Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show

Today, 23 February 2010, Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show is published – my fourth novel and fifth book since 2005 (including the non-fiction, Simple Courage).  So far the reviews have been pleasingly good, but of course they don’t tell what I alone know – why the book came to be written.

It’s a rite of passage, told in the more-or-less intimate tone of an eighteen-year-old young Irishman, Ben MacCarthy.  In the year 1932, when Ben is eighteen, everything changes. His father, a jovial farmer, suddenly quits everything, and runs off with a beautiful young actress from a tacky group of traveling players.  Ben goes after him to bring him back.

The story sprang from three sources. First, I recalled a young man from my own past, a friend of mine, whom I won’t (and mustn’t) identify, and whom I watched as he dealt kindly and innocently with two extremely dysfunctional parents. And who then fell headlong in love with a woman many years older than him. For locations, the MacCarthy family house in the novel is modeled on a different farm - that stands about two miles from my childhood home.

Next, we had those raggedy traveling shows that lurched through our villages and towns, all flim-flam, Find-The-Lady card sharks, and drunken old actors, dripping with melodrama, who recited great speeches from Shakespeare (and often forgot the lines).

The third element comes from my own close-to-obsessive reading of mythologies from all over the world, and finding in them so many stories that I have seen being played out one way and another in my own life. Or the lives of people I know.

In terms of weight, Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show isn’t a soufflé - it’s more of a pot roast, or an Irish stew, with perhaps subtler flavors than you think you’re tasting. My brief to myself was this: Create a novel that takes the readers into a world they don’t know; those towns and villages were the stamping-grounds of my own young life. Add in the factual events of a great, boiling General Election, and thereby peel back a corner of the wild and sometimes rueful politics of an emergent western state. Have it played by energetic characters, and have them observed by a young man who wants to do only what is good, but may not be given the permission.

Note: Part of the technical challenge was to have the narrator - now a man obviously in his senior years given the time-line - reflect the events in the less mature tone of the boy he was at eighteen.

And all the time I was looking over my shoulder that the great myths that formed our civilization – from ancient Celtic Europe, from Scandinavia, from Greece. In this case, the Oedipus myth is almost too obvious, but I also wanted to stay with the Homeric and Scandinavian ideas of culture, no matter how low, penetrating remote areas.

Also, I wanted to tell a story that observed three things – the collisions possible when the outside world comes too close to a sealed world of tranquility and “ordinary” good behavior; how political upheavals frequently stick their fists into our personal lives; and the possibility that our journey through the world may once in a while conform in one way or another to the events portrayed in ancient myth.

That all seems to summarize the job I had to do when writing this book. The other fifty per cent of the creative effort – by which I mean the act of reading – is up to you!

Comments

[Sue Moyer]

(my third & last attempt at posting this comment)

This STORY is so Good!! Mystery, humor, political satire, forbidden love, a great range of characters from the virtuous to the villains, and always the suspense of what might happen next. This is truly a story to escape with, to curl up with in a cozy corner. I knew I'd enjoy it having read Ireland, Tipperary and Shannon. The extra bonus for me is the setting in North Cork. Having been there to visit my roots adds greatly to my visualization of what I'm reading. Another personal bonus was the complimentary reference to County Kerry when telling why Venetia's show did not travel there. I'm still smiling about this, hoping it's true but realizing it's debateable. I did see one of these traveling shows many years ago in Ireland where we sat outside looking up at the performers on a makeshift stage, a fond memory, and I know it was not in County Kerry. Masterful storytelling and a touch of my Irish heritage.......perfect reading for me!