Book Review: Words to Shape My Name - an ambitious, historical tour-de-force

Laura McKenna, author of Words to Shape My Name. Pic: Victor Horgan

• Words To Shape My Name 
• Laura McKenna
• New Island €16.95

‘Ambitious’ is the word that comes to mind reading Cork author Laura McKenna’s debut novel Words to Shape my Name, tracing the epic journey of a former South Carolina slave into the heart of Revolutionary Ireland and aristocratic society. Developed as part of her PhD in creative writing at University College Cork, McKenna explored historical fiction and the real lives of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Tony Small. (Indeed, the cover is adorned with a quote by the high queen of historical fiction, Hilary Mantel: “An ambitious and vital novel with an epic sweep. This book is an act of salvage.”) 

The former was a rebel member of high English society associated with the failed rebellion in 1798 against British rule. Small was an escaped slave who Fitzgerald encountered in the US and employed as his personal assistant. In itself it’s a fascinating tale, from which McKenna’s imagination takes over: It’s now 1857 and Harriet Small, standing at her parents’ grave in London, has been left her father Tony’s ‘true narrative’ in the will of Fitzgerald’s sister, Lady Lucy.

Harriet, early in the narrative, explains simply that Edward organised a rebellion in Ireland, “and if that don’t make him a traitor, well what does”. She says her father, when he died, had not received “one brass farthing of what he were owed by that Family... in spite of all his years of work”. Harriet remembers how Lady Lucy had asked Tony to write an account of his life to show how her brother, his name now disgraced, “was incapable of treasonous acts, just led by his good heart and by bad men”.

It’s a heady, heavy introduction - and that’s before we go back to 1781 and ‘The True Narrative of The Most Remarkable Particulars of The Life of Tony Small, The Devoted African Servant of Lord Edward Fitzgerald’, which includes text markouts by Lady Lucy and footnotes questioning Small’s account. Indeed he has scribbled out his own beginning in life, “perhaps of the Igbo people”, as he cannot remember the whens and wheres. 

“Is this what you expect of me?” he ponders. Lady Lucy notes: “You really must mention something of the trials of your enslavement.” Like a school history lesson, the reader will soon be distinguishing between primary and tertiary sources, between what Small thinks Lady Lucy wants to hear and the actual events that occurred across countries and over decades - with Harriet’s own reflections, 60 years on, interspersed throughout. So yes, ambitious.

Tony and Edward’s relationship is the centrepiece of the narrative, complex and turbulent. Tony is told by a slack-jawed corporal, on a voyage back to England from the West Indies, that he’s “mimicking how your master speaks” and will fool no one. This ill treatment and side-eyeing confronts Tony throughout the years. In Dublin some 15 years later, an officer blocks his path over a bridge on Canal St and derides: “‘A black man on a horse. It could only be Lord Edward’s pet black. His Faithful Tony.’ The last was uttered with such derision that I was struck dumb.” In St Louis in 1789, there is a gripping encounter with a slave trader, Clamorgan, that leaves Tony resentful, despite Edward’s laudable actions. They challenge each other; they respect each other.

Tony’s musings on the Ireland of the late 1700s, of the “Established Church and rent to absent Masters”, seem too perceptive, that “even their Native language is subject to persecution… with many people forced to accept the bitter taste of another’s launchuage on their tongue”. Cue Lady Lucy’s delusions: “I know how the Irish love their Gaelic language - I too have a fondness for it - but is it not the case that English is the true language of enlightenment and advancement? Think how well you have done because of it!” 

 Words to Shape My Name is like four books in one. The reader has to do the work - and may well be Googling names and discovering the real life events behind the tale of Tony Small and Lord Edward - but will be rewarded for it. It’s ambitious in the best sense of the word.