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Fergus
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192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
35 people want to read
About the author
Brian Moore
160 books169 followersBrian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 5, 2024
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross -
Within be fed: without, be rich no more.
Shakespeare
When I read the story of my quirky namesake Fergus Fadden as a teen, I just let myself be carried away by the anxious drift of the plot in a winsome weekend, curled up with it in various nooks and comfy corners of my parents’ house.
Back in those days it was easy to find good new books - my mom’s nearby library was as handy to an active kid as the huge Kindle library is, now, to a sedentary senior citizen!
I had often thought I’d try Mr. Moore’s books when I drifted past them in my mom’s fiction section.
After all, he lived nearby - in Montréal - and his new books were routinely written up in the now-defunct Ottawa Journal.
He even had the odd honourable mention in the Sunday New York Times, which Mom subscribed to back in those days for its book reviews!
Now, THAT was a cumbersome and ungainly, bulky way to get your book news - and to think I now have access to every review on GoodReads on my minuscule iPod...
Kids, you don’t know how lucky you are.
Brian Moore, of course, hailed from Ireland, and had that Irish gift for storytelling which is so envied by the rest of the world.
And so the familiar Troubles of that Fair Land have their place here, too. And this Fergus, like the young Fergus I was way back then, has his troubles too.
For back then I was headed to a collision course with reality. And reality would try to teach me certain things I wasn’t eager to learn. Such is life, and so I rolled with the punches.
And so, too, that collision gave me lots of free time to rethink my life - like, what out of this complex kerfuffle can I learn, if I reject the baldly ugly lifestyle which nowadays passes as normal?
I chose the way of the heart. Maybe not holus-bolus and right away, but, believe me, after the plethora of hard knocks that would befall me in later life, there was for me no other option.
I became open, because whatever a guy is in his heart, he is!
But Brian Moore’s characters are different. Instead of loving their families through and through, they obsess, and so clash with them.
On the other hand, resolving your inner conflicts with love allows to you to overlook a multitude of faults in others. Not so interesting as combative reality, perhaps? My way gave me peace.
But contentious characters always impel the action of a story ever onward.
Which gives this lesser-known work in Moore’s opus real character. He wrote vibrantly realistic novels. A bit like Reality TV tries to achieve - but fails, being without much substance.
And so, as I, Fergus, look back on Moore’s Fergus now, I sometimes wonder if its story telling went so far as to rub off on fellow Montréalais Mordecai Richler.
For Richler’s St Urbain’s Horseman and Joshua Then and Now may have had their conception in Fergus Fadden’s endless domestic cauchemars!
Be that as it may, Moore had his own very winning Irish way with storytelling and will fill many an idle weekend for you quite winsomely indeed.
So four appreciative stars to you, Mr. Moore!
Requiescat in Pacem.
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross -
Within be fed: without, be rich no more.
Shakespeare
When I read the story of my quirky namesake Fergus Fadden as a teen, I just let myself be carried away by the anxious drift of the plot in a winsome weekend, curled up with it in various nooks and comfy corners of my parents’ house.
Back in those days it was easy to find good new books - my mom’s nearby library was as handy to an active kid as the huge Kindle library is, now, to a sedentary senior citizen!
I had often thought I’d try Mr. Moore’s books when I drifted past them in my mom’s fiction section.
After all, he lived nearby - in Montréal - and his new books were routinely written up in the now-defunct Ottawa Journal.
He even had the odd honourable mention in the Sunday New York Times, which Mom subscribed to back in those days for its book reviews!
Now, THAT was a cumbersome and ungainly, bulky way to get your book news - and to think I now have access to every review on GoodReads on my minuscule iPod...
Kids, you don’t know how lucky you are.
Brian Moore, of course, hailed from Ireland, and had that Irish gift for storytelling which is so envied by the rest of the world.
And so the familiar Troubles of that Fair Land have their place here, too. And this Fergus, like the young Fergus I was way back then, has his troubles too.
For back then I was headed to a collision course with reality. And reality would try to teach me certain things I wasn’t eager to learn. Such is life, and so I rolled with the punches.
And so, too, that collision gave me lots of free time to rethink my life - like, what out of this complex kerfuffle can I learn, if I reject the baldly ugly lifestyle which nowadays passes as normal?
I chose the way of the heart. Maybe not holus-bolus and right away, but, believe me, after the plethora of hard knocks that would befall me in later life, there was for me no other option.
I became open, because whatever a guy is in his heart, he is!
But Brian Moore’s characters are different. Instead of loving their families through and through, they obsess, and so clash with them.
On the other hand, resolving your inner conflicts with love allows to you to overlook a multitude of faults in others. Not so interesting as combative reality, perhaps? My way gave me peace.
But contentious characters always impel the action of a story ever onward.
Which gives this lesser-known work in Moore’s opus real character. He wrote vibrantly realistic novels. A bit like Reality TV tries to achieve - but fails, being without much substance.
And so, as I, Fergus, look back on Moore’s Fergus now, I sometimes wonder if its story telling went so far as to rub off on fellow Montréalais Mordecai Richler.
For Richler’s St Urbain’s Horseman and Joshua Then and Now may have had their conception in Fergus Fadden’s endless domestic cauchemars!
Be that as it may, Moore had his own very winning Irish way with storytelling and will fill many an idle weekend for you quite winsomely indeed.
So four appreciative stars to you, Mr. Moore!
Requiescat in Pacem.
November 2, 2017
We all have demons to exorcise - it was extremely moving to read through Fergus' memories. Some of it was hysterical, as well [the religious hang ups from his Mom].
August 22, 2017
One of my favorite Brian Moore books.
March 4, 2021
This novel published in 1970 is set in California. It is transparently autobiographical. A writer from Northern Ireland is living in California writing film scripts. There are no chapters in this book which takes place over the course of 2-3 days. Ghosts of both dead and living family and friends of Fergus appear to him over the course of the story. Interesting, but not, by far, a favorite by this author.
Read as part of the 2021 Brian Moore Centenary Read Along organized by the Northern Irish writer Jan Carson. https://746books.com/2020/12/16/annou...
Read as part of the 2021 Brian Moore Centenary Read Along organized by the Northern Irish writer Jan Carson. https://746books.com/2020/12/16/annou...
May 19, 2017
One of the only Brian Moore books that I haven't enjoyed. Very confusing with a long list of characters who are difficult to remember. I reached the end ( gratefully) and there didn't seem to be any conclusion to the story that had been built up. Only for the die hard Moore fans.
August 18, 2024
Ghosts on the coast.
39 year old Fergus Fadden is a direct match for 31 year old Mary Dunne, the protagonist of Moore's previous novel published three years earlier. Both experience repeated flashbacks (hauntings) of past lives, as a procession of old faces test their limits of remembrance, and push them to question the limits of their sanity. Both are living close to the coast (just on opposite seaboards), as divorcees forging new lives where they are feeling overlooked. There are different prompts but the clockwork machine that holds these ghosts is pretty similar.
This repetition is a surprise in one sense, given the inventiveness I have previously ascribed to Moore's writing. At the same time, however, there are clues in Moore's book of an autobiographical skeleton to some of these stories, which Moore then clothes with fictional variety. 'I am not a Catholic author' the novelist Fergus protests at one point. Moore himself could make the case, even if Catholic themes routinely surface in his work. The American setting was his new home (he was originally from Northern Ireland) and the tension between the incensed depths of the old faith and the shiny vaneers of the New World are the site of creative tension for his writing.
Earlier this year I read and reviewed 'Cold Heaven' (1983), which was again a story of ghosts on the coast. Like 'I am Mary Dunne', there are lots of parallels, sufficiently similar that in retrospect it feels like some of the 1980s book was a creative rehash. Of the two, I prefer 'Fergus'.
Appropriately for the auto-ago defined by cars, there is a neat contrast made between a Lincoln continental and Morris Minor. These cars haunt the narrative, with the Lincoln a totemic slab-bonnetted status symbol, all for show, obscuring the person behind smoky windows. In contrast the Moggie is all about people and family, like a wheeled picnic basket-meets-metal pet, as part of the family itself. Moore's writing remains fluent, with such flourishes standing out, it is only starting to feel in the repetition of autobiographical themes that sometime the pen goes into automatic writing.
39 year old Fergus Fadden is a direct match for 31 year old Mary Dunne, the protagonist of Moore's previous novel published three years earlier. Both experience repeated flashbacks (hauntings) of past lives, as a procession of old faces test their limits of remembrance, and push them to question the limits of their sanity. Both are living close to the coast (just on opposite seaboards), as divorcees forging new lives where they are feeling overlooked. There are different prompts but the clockwork machine that holds these ghosts is pretty similar.
This repetition is a surprise in one sense, given the inventiveness I have previously ascribed to Moore's writing. At the same time, however, there are clues in Moore's book of an autobiographical skeleton to some of these stories, which Moore then clothes with fictional variety. 'I am not a Catholic author' the novelist Fergus protests at one point. Moore himself could make the case, even if Catholic themes routinely surface in his work. The American setting was his new home (he was originally from Northern Ireland) and the tension between the incensed depths of the old faith and the shiny vaneers of the New World are the site of creative tension for his writing.
Earlier this year I read and reviewed 'Cold Heaven' (1983), which was again a story of ghosts on the coast. Like 'I am Mary Dunne', there are lots of parallels, sufficiently similar that in retrospect it feels like some of the 1980s book was a creative rehash. Of the two, I prefer 'Fergus'.
Appropriately for the auto-ago defined by cars, there is a neat contrast made between a Lincoln continental and Morris Minor. These cars haunt the narrative, with the Lincoln a totemic slab-bonnetted status symbol, all for show, obscuring the person behind smoky windows. In contrast the Moggie is all about people and family, like a wheeled picnic basket-meets-metal pet, as part of the family itself. Moore's writing remains fluent, with such flourishes standing out, it is only starting to feel in the repetition of autobiographical themes that sometime the pen goes into automatic writing.
January 2, 2025
Moore was aware that, for his readers, this was one of his least liked novels. A haunting, but done as real. I've given it a second go. But I agree with everyone else.
January 28, 2016
Den Anfang fand ich sehr unterhaltsam, ungewöhnlich, spannend. Dann hat es sich für mich doch etwas hingezogen, obwohl es eigentlich doch nur ein recht kurzer Roman ist. Deshalb habe ich ihn auch zu Ende gelesen, ich weiß nicht ob ich es sonst getan hätte. Selbst am Schluss hat mir irgendwie die Begründung für Fergus' Besucher gefehlt. Und komisch, so wie in der Beschreibung am Klappentext, fand ich es an keiner Stelle.
March 24, 2010
a bit confusing fiction. sorry, i do not remember much.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews