catholic hierarchy. As a teenager he had endured a stint in a psychiatric hospital following the kind of broken heart that never heals. Now he is middle-aged, single and, aside from the occasional fling, lonely. Myles has also been down the teaching road, though he was some years ago invalided into an alcohol-fuelled early retirement following a brutal beating at the hands of British soldiers. He too is single, and just as lonely. He too is haunted by a past that won’t let go.
