Il ritorno degli dei

by Nick Laird, Federica Aceto (Translator)

Alison vive ancora nella piccola cittadina dell'Irlanda del Nord dov'è nata, lavora nell'agenzia immobiliare del padre e spera che il suo secondo matrimonio rappresenti finalmente la svolta che sta cercando da anni. Sua sorella Liz, che ha preso le distanze dalla famiglia e vive a New York, torna a casa per le nozze di Alison prima di proseguire il suo viaggio alla volta di un'isola al largo della Papua Nuova Guinea: lì, nelle sue vesti di antropologa, dovrà realizzare un documentario su una religione di recente fondazione. Ma la vita delle due sorelle sta per subire un nuovo scossone: Alison scoprirà che il nuovo marito ha un passato al quale non si può sfuggire, mentre Liz, immersa in una foresta pluviale, si troverà sempre più coinvolta nel mondo di Belef, la misteriosa donna a capo del culto. Sapientemente costruito lungo due assi paralleli, "Il ritorno degli dei" affronta alcune grandi ossessioni dell'immaginario contemporaneo: l'inutilità di ogni fuga dal passato, l'esigenza dí fare i conti con un'eredità difficile, la ricerca di nuove divinità e di una fede che possa sovvertire le leggi della ragione e della scienza.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, Religion, Novels, Literary Fiction, British Literature

410 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 2017

About the author

Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland in 1975. He read English Literature at Cambridge University, and then worked for several years as a lawyer specializing in international litigation.

He is the author of two novels, Utterly Monkey and Glover's Mistake, and two collections of poetry, To A Fault and On Purpose. A new volume of poetry, Go Giants, is forthcoming from Faber in January 2013.

Laird has won many awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Rupert and Eithne Strong award, a Somerset Maugham award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He has published poetry and essays in many journals including the New Yorker, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and wrote a column on poetry for two years for the Guardian newspaper.

He has taught at Columbia University, Manchester University and Barnard College.

Reviews

[Hanneke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very original novel. Nick Laird shows with devastating clarity how sectarian religious violence evolves along similar lines whether it occurs in Ulster, Northern Ireland, or a small island off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Furthermore, the novel reminds us what an odious influence Western missionaries can have in communities that are led to believe that it is advantageous to adopt the foreign religion purely on the ground of the promises it makes. I would imagine that preachers in places like Papua New Guinea of whatever denomination will have all in common that they are so fanatically single-minded that they will not let the idea enter their mind that they advocate ideas and values which are truly foreign and disadvantageous to the native people, such as the concept of hell. How cruel it is to be introduced to hell, if you had previously no idea of its existence! The same religious single-mindedness applies to the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Island and the parallel is convincingly demonstrated in this novel. The novel is about loss, love, danger, violence and the persistence to look the other way. I really liked this novel. It was an interesting and touching read.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It didn't take much more than the mention of Papua New Guinea for me to request an eARC of this novel. I did not know nor did I care that Nick Laird is married to Zadie Smith, something I only discovered after reading.

I've always loved novels featuring anthropologists, linguists, or people struggling through similar issues. There is so much ripe for conflict when white people (or people from the developed world) go traipsing through the world to study or convert.

Some of my favorites:
-Mating by Norman Rush
-Euphoria by Lily King
-State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (up until the blue mushrooms)
-The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (yes aliens, yes anthropology)
-The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara (hated it, loved it, couldn't decide)

So I was hoping for more of that. 25% in, the narrative was still in Ireland, focusing on the siblings in a family and their somewhat dysfunctional adult lives. Interspersed with that were profiles of people who had died in a shooting, which I was confused about at first. I didn't dislike the beginning, but it definitely was not what I expected when I started.

Eventually Liz, the older sister of the family, gets to New Ulster, an island off of PNG, and starts her work. She is more of a journalist and is there very briefly, investigating what might be the newest religion in the world, a female-led cargo cult. I think the author got a lot right about PNG from what I know about it through my own reading; the only thing I'm not sure about is how Liz (and her BBC crew) were able to connect so easily to Belef, the leader of the cargo cult. Anthropologists talk about the importance of trust and understanding the culture and still spending years gaining the kind of access her crew gets in under two weeks, foreign technology and being filmed included. That's a bit of a stretch. Not to mention that Liz, while trained in anthropology, learns much about what she knows by skimming a few books she's heard about on the long plane rides over.

The novel as a whole draws some interesting parallels. There is a storyline dealing with the aftermath of a shooting that happened during "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, questioning how people move on from that violence and form normal lives. In New Ulster, like most of Papua New Guinea, World War II was the first real connection they had with the outside world. Missionaries have moved in and started to insist the natives act a certain way, but these also seem to be puppets of the government and/or commerce, which is not good!

We really only see the natives through the lens of Liz, which is more fair than the lens of the missionary and his family. I would have liked an entire novel of Liz and Belef and the cargo cult and ghost children, and I'm still mulling over why the author chose to make over half of the novel about this other story.

Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to the title via Edelweiss.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Nick Laird's third novel. As he describes himself, he is referred to as an "Irish poet and a British novelist". That goes with being from Northern Ireland. In this novel, he tells the stories of two sisters, Liz and Alison Donnelly from a small town in Northern Ireland. Liz is an anthropologist, currently living in New York, and on her way to an island off of Papua New Guinea (PNG) named New Ulster (a fictitious place) to film a documentary for BBC4. The subject of interest is a woman named Belef, and her followers are what's known as a "cargo cult". The topic of cargo cults is interesting enough to pull in readers. Alison, mother of two, and divorced from an alcoholic abuser, is about to get remarried.

The Guardian referred to this novel, appropriately, as "a tale of two tribes". Laird tells the story of the tribes of Northern Ireland and PNG, without ever resorting to hyperbole. Protestant religiosity occupies a central role in both tribes. In PNG, a missionary, angry at Belef's growing power over locals, reports her to authorities for a minor infraction. The intervention of the authorities does not end well. In Northern Ireland, the Presbyterian church is at the center of the story. As in New Ulster, the local church, as well as as the history of sectarian violence, hold sway over the family. Laird describes the materialism surrounding the upcoming wedding of Alison, and parallels it with the dreams of the New Ulster inhabitants who wish for appliances, tvs, and more to come from the sky or the sea. The similarities of the tribes are convincing.

It is 19 years after the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Despite the passage of time, many in the North, have not reconciled the past with the present. This is at the heart of Alison's story. In Liz's trip to New Ulster, we see the continuation of colonialism in the independent state. The American missionaries have brought about some crucial changes, particularly improving the lives of women. In the past widows were killed, and women's lives were not valued. But we see at the same time, they wield tremendous power with local authorities who depend on donations from the missionaries' home church in America. That is why when Belef's church poses a threat to the power of the missionaries and their church, the local authorities are at their beck and call. The BBC documentary process is also indicative of how those of us who live in developed countries view people in developing societies. They are "the other", "the exotic", and we want to keep our distance.

I am a big fan of Laird as a novelist, poet, and human being. This novel does not require readers to know a lot about Northern Ireland or the Troubles to appreciate. In fact, both societies in the book will seem "foreign" to readers, and provide journeys to new places.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

To some, Nick Laird will only ever be Mr. Zadie Smith. Many probably have no idea that he’s an accomplished poet as well as a fiction writer. I’ve read all six of his books now: three collections of poems and three novels. While his two previous novels were firmly in what could be called the ‘lad lit’ camp, with Modern Gods he’s upped his game and is attempting a broader and more literary statement.

The Donnelly family of Ulster is preparing for a wedding. But it’s not exactly a time of unadulterated joy. It’s Alison’s second marriage and she has two small children from her previous relationship with Bill, an alcoholic. Alison’s sister Liz is an anthropology professor in New York, and although her professional life has taken off – after the success of her self-help book on Lévi-Strauss, she’s been invited to present a documentary on a new cult in Papua New Guinea – her personal life is in tatters after she finds her boyfriend in bed with another man. Meanwhile, their brother, Spencer, is sleeping with a married colleague, and their mum, Judith, is ill with untreatable uterine cancer and hasn’t yet told her children.

It’s only on the morning after her wedding that Alison – and the rest of the world, via the papers – learns that her groom was involved in Catholic-Protestant violence some years back. At last the mini-profiles that have interrupted the text at various points make sense: these are the victims. As Alison loses faith in the idols of marriage and family, Liz also has reason to question what she holds true as she travels to the fictional island of New Ulster, where she is to interview the cult leader Belef about her new religion, dubbed “The Story”. This is a mixture of Christianity and traditional myths and originated, it seems, primarily as a way for Belef to process her grief over the accidental deaths of her children.

The Irish strand of the novel is much the better one, with the complicated and sometimes funny family dynamic reminding me of Anne Enright’s The Green Road and Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You. The Third World interlude struck me as unsubtle – “New Ulster” demands comparison with Northern Ireland, and the name “Belef” is just one letter away from “belief” – and mostly irrelevant. Oddly enough, this is exactly how I felt about Zadie Smith’s latest novel, Swing Time, in which the visits to Africa feel forced and weak compared to the central story of troubled family and friendship back in London.

Still, I see what Laird is trying to do here: point to the inevitable links between religion and violence, and show how difficult it is to move beyond beliefs that seem to be bred in the bone. And I appreciate how he occasionally turns Liz’s anthropologist’s eye onto his homeland: “Ulster—a gift-based culture. You received, you returned, you passed it on. The statelet ran on quid pro quo, on tit for tat” and “What fetish gods the Donnellys were! They’d stay in a marriage so as not to waste the cargo of a fondue set.” Though I don’t think the novel is entirely successful, it’s interesting to see themes of faith, family and violence coming to the fore.

Originally published at Nudge.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

 
Does Not Quite Connect

I was prepared to like this a lot. Nick Laird writes superbly. He addresses his native land (and mine), Northern Ireland (Ulster), with faithful objectivity and a less usual perspective: Protestant, rather than the more familiar Catholic. Yet he does not fall into the provincialism of so much Ulster writing; many of the characters have experience in other cities, other continents, and almost half the novel takes place on an island in Papua Net Guinea, fittingly called New Ulster.

That split locale was another thing that got me thinking of five stars. It takes courage to open a novel's scope as widely as Laird has done, and I take my hat off to anyone who attempts it. After returning home from New York to attend the wedding of her divorced sister Alison, Liz Donnelly flies to the South Pacific to record a program for the BBC about a cargo cult on this remote (but imaginary) island. Alison goes on honeymoon to Greece with her new husband, Stephen. Both stories are well developed and interesting in themselves, and there is at least one parallel between them, in that both involve religious strife that leads inevitably to violence. But the parallel is a subtle one. While I enjoyed the swift changes of texture between the two stories, and sensed rather than analyzed their kinship, I did expect a closer connection as they both wound up, so that the lessons of one might illuminate the other. But this did not happen. Both stories ended, more or less neatly. But they never came together. And my presumptive five stars dwindled to four, though a high four.

======

I have put this aside for a week, meaning to write a lot more, but work has got the better of me. So I shall just end with some examples of Laird's writing.

On the weather in Northern Ireland:

The light of Ulster traveled not by particle or wave but by indirection, hint, and rumor. A kind of light of no-light, emanating from a sun so swathed in clouds it was impossible to tell where it lurked in the sky.

On sectarian division:

If you tried to sit on the fence, you came to realize that you couldn't move, not an inch, for you would topple off and land on one side or the other, covered in bullshit. The north was thesis and antithesis, but no synthesis.

On the slow recovery from stroke:

To see him do such simple things with such tremulous care and hysical trepidation. His eyes expressing fear, his fingers fiddling with a zipper. It was like the element he lived in had changed, had once been air and now was water, and the entire choreography of daily life had to be relearned.

Laird's writing about Papua New Guinea is equally good, with hints of Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and Peter Matthiesen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord, especially in his attitude to missionaries, but still very much his own. However, I can't quote everything!

[Kansas · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2025...

"Me he perdido en el bosque. No es la clase de bosque en el que una querría perderse."

Nick Laird ha sido un hallazgo y el hecho de esta novela no sea perfecta porque en algún momento se va por los cerros, no significa que necesite esta perfección para que conectes y contenga momentos realmente gloriosos y aquí los hay y todos están relacionados con los intríngulis en torno a la familia porque Laird usa la familia irlandesa, en este caso los Donnelly, como un ecosistema a la hora de explorar la identidad, este peso del pasado que a veces se arrastra como una enorme cruz, al mismo tiempo que visibiliza la religión como ese gran monstruo manipulador culpable de muchos de estos males. Los recuerdos de infancia y como los hemos llegado a interpretar como adultos es otro enfoque que saca a relucir Laird con un estilo totalmente accesible y muy fresco. La memoria a lo largo de los años no deja de ser una interpretación de algo que nos hemos construido en nuestra mente. Aunque haya una parte concreta de la novela con la que no he conectado demasiado, y es concretamente aquella que se ubica en la isla de Papúa Nueva Guinea, el resto de la novela me ha llegado muy cerca en la forma en que Laird narra la situación de la familia Donnelly, ya una vez que sus tres hijos han crecido: cada uno tiene su vida, y sin embargo todos y cada uno de ellos siguen conectados a la casa familiar como si fuera un faro al que volver cuando de verdad se está perdido. Hay tantas conexiones con la forma en que se concibe la familia tradicional en Irlanda del Norte con esta España en la que vivo, concretamente el sur, que es difícil no reconocerse en ella. En la Irlanda del Norte que describe Laird todavía es más palpable esta pertenencia medio traumática porque además ha sido una sociedad muy marcada por la división religiosa y política desembocada en violencia, y aún así, la familia es el núcleo central que garantiza la pertenencia y la continuidad en un ciclo marcadamente conflictivo para muchos.


"Pero durante esos primeros años, el optimismo era tan imparable como una avalancha. Era una locura no sumarse al entusiasmo general. Se construían casas adosadas en el terreno de las antiguas fábricas y no cabía duda de que se hallaría gente dispuesta a comprarlas.
(...)
Entrar en bancarrota era la clase de humillación que te hace sentir físicamente más pequeño, más débil. A lo largo de tres años después de cumplir los veintidós, Spencer no tuvo cuenta bancaria y su padre volvió a darle la paga, como si tuviera doce años."


Laird muestra que este núcleo familiar tan sólido en su apariencia, es muy frágil una vez que se escarba y sale a relucir de todo. La familia que puede funcionar como un refugio, también se puede convertir en el mayor motivo de huida, y en una cárcel sobre todo para las mujeres porque hay roles todavía muy enquistados y de esto hablaba en mi crónica de Entre toda las mujeres, también del irlandés John McGahern. Cuando la novela comienza, el matrimonio de Judith y Kenneth Donnelly ya en sus sesenta, se enfrentan a la segunda boda de su hija Alison que había tenido un primer matrimonio traumático. Liz, la hija mayor, no se ha casado y salió de casa para convertirse en académica en Nueva York después de haber estudiado antropología. El hijo menor, Spencer, sin oficio ni beneficio, después de intentar hacer dinero rápido con la burbuja que terminó estallando, finalmente encontró refugio en la inmobiliaria propiedad de su padre. Así a grandes rasgos, Nick Laird nos muestra una familia que podría ser la de cualquier otro lugar del mundo y mientras en esta primera parte nos está introduciendo en la dinámica familiar, antes de que Liz llegue para la celebración de la boda, es difícil no reconocerse en muchos momentos que describe Laird, con humor, ironía, con esa vena tragicómica tan habitual en los irlandeses cuando abordan los temas en torno a la familia.


"No entendía por qué su hermana estaba tan decidida a venderle esa imagen de su vida, como si no pudiera soportar vivirla sin la aprobación de los demás."


Aunque Nick Laird nos esté hablando de los Donnelly realmente usa a las dos hijas de la familia como una especie de guía para mostrarnos el cuadro completo. Liz por una parte, que aunque consiguió independencia, no ha cumplido las expectativas familiares porque no está casada, y por otra parte está Alison que aunque si se adaptó a las expectativas en torno al rol de madre y esposa, realmente se siente una fracasada. Esta novela está escrita de tal forma que ya digo que es fácilmente conectar con ella aunque no vivamos en el pequeño pueblo de Ballyglass, en el Ulster, en Irlanda del Norte. La desconexión que siente Liz una vez que vuelve a casa, es la misma que siente Alison, a pesar de que ella sí aparentemente parece responder al rol que se espera de ella y ha echado raíces en el pequeño pueblo de Ballyglass.


“Y sin embargo,y por eso David la miraba en aquel momento, como siempre la miraba, con lástima. ¿Todavía soltera? ¿Sin hijos? David le dio una palmadita en la cabeza a a dos de sus hijos a su lado, tenía cinco, y comenzó a hablar, como de costumbre, de su propia vida. Que era la misma vida que había tenido siempre.”


Tras la boda, Liz se dirige a Papúa Nueva Guinea, a la isla de Nuevo Úlster, para presentar para la BBC un documental sobre una nueva religión que ha surgido entre los nativos, liderada por una mujer nativa llamada Belef y es aquí en esta segunda parte donde para mí decae un poco la novela, o por lo menos el climax anterior se rompe en cierta forma, aunque sigue habiendo capítulos conectados con Alison y con la familia. Observar es en cierta forma el trabajo de Liz como antropóloga y su viaje a esta isla de Melanesia para investigar sobre una nueva religión, se conecta de alguna forma con esa parte de Irlanda que ella creía haber dejado atrás: la fe como necesidad humana, como una fuente de pertenencia a la que agarrarse, pero al mismo tiempo Laird está visibilizando lo peligrosa que puede llegar a ser a la hora de manipular y de ahí hay un solo paso para la violencia. Nick Laird está comparando a Irlanda del Norte y la pequeña isla de Papúa Nueva Guinea y sus nuevos dioses creados en un principio como signo de esperanza pero finalmente se transforman en otra cosa que acaban manipulando las vidas de las comunidades. Es un símil interesante el que establece aquí Laird sobre todo cuando reflexionamos sobre estos nuevos dioses o dioses modernos que el ser humano necesita para que la desesperanza no los invada y los sume en la oscuridad.


“Aquella inmensa oscuridad qué el mismo había llevado a tantas vidas, la suya incluida.”


Tal como decía al principio de esta crónica, Nick Laird me ha parecido un hallazgo y quiero seguir leyéndole porque se muestra muy lúcido a la hora de mostrar ciertos temas que todavía son dolorosos y que están muy enlazados con el pasado y además muestra mucho sentido del humor a la hora de narrar pequeños momentos domésticos que quizás todos hayamos vivido. La forma en que relaciona un tema global como puede ser el de la religión y la violencia, con la experiencia que se puede vivir dentro de una familia, estableciendo símiles que podremos reconocer todos, son muy reveladores, por ejemplo cuando se refieren a la madre de la familia: "Liz no recordaba haber visto nunca a su madre irse a la cama de día. Rara vez la había visto sentarse. A veces cuando ya era de noche, se apoyaba media hora en uno de los brazos de la silla mirando la televisión sin prestarle atención. Pero por lo general era una mujer vertical, laboriosa, ágil." Es en este momento de inflexión en la vida de la familia Donnelly, en el que durante la boda de Alison surge un tema del pasado, y a través de las perspectivas de las hermanas, justo el momento que usará Laird para enfrentarlos a su propia identidad. Todos están en crisis, todos están buscando algo y deseando agarrarse desesperadamente a un ancla que los sostenga, y es en esta reflexión que hacen de sí mismas las hermanas dónde quizás esté la respuesta.


"Y pensó en lo horrible que era ser joven hoy en día, incluso aquí, en el fin del mundo. Se te echaba encima el mundo en su conjunto, su estupidez y su pornografía, su lujuria, su avaricia, su envidia y su odio. A veces se olvidaba de lo difícil que era ser mujer, y luego había algo que se lo recordaba.
No había forma de proteger a una chica ante el mundo; era como intentar poner coto a un tsunami de mierda con cinta adhesiva y una cuerda.”

♫♫♫ Save your tears - The Weekend ♫♫♫

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description of this book reads in part, "Both Liz and Alison are looking to be reborn, to be cleansed in some way, and the dramatic journeys that they take form the backbone of this compelling novel about trust, intimacy, complicity, religious belief, and the bonds of family life." I don't think that the person who wrote that summation actually read the book. Neither Liz nor Alison is "reborn" or "cleansed" here, and no one takes a journey (although they do both need to examine their own contributions to unfortunate events). The book opens with a terrorist attack on an Irish pub, in which several people are killed. The way in which this incident is woven into the story was the most interesting part of the book for me.

The focus of the book is the Donnelly family, including the parents Judith and Kenneth, who both have serious health issues, and their grown children Liz, Alison and Spencer. Liz is an anthropologist living in New York who comes to Ireland for the second wedding of her younger sister Alison. Alison is marrying Stephen, a man with a tragic past, and she really should have listened to him when he tried to tell her about it before the wedding. After the wedding their marriage is severely challenged. Spencer's sole contribution to the book is to have a boring affair with a married woman. His character is given short shrift here and I have no idea why he was included in the book. There is also a dog who Liz smuggles into Ireland and dumps on her parents while she goes to New Guinea. The dog then disappears until the final pages of the book.

Liz has been asked to fill in as host of a BBC documentary on a religious movement in New Ulster near Papua New Guinea. A woman called Belef has started a new religion there, combining local religions with Christianity. She communicates with the dead, including her daughter, in order to obtain the cargo that she sees going exclusively to the white people. Belef is a grieving mother who is part insane and part shrewd. The chapters of the book dealing with the film crew, the Christian missionaries and Belef and her followers were my least favorite.

I found this book disjointed. Both the Belef story and the Irish story (to a lesser extent) deal with the role of religion in people's lives. Both Belef and Judith use religious rituals to deal with death, grief and illness. Religion is also a source of violent conflict in both settings and divides the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland and the Christian missionaries and Belef in New Guinea. However, I thought that the religious linkage didn't completely tie the two parts of the book together. I think that I would have been happier with just the Alison/Stephen storyline.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Ayelet Waldman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Too much time has passed since Laird's last book, but this was worth the wait!

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

In literary format the Irish (particularly of the northern variety) tend to come across as a sour dour depressed bunch. At least from what I've read thus far. It isn't utterly unreasonable either, the country and nation divided as they are has had their share of sadness. And while unhappy families certainly make for more interesting reading as Tolstoy once mentioned, it can be an emotionally draining experience. This was such a case. A story that concentrates on two sisters (very different and yet presumably shaped by the same familial events) as they struggle with life's vicissitudes. Both romantically challenged to varied degrees, one goes from one messed up marriage to another, one (unmarried and childless) goes to PNG to do a tv presentation on a cargo cult. Mind you, despite romantic challenges, this is very much not a chicklit or a romcom of any sorts and is way to bleak for either. But the cargo cult aspect is what attracted me to this book. The psychology behind such things is fascinating to me. Albeit cargo cults are a different bag of tricks altogether, usually a product of a primitive society such as the one described here, a syncretic Papua New Guinea variation. With the prerequisite paternalistic perspective, because frankly how can there be any objectivity when perceiving something so profoundly backward to modern ways. And all of this is cleverly juxtaposed with the greatest cult of all...family, the only institution where all logic is abandoned in favor of the blind pursuit of unconditional love shared DNA promises. With that narrative construct the author genuinely delivers the goods of a first class literary novel, one that might not have necessarily sung for me, but was objectively quality material with very strong characterizations. Took a few chapters to get used to his writing cadences, which much like the Irish accents have a music of their own, but it did engage after a while and though I didn't love the players, I enjoyed the play. Thanks Netgalley.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern Gods is a novel examining religion, death, tribalism, and culture on 2 islands on opposite sides of the earth: Ulster, what we commonly call Northern Ireland, though it does contain 3 counties of the Republic of Ireland, and New Ireland, which Nick Laird calls New Ulster, an island belonging to Papua New Guinea. It's also a novel about 2 sisters, Liz and Alison. Liz is a teaching anthropologist who joins a BBC crew making a documentary about the "world's newest religion," a cargo cult called the Story which has sprung up around a dynamic Melanesian woman named Belef. Alison, the younger sister, works for the family estate agency in Ballyglass and is getting remarried.

It's a novel of many parallels. Laird carefully points to the similarities between 2 cultures we'd normally think aren't alike. He equates the giving of wedding gifts for an Ulster wedding, for instance, with the exchange system of Melanesian peoples, calling them both gift-based cultures. Obviously there are religions in conflict. Not just the Protestants and Catholics in Ulster but Belef's cargo cult the Story is in desperate competition with the missionary Christianity on the island. Just as obviously, Ulster is violent. But so is New Ulster in these times not far removed from the stone age with its peoples intoxicated by the materialistic promise of the modern as well as by the friction caused by 2 contrasting religions rubbing together. If Liz is an anthropologist studying primitive culture in the field, so is a man named David Boyd who interviews Stephen, Alison's new husband, about atrocities committed against Catholics in the past.

Laird connects the 2 islands, the 2 cultures, and all the divergences and correspondences of religion in ways I expected. Certainly one reason I like this novel so much is that it performed exactly as I felt it would in mining the veins of my own thinking and beliefs. I began it eager to follow the path of its ideas to the food for thought I hoped for. It delivered, and Laird laid it out with an elegance I appreciate and admire. He skillfully shifts his narrative almost 180 degrees back and forth between Ulster where the night stars are "exit wounds" and the older skies of New Ulster, "Galactic time, nighttime, deep time, the time of stars, time of the moon." And near the end Liz lies in the dark reflecting how "she had spent her lifetime studying the differences, how one tribe does this, another that--and all the time there was no difference, not really, just tiny variations on a theme of great suffering, great loss."

[☘Tara Sheehan☘ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a book to read for entertainment, it’s one to read for education, for philosophical reasons.

If you have an emotional attachment to Ireland and its history, it’s a bloody painful one to get through.

The novel opens violent and bloody so the first impression you’re given is one of monsters especially with the Halloween theme placed over the scene and no explanation given for the massacre. Interspersed throughout the story you’ll suddenly come across a small story snuck in about one of the people who was part of that massacre then the main story picks up again so faces are put with the bodies from that horrific opening. Eventually an explanation is given late in the book as to who was involved and why.

One of the best lines is when a supporting character is trying to comfort another and tells her “I wish someone would explain Northern Ireland to me,” and the main character replied, “Me too.” That pretty much sums up the history and turbulence in which this story is set; no one, not even those who live there, can ever fully wrap their hearts and minds around it.

At its heart this is a story about the messiness of families, relationships and trying to navigate a world where boundaries don’t exist or move as fluid as water. Thrown in early, the author highlights the generational issue when it comes to dating that it seems increasingly newer generations of people are deciding at an exponential level that the ‘norms’ of dating mean to have sex with whoever is available regardless of gender and monogamous relationships exist only in history books; that could just be a thing in the States and not the rest of the world. The rules of motherhood were one of his better introspections on human behavior because any parent being honest with themselves would agree they made perfect sense.

At times he used the “f-word” so often I wondered if he had quota or if he was trying to create a drinking game – take a shot every time it appears. Since a good chunk of the story is set in Ireland he did at least use phrase and terminology appropriate for the country and people which is appreciated though I’m sure if Americans read this they’ll need to keep google open to understand what he means or we’ll be having reviewers claim Laird’s homophobic for using the word “fag” because they didn’t know that means “cigarette” in the UK. You shake your head but I’ve seen it.
The reader needs some kind of familiarity with what has happened, and on a smaller level continues to happen, in the North of Ireland to truly appreciate the story. Even small things will lose their humor if they don’t understand passages like when he describes his characters leaving County Derry and the context as to why the sign showing they’re leaving the area has been defaced. Or how another sign sums up so accurately the convoluted politics of the area and times: “In Texas murder gets you the electric chair. In Magherafelt you get chair of the council.”

For me the hardest part to read was when one of the characters tries to justify what he did by saying, “They were killing us for being Protestant, just for existing. We had to strike back.” I’m an Irish Catholic who lost family at the hands of Protestants simply because my family is Catholic. Our whole country was being run for hundreds of years by people who wanted to kill us, exterminate us, just for being Catholic; it was a genocide that England has never been punished for. Laws were created and enforced making everything about us illegal even into the late 1900s; so we began to fight back. It’s always been hard that for years, even now, they justified what they did and called us terrorists for fighting for our right to exist. All they had to do was let us live and treat us as equals and none of this would have happened.

As an Irish Catholic it was interesting reading the dynamics in an Irish Protestant family because if you didn’t know their religious leanings they very well could have been from the other side. Their struggles, their faith, their chaos and confusion with the politics of the area as well as how they feel regarding their own who use violence is exactly the same as us. When one of the characters is being interviewed for his part in killing innocent people just because they were Catholic he sounds so justified, even thrilled, I felt my soul break from the pain then fill with rage; it may be a fictional story but these kind of people and these events really happen and that’s where the emotional attachment hits thanks to Laird’s descriptive writing. It would have been easy to fall into old genetic patterns and just hold onto that hatred if Laird hadn’t shown that just as with Catholics there were Protestants who were truly good people who wanted nothing to do with the violence and maybe we needed to remember we can’t continue to judge and punish them for their religious beliefs if we want the same.

I only had two issues overall with the book. One was with the Part 2 of the story where one of the characters goes off to New Ulster to research a cult like group where Christians are painted as invaders destroying indigenous cultures (which they have) and are willing to cause death to spread their faith (something I’m not even going to touch). I didn’t really get why the author included this storyline as it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the bulk of the book unless it was just because the place she went to was called “New Ulster” like it was some kind of tie in to the Ulster in Ireland. Apparently the author just made that place up as I can’t find anywhere in Papua New Guinea called “New Ulster”. I guess you could stretch and say it was like a mirror to the Catholic-Protestant multi-centuries war in Ireland as you have an invading Christian faith bent on wiping out the existing people but whatever it still felt like it was 2 separate books meshed together and imperfectly at that.

The other issue I had was the bias towards Protestants being the innocent victims who were wrongly being murdered by Catholics. Although Laird did paint nearly all but one of his Protestant characters as having some humanity and not being pro-murder towards Catholics there was still never anyone pointing out WHY the violence and issues even existed; it’s not like Catholics just woke up one day and decided “Hey we’re bored let’s set off some bombs or shoot up people!” It’s a verifiable truth the history is a convoluted mess but you can’t explain anything or tell a story properly without showing both sides.

[Allan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lost my review - in a nutshell though, I didn't buy the main point of the NI thread, knowing the 'nosiness' of locals and the infamy of certain individuals in our society, and while I understood the symbolism of the New Ulster narrative, it held no interest for me. Shame but there you are.

[SueLucie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel of two halves. On the one hand we follow a family in crisis. Alison has escaped her first marriage to a drunken, abusive husband and has hitched herself to a seemingly good man who turns out to have the worst sort of past for a family to accommodate in Northern Ireland of the 21st century. Two decades after the Good Friday Agreement, memories are still too raw.

‘A second marriage meant substituting old ceremonies and traditions with different ones, meant trading in the old gods for new, but Alison couldn’t help it; she didn’t believe in it any longer. She’d lost her faith and found the new gods to be false gods.’

On the other hand we journey with Alison’s sister, Liz, to Papua New Guinea to make a TV documentary about a local woman who has established a religious following in the heart of the jungle (a cargo cult, a concept new to me and utterly fascinating). This is in direct competition with a Protestant mission on the same island and here lies the link between the two halves of the novel.

Nick Laird presents a thoughtful and carefully written take on religion (of any denomination), its genesis and how it survives, mostly through the observations of our anthropologist Liz.

‘…how long can you enforce belief based on some future event occurring? How long can Belef promise and not deliver? Here Liz drew a little asterisk, then, at the bottom of the page, its twin, and wrote: Of course, Christians have been waiting for two thousand years for their own cargo! The trick is to keep them on edge - on red alert - ‘one cannot know the hour.”’

‘It seemed to Liz that Josh was living out the longings of a mystic who’d pitched up in the desert two thousand years or so ago. He’s staked his life - and his wife’s, his children’s lives, the little time he’d got on this good green earth - on something he could neither see nor hear. He had a hunch, a feeling in his gut, and on that he’d bet the farm.’

Are we to think Belef’s followers foolish and susceptible to her charisma? Are they not living hard, impoverished lives, hopeful of better and comforted by the force of her self-belief? Have they turned their backs on the Mission or are they, like Usai, torn between the two and hedging their bets?

There is no need to labour the comparisons between the versions of religion we see here, their competitiveness and their inability to exist side by side with each other. Religions are shown to be basically the same - live according to certain rules and have faith that the reward will be received sometime afterwards. Whether one will ever be able to accommodate the existence of another is a topical question, as it has been throughout history. I’d certainly recommend this book.


With thanks to Harper Collins 4th Estate for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Allison · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book. I cannot find one good thing to say about it

[Jamila]

I'm kinda bummed that when the narrative split it spent more time on Liz's story, just as Alison's side got interesting we only dipped back into her life a few times. Also found it a bit jarring that the third person narration was omniscient, i know that's a perfectly common style but it's so rare in modern books, i kept getting distracted when we'd read how one person felt, and then in the next paragraph read how another person felt. BUT overall i still enjoyed this book

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

Abandoned just shy of the 70% mark, with a couple hundred pages left to go. It wasn't awful, but not good enough. At best, this was going to end up being a three-star read for me and life is too short to waste my time on anything that mediocre.

[Paula Corker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the writing was amazing, but in all, I found this book interesting, confusing and tiresome. Not sorry it’s finished.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard novel to rate and so I won't. The writing is very fine. I loved reading about this family, the two sisters, Liz and Alison, trying to reclaim themselves in very different ways, Alison's coming second wedding, the relationships with their parents and brother Spencer. There is a wonderful sharpness to the descriptions and the dialogue. From the start we understand something else is going on, for the book opens in a pub, with people being gunned down, and there are short inserts through the book in which we learn who the victims were. We also learn who Alison's new, mild-mannered new husband is. I found it all fascinating. When Liz goes on assignment to Papua New Guinea to host a BBC 2 presentation of a cargo cult that has sprung up, I was interested, but grew less interested and found myself doing what I rarely do, flip through pages seeing how many to go before I was back in Northern Ireland with the family. Perhaps my interest fell away because the whole setting in PNG, the jungle, the native-born, the cargo cult that seems to have burgeoned, lacked Conradian weight. Still, this is a novel I'm very glad to have read.

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a funny novel, which necessarily comes chiefly from the keenly observed style and cadence of the Northern Irish characters’ speech and of the New Ulster Pidgin. After all, sectarian violence and exploitation of tribal communities rarely gets played for laughs. Laird can also evoke a wry smirk, but he’s trying here for ontological truth and he mostly pulls it off: it does get you thinking. What can we justify, is violence and murder ever a civilized response to repression, is my violence more understandable than yours? And can we ever forgive? Much better than Glover’s mistake.

[Hannah Obrien · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
initially i thought this would be a 5 star read for me. laird’s prose is just wonderful. however, echoing what others have said, liz’s story line in New Ulster in the second part of the novel just dragged for me and the storyline felt somewhat disjointed.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I wanted to read more about everyone's story but without feeling like I'd been left hanging. The characters were introspective without being self-deprecating or whiny and the depiction of the cult and Liz's experience in their world felt realistic. I'd read a whole, albeit short, book about either Liz or Alison and where they go from here. The ideas of "modern gods" is touched on appropriately and thoughtfully - is it technology? Comfort? Love? Money? Success?

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, Nick Laird can do no wrong. This book was a MASTERPIECE. All the characters were beautifully drawn, the settings felt lush and well-researched and the stories interwoven within the story were gripping and heartwrenching. I wish I could rewind and wipe my mind of this story so I could read it again. BRA-VO!

[rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

the first book in memory that has made me cry.

nick laird's words breathe fresh air into stale occurrences. very grateful my prof assigned this book in our irish lit course.

it shook me to my core and i think it's always worth noting when words manage to shake you.

[Tejas Shah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very meh book. The plot sounded a lot more interesting then the actual book was. The plot follows two people, one of who’s was a lot of interesting than the other. At least the cover looks cool!

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Nick Laird’s new novel, Modern Gods, the politics of Northern Ireland runs parallel to that of Christian missionaries and an indigenous religious cult in New Ulster, Papua New Guinea. After a bad first marriage, Alison marries Stephen, only to later learn of his involvement as a member of the Irish Republican Army in a mass shooting. Her sister, Liz, also escaping a bad relationship, agrees to host a documentary for the BBC on the Story and its leader, Belef, and travels to Papua New Guinea, only to become enmeshed in the struggles there between the two religious factions. I found the alternating stories interesting, but the ending somewhat dissatisfying. Although describing her marriage, I do think Alison sums it up best. “A second marriage meant substituting old ceremonies and traditions with different ones, meant trading in the old gods for new, but Alison couldn’t help it; she didn’t believe in it any longer. She’d lost her faith and found the new gods were false gods.”

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written novel set in Northern Ireland about the adult Donnelly sisters, Liz and Allison. A haunting novel exploring religion, marriage, and truth. Allison is entering her second marriage to Stephen. Her first marriage to Bill was filled with heartbreak and violence. They had two children Isabel and Michael. Liz has come to attend the wedding before flying to New Ulster, an island near Papua New Guinea to produce a BBC documentary, The Latest of the Gods, on a new religion.
A dark secret emerges about Stephen. In 1993, he was known as Andrew McCleen and was a participant in an IRA shooting in a pub leaving five people dead. The story slowly unfolds about the people killed. This portion of the story was exceptionally well done. It is heart wrenching to read about the people killed and Stephen's justification for the shootings. Allison is dumbstruck that the man she married another man who has a dark past and how could it unfold for her into a similar life she had with Bill. Allison's parents, Kenneth and Judith and her brother, Spencer try to downplay Stephen's past.
Liz encounters another twist on religion in PNG. A woman, Belef, is the head of a new religion which she invented called the Story. The indigenous tribal people are stuck between their third world status and past cannibalism versus moving toward second world status, meeting outsiders, and accepting this new religion. This portion of the story had hair raising scenes when various members of the BBC crew individually found themselves alone in the jungle while their PNG guide slips away and reappears. Their fears were palpable.
Liard is a gifted writer and I look forward to reading more of his works.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/bo...

[William Koon · Rating 2 out of 5]

The novel half engages. But then you have two disparate halves which never quite construct a whole. There are two sisters, both Irish. One lives in America and is an anthropologist. (Are there really anthropologists left?) She is called upon to be a narrator for a BBC program on a new cargo cult discovered in New Guinea. The other sister has been in an abusive marriage, and then she finds true love. But as we all know about true love, sometimes that lover has (had) a gun in his hand. The gun is flashing all over the place in the novel until, ALAS! It is revealed.

Laird goes between the two sisters until he doesn’t. Strangely one cares more about the narrative with the sister in Ireland, but the author is totally wrapped up in the exoticness of New Guinea and wants to make all sorts of pronouncements about the western world, Christianity, Britney Spears, you name it. Meanwhile the natives, including Mama-God, chew betel nuts and spit copiously. In fact, there is much spitting in the novel.

The author misses the mark by not focusing more on the “troubles” and the troubles the “troubles” make. He should know better how to write a novel than he shows here. He is, after all, a creative writing teacher.

[Lee Collier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautiful cover, terribly shallow. I am not sure how this novel landed on my to read list but the 308 page spread took me almost an entire month. I found myself dreading the read before bed which is such a shame. I am not one to leave a story as I feel it important to push through but I hit the snooze button often here.

Laird is a fabulous writer, possibly, or so many a review paint him out to be. But I won't read him again. The book hooks you with a monster of an intro and bores you with meandering feelings throughout most of the following 200 pages. The last 50 pages or so help reel the reader back in but it is safe to assume there will by this point be a long line of leavers.

The ending felt rushed but I question why because I was happy to see it end. The relationship conversation between sisters and the caustic reminiscence with their mother on the novel's final two pages sealed the honor of Year's Most Disjointed Novel. In all this was a book of two journeys which did not need to be packaged together. Nick, you could have written two books here and probably held the audience a bit better.

[Paltia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. In fact, it was one of those can’t put down til finished. Sardonically humorous. There are times when I cringed with embarrassment and shame for the characters. This story explores the basis for beliefs, be they the troubles in Northern Ireland or a cargo cult in Papua New Guinea. I shouldn’t forget to throw in the faith healing scene with the cross. The bbc team throw caution to the wind and indulge in what they are told is only slightly mood altering drink. The end result, and the rest of the book seem to, spin rapidly beyond the character’s controls.
The book closes on a calmer note with as much resolution as one might hope for. I like Nick Laird’s style and hope to find more of his books to read.

[Noralo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this but don't really know what to say about it. Obviously Laird was trying to say something about Irish divisions and those that exist in Papua New Guinea between the indigenous people there and the missionaries. But I don't think it was quite as deep as he wanted it to be, or else I'm misreading it. We derive meaning from strife and pain, and we find ways to continue in our lives by changing our worldview to adapt. That's it? I think that's it.

I will say the first chapter started and I really wasn't expecting something quite so graphic, and then the rest of the book... wasn't. Which I'm grateful for, frankly. But it's a little misleading.