cover image Killing of Yesterday

Killing of Yesterday

M. S. Power. Viking Books, $16.95 (264pp) ISBN 978-0-670-80965-3

Power's novel is slow, often maddeningly impenetrable, and pervaded by agonized feelings about the Irish Troubles as recorded by Arthur Apple, formerly of the British diplomatic service. In Belfast, he and Martin Deeley run a betting shop that helps finance the IRA. Colonel Maddox and Mr. Asher of the Royal Ulster Constabulary count on Apple to inform them about rebel plots, but he equivocates, sheltering Deeley after he tries to kill the colonel and the IRA kidnaps Asher. This is the climax of the narrative, swollen with the mystic musings that Maddox reads in Apple's journal after one more tragedy in the devastated city. Bearing stigmata from wounds inflicted upon him when a diplomat in Mexicofor reasons never explainedApple perceives that hate and lust for revenge are killing people on both sides, soldiers who were children only yesterday: an obvious point excessively made. February