Book review: Debut worth a watchful eye

'Frogs for Watchdogs' is both funny and sad. The last few pages left our reviewer, normally an impassive reader, in tears of happiness

Seán Farrell’s impressive first outing takes place in 1988 Ireland. Picture: Darek Novak

• Frogs for Watchdogs 
• Seán Farrell 
• New Island, €16.95 

Seán Farrell’s impressive debut is a very special novel that will stay in your memory long after it ends. 

The story, set in 1988-‘89, is told mainly by a seven- to eight-year-old boy who lives in an isolated house in rural Co Meath with his English mother, a brave but slightly batty healer, along with his 10-year-old sister B, a precocious reader and lover of fancy words.

His Irish father, an actor and “a rogue”, left them some time ago, apparently penniless. 

They travelled, lived in a commune, and had some dangerous times until ending up in the Meath farmhouse.

The house is the holiday home of a family who seem to be friends of Granny and grandfather England — the reader has to piece the story together as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old. 

Their mother is expected to do basic maintenance and to move out when the family come on holiday. 

She is trying to build a stone wall and also dig the garden to plant vegetables. 

Because B is now 10, “Granny and grandfather England” are paying for her to go to a Protestant boarding school, and she is much missed by her family.

There is a barn next to the house, and a local man, sheep farmer Jerry Drain, steals hay bales from it, according to the boy — leading the reader to suspect he does so by arrangement with the landlord. 

The boy hates Jerry Drain from the outset.

We read Jerry’s thoughts in italicised sections and learn that he was about the same age as the boy when his own father drowned, and he wants to protect this vulnerable family.

The boy has befriended Mrs Lynch who gives him tea and biscuits, and knows more about the workings of the little community than anyone. 

His teacher Miss Kelly praises the stories that the boy writes, but when they appear to come true, he is frightened and stops.

The main focus of the story is Jerry’s attempts to befriend the boy.

Jerry and his mother start bonding while building a stone wall.

“They’re working one beside the other and a stone falls and there’s no fuck or sugar or other bad words or any of them. Mum just laughs. He turns his head and his face is all ruckled up with his smile. His eyes are up and down Mum’s face and she hides with her hands.”

It turns out that his name is Gearóid Ó Direáin, and he is from Inismaan.

“People up here in Meath call me Jerry Drain because they can’t speak Irish.”

The boy contradicts him but he will not argue.

He has soon moved in with the family, but the romance is secondary to his struggle to make friends with the boy.

Both mother and daughter accept him, but the boy remains stubbornly resistant to all his attempts at friendship, and is planning to kill him. Chillingly the reader realises that he might succeed.

The perfect pitch of Farrell’s child’s-eye point of view reminded me of Eoghan Ó Tuairsc’s beguiling child’s eye view novel, An Lomnochtán (1977), first published in English as i am Lewy in 2022 by the Bullaun Press, a new imprint set up by Bridget O’Farrell, Seán Farrell’s sister.

Their father, Antony Farrell, founded the Lilliput Press where Seán is also an editor.

But Frogs for Watchdogs is also about Jerry Drain, an exemplary, even heroic Irish countryman, who tells a heart-breaking story of rejection as he seeks to win his place in this blended family. 

It is both funny and sad. The last few pages left me, normally an impassive reader, in tears of happiness.