cover image The River and Enoch O’Reilly

The River and Enoch O’Reilly

Peter Murphy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner, $14.95 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-0-547-90477-1

Set in the small town of Murn, Ireland, Murphy’s strong second novel (after John the Revelator) introduces Enoch O’Reilly, an ex-seminarian who doesn’t believe in God but prays to Elvis. As a child, Enoch decided to become a radio preacher after hearing a sermonizing program, Holy Ghost Radio, on his father’s private basement radio. Enoch has the personality to carry this off and doesn’t mind making up sensational tripe to entertain an audience, and his own Holy Show is a big draw—until he delivers an earnest sermon about the great river Rua, the book’s other main character, and the sermon is poorly received. Murphy expands the narrative with vignettes about Murn’s troubled inhabitants, among them a woman who drowns herself in the Rua, a boy who “takes fit” (has seizures), and a troubled arsonist. Murphy’s language is powerful, and in particular uses wavelike repetition to good effect: “Maybe a man’s beloved did not love him. Maybe a man could not bear how the world had turned pallid.... Maybe a man’s mind burned until the fever of it, the heat of it, turned his soul to char.” Agent: Marianne Gunn O’Connor, Marianne Gunn O’Connor Literary Agency (Sept.)