| Hateland -
Articles |
30/05/05 - Fascinating portrait of a minnow in a literary shark pond
ANDY WALPOLE
Morning Star
HATELAND by Bernard O'Mahoney
(Mainstream, £9.99)
STARTING in the 1990s with Colin Ward's Steaming In and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, a great amount of working class literature has been published over the past decade. It is mostly autobiographical material, dealing with music, politics, football hooliganism and crime.
The quality of these books varies greatly - just because somebody has an interesting story to tell, it doesn't mean that they have the ability to convey it through the written word. Also, the reader has to be aware of how the storyteller can embellish their tale for the sake of dramatic effect.
One addition to this new field of literature is Bernard O'Mahoney's Hateland. The son of Irish immigrants, O'Mahoney and his three brothers were subjected to continuous violent abuse by their father.
These formative years wrecked, he spent the next 30 years inflicting violence and misery on all who crossed his path - sometimes with good reason, mostly just casually.
In south London in the early 1980s, he slides into far-right activity, which, at one point, even leads him to South Africa in an attempt to enlist in the apartheid army.
He tells how his British fascist comrades' rhetoric didn't match their physical prowess and how they'd run from a confrontation unless the numbers were stacked massively in their favour.
After spending periods in prison, he at last seeks to resolve his own brutalised childhood, which leads him to realise just what a bunch of losers and misfits surround him in the nazi movement. In the last pages, he confesses: "I thank God that my experiences have changed some of my abhorrent views.
"All I can do is look back on my past, learn from my mistakes and try to become a better person." Then, at this point of resolution towards the end, along comes a completely unexpected twist.
It can be a frustrating read, as O'Mahoney often ignores his own experience and only slowly reaches the obvious conclusion, but it is written with enough punch and reflective questioning to make Hateland quite a classic in its own genre. |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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