Exit Wounds
By Simon Adams
Published by Crossing Press
www.crossingpress.com.au
On Monday
20 November 2000 in conjunction with Val Noone, Mary Doyle and all
at the magazine Táin, to the accompaniment of the brilliant
Francis O'Mara on the uillean pipes and the equally impressive Felix
Meagher on fiddle, I had the pleasure of launching Simon Adams'
book Exit Wounds at the Celtic Club.
In 1998
Simon went to Belfast in search of the killer of his aunt, Jean
Smyth, shot dead at age 24 in June 1972. Along the way he
discovered that like so many others, Jean was as much a victim
of a tragic and oppressive historical setting as of malevolent men.
Yet there is little if any rancour in Adams' literary journey through
the streets and sacred sites of Belfast. This is a generous
book; it's a book for the times. And although the word doesn't
ever appear this is as much a book about reconciliation as the politics
and history of the epicentre of the partitioned north.
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The republican plot in Milltown cemetery.
The name of Volunteer Bobby Sands can be seen six from
the top.
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For although the author doesn't resile from the task of laying
bare the hypocrisy of those politicians, media scavengers and god
fearing zealots who claim to speak for peace and morality he never
disposes of his empathy for the real participants in the struggles.
Never are the gunmen who shed blood on the side of the oppressor
reduced to uncomplicated tabloid archetypes.
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The Sinn Féin office as it looked in 1994 just prior to
the ceasefire.
It was here that Jim Neeson introduced me to Gerry Adams.
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Like the rest of us Simon Adams knows the depth of the vitriol
that accompanies a position in defence of nationalists in the partitioned
north. Whether from the irrational, panting pen of Murdoch
scribbler Piers Akerman or the anonymous sectarian bigot the utterances
are a telling reminder of the hegemony exerted over the narrative
on partitioned Ireland. Adams' book is a welcome tilt at that
hegemony. It's not before time.
Well
worth the $26.95 .........
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