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Disturbance
Never before published in the United States, "Disturbance," a wickedly funny, macabre story of obsession, is the first book by Jamie O'Neill, author of "At Swim, Two Boys."Nilus Moore is an Irish boy struggling to find his place in the world. He lives with his eccentric and capricious father in their shambolic house. The decay is overwhelming and Nilus notices every detail -- from a chipped cup to the crumbling plaster -- but when Nilus' uncle tries to demolish the house and build an office complex on the block, Nilus and his father take in boarders to save their home: Mrs. Houlihan, a medium; a blind piano accordionist; Father Mulcahy, a defrocked priest.
On the surface, Nilus is calm, silent, fastidious, but he is a young man trying to cope with tragedy and chaos. Haunted by his mother's death, Nilus takes refuge in his bedroom, where he obsessively makes and remakes a matt-black jigsaw puzzle as he battles to keep control of his senses.
Written with wry wit and deep compassion, "Disturbance" is a portrait of a mind disordered yet obsessed with order, a haunting and powerful work of incredible imagination.
On the surface, Nilus is calm, silent, fastidious, but he is a young man trying to cope with tragedy and chaos. Haunted by his mother's death, Nilus takes refuge in his bedroom, where he obsessively makes and remakes a matt-black jigsaw puzzle as he battles to keep control of his senses.
Written with wry wit and deep compassion, "Disturbance" is a portrait of a mind disordered yet obsessed with order, a haunting and powerful work of incredible imagination.
- GenresFiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2003
1 person is currently reading
208 people want to read
About the author
Jamie O'Neill
12 books221 followersJamie O'Neill is an Irish author, who lived and worked in England for two decades; he now lives in Gortachalla, in County Galway, Ireland. His critically-acclaimed novel, At Swim, Two Boys (2001) earned him the highest advance ever paid for an Irish novel and frequent claims that he was the natural successor to James Joyce, Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett.
O'Neill was born in Dún Laoghaire in 1962 and was educated at Presentation College, Glasthule, County Dublin, run by the Presentation Brothers, and (in his words) "the city streets of London, the beaches of Greece." He was raised in a home without books, and first discovered that books "could be fun" when he read Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. O'Neill was unhappy at home; he had a very difficult relationship with his father and ran away from home at age 17.
O'Neill was the partner of television presenter Russell Harty for six years until Harty's death in 1988. His current partner is Julien Joly, a former ballet dancer who now works as a Shiatsu therapist.
O'Neill lists as his favourite books: Ulysses, by James Joyce, The Last of the Wine, by Mary Renault, Hadrian VII, by Fr. Rolfe (Frederick Baron Corvo), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Siege of Krishnapur, by J. G. Farrell, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien, The Swimming-Pool Library, by Alan Hollinghurst, and The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt.
O’Neill met Russell Harty in 1982, during a two-week holiday in London. They became a couple and lived together in London and at Rose Cottage, Harty's home in Giggleswick, Yorkshire. Harty encouraged O'Neill's writing and read his manuscripts; he even mailed manuscripts of early novels to publishers without O'Neill's consent or knowledge, and a book deal was agreed with Weidenfeld. Soon after that, in 1988, Russell Harty died of AIDS-related Hepatitis B. Hounded by the tabloid press, O'Neill's nude photograph was splashed across the front of the Sunday Mirror; the picture was taken shortly after his arrival in London when he earned some money as a model. He turned down offers of up to £50,000 for interviews about his private life with Russell Harty.
This newspaper coverage was how O'Neill's parents in Ireland discovered that their son was gay. This event would have been traumatising enough; his distress was deepened when members of the Harty family threw him out of the cottage, burned his clothes and left him homeless. They did, however, allow him to take the couple's pet dog, Paddy; even though they did want it.
After Russell Harty's death, O'Neill sought therapeutic help. The following year, O'Neill's first novel, Disturbance, was published; Kilbrack followed in 1990. Both novels had been mostly finished while Harty was alive. But then, grieving for Harty and alone in London, O'Neill struggled to write, parted company with both his agent and publisher, and took the job as a night porter at the Cassell Hospital, a psychiatric institution in Surrey from 1990 up to 2000.
Two years after Russell Harty's death, Paddy was to accidentally introduce O'Neill to his future partner. O'Neill was in a London pub when he noticed the dog was missing. Paddy had been found by a ballet dancer named Julien Joly. They began a relationship and Joly was instrumental in helping O'Neill put his life back together. During the ten years that followed, O'Neill wrote At Swim, Two Boys, which was published in 2001. Its official launch at Somerset House in London was abandoned on the day -- it was September 11, 2001.
O'Neill was born in Dún Laoghaire in 1962 and was educated at Presentation College, Glasthule, County Dublin, run by the Presentation Brothers, and (in his words) "the city streets of London, the beaches of Greece." He was raised in a home without books, and first discovered that books "could be fun" when he read Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. O'Neill was unhappy at home; he had a very difficult relationship with his father and ran away from home at age 17.
O'Neill was the partner of television presenter Russell Harty for six years until Harty's death in 1988. His current partner is Julien Joly, a former ballet dancer who now works as a Shiatsu therapist.
O'Neill lists as his favourite books: Ulysses, by James Joyce, The Last of the Wine, by Mary Renault, Hadrian VII, by Fr. Rolfe (Frederick Baron Corvo), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Siege of Krishnapur, by J. G. Farrell, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien, The Swimming-Pool Library, by Alan Hollinghurst, and The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt.
O’Neill met Russell Harty in 1982, during a two-week holiday in London. They became a couple and lived together in London and at Rose Cottage, Harty's home in Giggleswick, Yorkshire. Harty encouraged O'Neill's writing and read his manuscripts; he even mailed manuscripts of early novels to publishers without O'Neill's consent or knowledge, and a book deal was agreed with Weidenfeld. Soon after that, in 1988, Russell Harty died of AIDS-related Hepatitis B. Hounded by the tabloid press, O'Neill's nude photograph was splashed across the front of the Sunday Mirror; the picture was taken shortly after his arrival in London when he earned some money as a model. He turned down offers of up to £50,000 for interviews about his private life with Russell Harty.
This newspaper coverage was how O'Neill's parents in Ireland discovered that their son was gay. This event would have been traumatising enough; his distress was deepened when members of the Harty family threw him out of the cottage, burned his clothes and left him homeless. They did, however, allow him to take the couple's pet dog, Paddy; even though they did want it.
After Russell Harty's death, O'Neill sought therapeutic help. The following year, O'Neill's first novel, Disturbance, was published; Kilbrack followed in 1990. Both novels had been mostly finished while Harty was alive. But then, grieving for Harty and alone in London, O'Neill struggled to write, parted company with both his agent and publisher, and took the job as a night porter at the Cassell Hospital, a psychiatric institution in Surrey from 1990 up to 2000.
Two years after Russell Harty's death, Paddy was to accidentally introduce O'Neill to his future partner. O'Neill was in a London pub when he noticed the dog was missing. Paddy had been found by a ballet dancer named Julien Joly. They began a relationship and Joly was instrumental in helping O'Neill put his life back together. During the ten years that followed, O'Neill wrote At Swim, Two Boys, which was published in 2001. Its official launch at Somerset House in London was abandoned on the day -- it was September 11, 2001.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 11, 2016
Went from casual ignorance of O'Neill's pre-At Swim, Two Boys career very quickly to owning the lot (okay, the two), and quicker still from starting this to finishing. It's of course a lesser effort than that later masterpiece—most things I've read are—but its discomfiting match of genuinely sympathetic character work and slow-built horror marks O'Neill early as a one to watch in Irish literature, an enthralling upstart in the vein of Pat McCabe. Perhaps even too much so; effective though Disturbance may be, its plot progression is as vaguely familiar as many of its symbolical elements, from the ailing father and decrepit home to the pregnant cousin and revolutionary aspirations many of the characters share. That some of these would crop up again, more nuanced, in O'Neill's later breakthrough suggests perhaps he felt the same; Disturbance might have marked him a writer of skill and superb sensibility, but it's just a tantalising tease of the kind of quality he had held in store.
December 23, 2024
Visit JetBlackDragonfly (The Man Who Read Too Much) at www.edenthompson.ca/blog
Disturbance is the debut novel from author Jamie O'Neill. It was followed by Kibrack (1990) and At Swim, Two Boys (2001). O'Neill has been hailed as the rightful successor to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, taking his place amongst the great Irish writers all the way up to Roddy Doyle.
This is a tender novel of sixteen year-old Nilus, living with his father, as his world literally crumbles around him. The family home is the last in a row of cottages, mostly abandoned after the nearby perfume works was bricked up. They live like bachelors in dilapidated rooms with crumbling plaster and a loose banister. His Uncle Frank, a developer from Kilkenny, has encouraged them to move, as bulldozers begin levelling the abandoned street of row-houses.
The only solace Nilus can find is playing 'Disturbance' with his jigsaw - completed a year ago the day his mother died. The whole puzzle a solid matte black surface, each piece just black, his made-up game is to pull a corner or section apart to put it back together. Some sense of order in the shambles.
His father takes to his bed after a minor heart attack, and Mrs Houlihan (the last turfed out neighbour) moves in to help (feeding his Da copious cloves of garlic for his health, though the smell is awful). The idea is to turn the home into a rooming house. Soon Father Mulcahy (a drinker turned out of the church) and John Mitchell (a blind homeless man) move into rooms. Uncle Frank and Aunt Agnes object, but when their daughter becomes pregnant, her Northern fiance Joe also moves in.
When pregnant niece Ira moves into Joe's room, things take a turn and the reader begins to question the whole story. Something else is happening that is slow to reveal itself, and the story turns into something quite unexpected. Although there were clues, this twist is so subtle, I was left outside, on the empty brick scattered street, questioning what I just read.
Truly great writing that was enjoyable and then mysterious. O'Neill has his finger on the pulse of the language and characters, and this is a sample of the great acclaim that was to come for his work. Recommended.
Disturbance is the debut novel from author Jamie O'Neill. It was followed by Kibrack (1990) and At Swim, Two Boys (2001). O'Neill has been hailed as the rightful successor to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, taking his place amongst the great Irish writers all the way up to Roddy Doyle.
This is a tender novel of sixteen year-old Nilus, living with his father, as his world literally crumbles around him. The family home is the last in a row of cottages, mostly abandoned after the nearby perfume works was bricked up. They live like bachelors in dilapidated rooms with crumbling plaster and a loose banister. His Uncle Frank, a developer from Kilkenny, has encouraged them to move, as bulldozers begin levelling the abandoned street of row-houses.
The only solace Nilus can find is playing 'Disturbance' with his jigsaw - completed a year ago the day his mother died. The whole puzzle a solid matte black surface, each piece just black, his made-up game is to pull a corner or section apart to put it back together. Some sense of order in the shambles.
His father takes to his bed after a minor heart attack, and Mrs Houlihan (the last turfed out neighbour) moves in to help (feeding his Da copious cloves of garlic for his health, though the smell is awful). The idea is to turn the home into a rooming house. Soon Father Mulcahy (a drinker turned out of the church) and John Mitchell (a blind homeless man) move into rooms. Uncle Frank and Aunt Agnes object, but when their daughter becomes pregnant, her Northern fiance Joe also moves in.
When pregnant niece Ira moves into Joe's room, things take a turn and the reader begins to question the whole story. Something else is happening that is slow to reveal itself, and the story turns into something quite unexpected. Although there were clues, this twist is so subtle, I was left outside, on the empty brick scattered street, questioning what I just read.
Truly great writing that was enjoyable and then mysterious. O'Neill has his finger on the pulse of the language and characters, and this is a sample of the great acclaim that was to come for his work. Recommended.
March 18, 2021
Nilus Moore, the narrator is in his mid teens and still at school as he starts his account. His mother has recently died, and he lives with his father, but it seems Nilus' world is falling down around him. Their large house is crumbling away while the other houses in the street are being demolished, and his father has taken to his bed, living on garlic cloves and brandy. Putting on the pressure is Nilus' uncle, his father's twin brother, who wants to demolish their house for redevelopment.
As Nilus approaches the end of his school days he struggles both to keep his home together and maintain his sanity. His bedroom, at the very top of their house is his refuge and which he keeps immaculately clean, where he is constantly checking to ensure that the sheet folds on his bed are in order, and where he watches over his near impossible 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. He also has to contend with his aunt and uncle's interfering, his pregnant cousin and her estranged boyfriend, an ageing priest and other odd characters.
Nilus is an appealing character, especially as he efficiently tries to take on such heavy responsibilities for one so young. However not all is as it may appear, the subtle clues are there, but they might easily be overlooked.
This is a captivating, witty and often very funny story that repays careful reading.
As Nilus approaches the end of his school days he struggles both to keep his home together and maintain his sanity. His bedroom, at the very top of their house is his refuge and which he keeps immaculately clean, where he is constantly checking to ensure that the sheet folds on his bed are in order, and where he watches over his near impossible 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. He also has to contend with his aunt and uncle's interfering, his pregnant cousin and her estranged boyfriend, an ageing priest and other odd characters.
Nilus is an appealing character, especially as he efficiently tries to take on such heavy responsibilities for one so young. However not all is as it may appear, the subtle clues are there, but they might easily be overlooked.
This is a captivating, witty and often very funny story that repays careful reading.
July 14, 2023
That I can rank this novel in the same way I rank O'Neill's 'At Swim Two Boys' should tell you that this is an extraordinary first novel of a brilliance that is quite astounding. Others have pointed out that the novel owes debts to Patrick McCabe; but how can any Irish writer after him not be influenced and have a debt to McCabe? his 'Butcher's Boy' was a game changer. To not be influenced by him would be a failure for any real writer and O'Neill is a great writer. That the novel also plays with themes that would reappear in ASTB is obvious, but again most of us will read this novel after the one that came later. Still this novel stands well on its own and should be appreciated and not judged by what came later.
I read this novel many years ago and aside from regarding it as brilliant I am going to refuse to say anymore because it would be easy to spoil the novel - I am not talking about silly spoilers - but there is more then sufficient information about what the novel is about to make a judgement on whether or not to read it. It is deep, moving, wonderful, dark, disturbing and just damned wonderful - everything a novel should be.
I read this novel many years ago and aside from regarding it as brilliant I am going to refuse to say anymore because it would be easy to spoil the novel - I am not talking about silly spoilers - but there is more then sufficient information about what the novel is about to make a judgement on whether or not to read it. It is deep, moving, wonderful, dark, disturbing and just damned wonderful - everything a novel should be.
July 30, 2023
Really not sure what I just read
September 22, 2015
Very clever, dark, and evocative. Of course, I prefer At swim, two boys, but I really enjoyed Nilus Moore's voice and the way O'Neill toyed with the reader. It's a stark little book heavy with meaning and just the right amount of politics, family feuds and madness for a quick Saturday afternoon read.
March 11, 2009
De thematiek van dit boek is mooi, het plot ook. Alleen had ik moeite met taalgebruik. Ik had de neiging snel over regels heen te lezen en de zinnen konden mij niet heel erg boeien. Jammer, want de ontknoping was best verrassend en maakte het boek uiteindelijk toch leuk.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews