cover image TAR AND FEATHERS

TAR AND FEATHERS

Dorothy Nelson, . . Dalkey Archive, $12.50 (133pp) ISBN 978-1-56478-373-8

"The facts of life have nothing to do with sex. No one is interested in sex but we're all forced to do it.... Tell your children about it, son, God knows they're not missing anything. There is only one fact of life that matters; you are stuck with yourself." That pithy piece of motherly advice captures the essence of Nelson's second novel, a Joycean exploration of a quintessential guilt-driven Irish family that suffers from a variety of maladies, including incest, thievery and wife beating. The narrator is Benjee, the son of a manic-depressive, womanizing petty thief who Benjee refers to as Da throughout the novel. Benjee's mother is no prize, either—in between nasty bouts of fighting with Da, Ma spends her time hitting the bottle and flirting with the boy. Most of the nonfamily chapters deal with Da's up-and-down criminal career, his sadistic love-hate affairs with other women and a brief interlude in which he's approached by the local chapter of the IRA to help eliminate a traitorous member of the terrorist organization. Nelson's stream-of-consciousness narration is lush and dense, marred only by the occasional turgid passage. Those easily offended by raunchy family dynamics should steer clear of this, but readers interested in the foibles of the dysfunctional Irish will find a veritable Oedipal swamp full of character flaws to explore. (Dec.)