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On the Back of the Swallow
A lyrical and tender novel about a passionate friendship between two young men.
- GenresLGBT
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 6, 2025
'A wonderfully lyrical and tender novel, testifying to the indomitable spirit of love.
'Nicky Smith loses his best friend, Robin, when they are both fifteen; from then on, he sees life through a smeared lens. Until the day he meets Gareth Williams, a bright, rich kid whose vulnerability and brilliance remind of the dead Robin. A passionate friendship develops between them, a friendship which provides the crushing forces of wrathful society in all its bitterness' From the back cover of the 1994 paperback Mercier Press edition.
The problem with this novel is not that it is bad but that I thought it not very good because it seemed very mechanistic as if most of the first two thirds of the novel were there to make the final part possible. Oddly enough when reading an interview with the author, Danny Morrison, I discovered this was not far from the truth (see: https://www.dannymorrison.com/wp-cont...). This is not really a novel about losing a friend at fifteen, or rediscovering him again when at 23 you fall in love with another 15 year old boy. This is not a man-boy love story. This is, partially, about what happened to Danny Morrison at 19 when he was interned in Long Kesh, about the brutality and corruption of the Northern Police, and things he experienced and saw while in prison (I refer back to the above interview with Morrison). That Danny Morrison, the IRA spokesman who will go down in history for 'ballot box in one hand and armelite in the other' phrase should have chosen the subject of a false 'paedo' accusation but true tale of same sex love for his second novel (written while he was in prison, again, in Long Kesh) is more than a little interesting but doesn't make this a satisfactory novel. At the root of the novel is the main character, Nicky Smith, and Danny Morrison's refusing, through most of the novel, to allow Nicky any form sexual identity.
At the end, once arrested and in prison awaiting trial Nicky admits that he is gay, but is late in the day that he has come to have any real sexual feelings. His friendship with his boyhood friend Robin is like a mariage blanc as is his subsequent life until he is picked up a neighborhood lass who seduces and then abandons him and he rescues young Gareth from some bullies. Nicky has to begin with no sexual interest in Gareth, all the sexual moves come from Gareth. This is not meant to be, but comes dangerously close to the paedophiles or pederasts insistence that it was they who were seduced. Anyone who has been fifteen, and male, should remember what it was like having that fountain of undirected? misdirected? multidirected? hormonal energy completely misunderstood and barely contained. But it doesn't mean that sex was what you wanted when your puppy dog eyes fixed on each succeeding obsession.
That Nicky is unable to recognise, let alone help young Gareth, with his wanton libido goes without saying because he has had no libido. If anyone were to teach the other it would be Gareth teaching Nicky, which is absurd. The real problem is that Danny Morrison decided to tackle a difficult theme for 1994 Northern Ireland but did it in the way that those 'problem' novels and films dealing with the 'coloured' question in the USA in the 1960s did by having a black man, usually played by Sidney Poiter, of such sterling quality that only the most out-and-out bigot could find fault him. So in this novel Nicky is 'gay' but aside from one drunken fantasy hasn't done anything gay in his entire life. It is doubtful he has even masturbated. He is the non sexual gay man just as Sidney Poitier was the 'white' black man.
I have probably given more time to this novel than it deserves. The only other review on GR is a one word review. But I read a review of this and other novels by Danny Morrison in The Independent newspaper and it was a paean of hate because of who Danny Morrison was. But that is no reason to either praise or condemn a novel. Also the Northern Irish Troubles have been buried under a mountain of retrospective bull shite by all sides. Anyone who imagines that there are easy moral stances to take doesn't know the history. Events come out of causes.
So not a great novel, I found the opening third(?) of the novel dealing with Nicky and Robin's schoolboy friendship rather lovely and moving. There was a good novel that could have been developed. But the ending was dreadful, both in dramatic terms and the clumsy 'Its a Wonderful Life' metaphor/fantasy that is used. Danny Morrison doesn't have the skill to bring it off and it is embarrassing.
So I give it three stars for what was good and ignore what was bad.
'Nicky Smith loses his best friend, Robin, when they are both fifteen; from then on, he sees life through a smeared lens. Until the day he meets Gareth Williams, a bright, rich kid whose vulnerability and brilliance remind of the dead Robin. A passionate friendship develops between them, a friendship which provides the crushing forces of wrathful society in all its bitterness' From the back cover of the 1994 paperback Mercier Press edition.
The problem with this novel is not that it is bad but that I thought it not very good because it seemed very mechanistic as if most of the first two thirds of the novel were there to make the final part possible. Oddly enough when reading an interview with the author, Danny Morrison, I discovered this was not far from the truth (see: https://www.dannymorrison.com/wp-cont...). This is not really a novel about losing a friend at fifteen, or rediscovering him again when at 23 you fall in love with another 15 year old boy. This is not a man-boy love story. This is, partially, about what happened to Danny Morrison at 19 when he was interned in Long Kesh, about the brutality and corruption of the Northern Police, and things he experienced and saw while in prison (I refer back to the above interview with Morrison). That Danny Morrison, the IRA spokesman who will go down in history for 'ballot box in one hand and armelite in the other' phrase should have chosen the subject of a false 'paedo' accusation but true tale of same sex love for his second novel (written while he was in prison, again, in Long Kesh) is more than a little interesting but doesn't make this a satisfactory novel. At the root of the novel is the main character, Nicky Smith, and Danny Morrison's refusing, through most of the novel, to allow Nicky any form sexual identity.
At the end, once arrested and in prison awaiting trial Nicky admits that he is gay, but is late in the day that he has come to have any real sexual feelings. His friendship with his boyhood friend Robin is like a mariage blanc as is his subsequent life until he is picked up a neighborhood lass who seduces and then abandons him and he rescues young Gareth from some bullies. Nicky has to begin with no sexual interest in Gareth, all the sexual moves come from Gareth. This is not meant to be, but comes dangerously close to the paedophiles or pederasts insistence that it was they who were seduced. Anyone who has been fifteen, and male, should remember what it was like having that fountain of undirected? misdirected? multidirected? hormonal energy completely misunderstood and barely contained. But it doesn't mean that sex was what you wanted when your puppy dog eyes fixed on each succeeding obsession.
That Nicky is unable to recognise, let alone help young Gareth, with his wanton libido goes without saying because he has had no libido. If anyone were to teach the other it would be Gareth teaching Nicky, which is absurd. The real problem is that Danny Morrison decided to tackle a difficult theme for 1994 Northern Ireland but did it in the way that those 'problem' novels and films dealing with the 'coloured' question in the USA in the 1960s did by having a black man, usually played by Sidney Poiter, of such sterling quality that only the most out-and-out bigot could find fault him. So in this novel Nicky is 'gay' but aside from one drunken fantasy hasn't done anything gay in his entire life. It is doubtful he has even masturbated. He is the non sexual gay man just as Sidney Poitier was the 'white' black man.
I have probably given more time to this novel than it deserves. The only other review on GR is a one word review. But I read a review of this and other novels by Danny Morrison in The Independent newspaper and it was a paean of hate because of who Danny Morrison was. But that is no reason to either praise or condemn a novel. Also the Northern Irish Troubles have been buried under a mountain of retrospective bull shite by all sides. Anyone who imagines that there are easy moral stances to take doesn't know the history. Events come out of causes.
So not a great novel, I found the opening third(?) of the novel dealing with Nicky and Robin's schoolboy friendship rather lovely and moving. There was a good novel that could have been developed. But the ending was dreadful, both in dramatic terms and the clumsy 'Its a Wonderful Life' metaphor/fantasy that is used. Danny Morrison doesn't have the skill to bring it off and it is embarrassing.
So I give it three stars for what was good and ignore what was bad.
June 5, 2025
2.5/5 "You used to tell me that the most magical word in the world is And. It means there is more. It was superior to Yes or Amen. It means there is no end. It was like everlasting love. But you lied." p.55
'On the Back of the Swallow' is a novel that had a lot going for it, but ultimately flopped because the author, Danny Morrison, didn't seem to know what exactly he wanted the plot to be about. And as a result, a lack of cohesion made for a disjointed reading experience so that by the end I had lost the plot right along with him.
That being said, of the three disparate plot threads, two of them were pretty compelling, and I wish he had just written two separate novellas rather than trying to turn these unrelated ideas into bookends in service of a third plot thread that was by far the weakest and most... dare I say, problematic?
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first third of the book was easily my favorite and felt the most emotionally earnest. In it, we focus on the friendship between two boys, Nicky (our protagonist) and Robin as they grow up in Northern Ireland in (I assume?) the 70s or 80s (we never really get any clues that I was able to use to specify). But even though there would have been a lot of political upheaval in Northern Ireland regardless of exactly which decade this was set, that turmoil doesn't really touch the characters who are more concerned with having youthful adventures along the coastline and in the countryside, anywhere they can run around getting into largely harmless trouble. The depth of their friendship was actually really beautiful to read about because rarely do we get to see that level of emotional intimacy in male friendships and I wish that was what the entire novel had been about.
But it wasn't.
There is a little bit of ambiguity about the exact nature of their friendship and if it could or would have developed into something romantic, but when tragedy separates them, we as the reader are also separated from the best part of what 'On the Back of the Swallow' had to offer.
The middle of the book is...how can I put this delicately? A mess.
Without Robin to keep him tethered, Nicky just kind of flails around emotionally even though in terms of life milestones, by the time he hits his mid-20s he's doing well. He has a stable job as a postman, he's fairly well-liked, he's still living at home, but not because he has to; just because nothing has prompted him (yet) to forge a more independent life.
But in terms of his inner world, he's suffering sever arrested development, unable to grow beyond the person he was when he had Robin in his life. Nicky ends up dating the girl that Robin had a crush on in high school, but he's not particularly besotted with her; he falls into the relationship more out of convenience than anything else, and his attraction to her is very mixed up with the fact that she was someone Robin liked, and being with her is a means to keep Robin alive.
So this is trucking along, and it's obvious that Nicky is just letting life happen to him even though he's not excited about any of it, and he's starting to view his relationship to this girl through a very ugly (and lowkey misogynistic) lens when he meets a plucky fifteen-year-old named Gareth.
This was where I started to get the prickly, trickling feeling of discomfort because it's very apparent early on that this is going to take a weird turn. Because unlike the relationship between Nicky and Robin, which was innocent and sympathetic, the relationship between Nicky and Gareth is... not.
Nicky at this point is 23, and really truly has no business palling around with a fifteen-year-old. At all. But the way Morrison frames this is as though their age gap is a tragedy and as though the problem with it is the way society would view this rather than it actually being a problem.
And this is made even more uncomfortable by the fact that Danny Morrison isn't even a queer person writing this; he's a straight man writing a story that plays into the 'man-boy love' stereotype that to this day links gay identity with pedophilia. And this is a stereotype with actual real-world consequences in terms of how gay men working in education or working with kids in any way are unduly scrutinized or assumed to be guilty of predatory behaviour and having to fight their entire careers against that damning assumption from a society that has been fed stories like this one that prop that stereotype up.
I really, really did not like that. Because it doesn't matter that Morrison tries to maintain plausible deniability by never having anything actually sexual happen between Nicky and Gareth; this is written explicitly as a love story, and moreover, it's written sympathetically. So, the only possible takeaways from this are either: 'this is fine,' or 'this is not fine.' And I think (I hope) we've grown enough as a culture to realize that no, 23-year-olds should not be in relationships with 15-year-olds. So, then, this is just more fuel on that aforementioned fire, and for that reason, I would have to say that entire part of the plot was bad, actually.
Ok, so where does Morrison go from here? Well, the boy's father reports Nicky to the police, and he is arrested and charged, basically, with committing 'gross indecency' with a minor. Which like... no, not actually, but it was very sketchy what he was doing so like, was it 'wrong' to put a stop to this? No, probably not. But again, the weird framing of all of this suggests it was bad that he was arrested on trumped-up charges... As I said: morally, it's a mess. Organizationally, it's a mess. Just a chaotic climax overall.
Then, we get the third part which is about Nicky's experience as an 'innocent' man in jail, and how corrupt and awful the prison system is (which, yes, true, big problems in the 'justice' system). I kind of got the impression that this was really what Morrison wanted to write about, and his biography would also support that (he was an activist who experienced imprisonment in Northern Ireland), but there was very little room for characterization much less a character arc between all of the scenes we're shown of the terrible conditions, etc. And then it all just...ends. Another reviewer called it a tacked-on 'It's a Wonderful Life' twist and I completely agree. Morrison did not seem to know how to end this, certainly seemed unsure how to create a through-line from beginning to end, and so it just felt abrupt, vaguely surrealistic, and flailing.
But, hey, at least the first 50 pages were really good, and the writing was lovely. Would I recommend this? No. But was it a waste of time? No.
'On the Back of the Swallow' is a novel that had a lot going for it, but ultimately flopped because the author, Danny Morrison, didn't seem to know what exactly he wanted the plot to be about. And as a result, a lack of cohesion made for a disjointed reading experience so that by the end I had lost the plot right along with him.
That being said, of the three disparate plot threads, two of them were pretty compelling, and I wish he had just written two separate novellas rather than trying to turn these unrelated ideas into bookends in service of a third plot thread that was by far the weakest and most... dare I say, problematic?
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first third of the book was easily my favorite and felt the most emotionally earnest. In it, we focus on the friendship between two boys, Nicky (our protagonist) and Robin as they grow up in Northern Ireland in (I assume?) the 70s or 80s (we never really get any clues that I was able to use to specify). But even though there would have been a lot of political upheaval in Northern Ireland regardless of exactly which decade this was set, that turmoil doesn't really touch the characters who are more concerned with having youthful adventures along the coastline and in the countryside, anywhere they can run around getting into largely harmless trouble. The depth of their friendship was actually really beautiful to read about because rarely do we get to see that level of emotional intimacy in male friendships and I wish that was what the entire novel had been about.
But it wasn't.
There is a little bit of ambiguity about the exact nature of their friendship and if it could or would have developed into something romantic, but when tragedy separates them, we as the reader are also separated from the best part of what 'On the Back of the Swallow' had to offer.
The middle of the book is...how can I put this delicately? A mess.
Without Robin to keep him tethered, Nicky just kind of flails around emotionally even though in terms of life milestones, by the time he hits his mid-20s he's doing well. He has a stable job as a postman, he's fairly well-liked, he's still living at home, but not because he has to; just because nothing has prompted him (yet) to forge a more independent life.
But in terms of his inner world, he's suffering sever arrested development, unable to grow beyond the person he was when he had Robin in his life. Nicky ends up dating the girl that Robin had a crush on in high school, but he's not particularly besotted with her; he falls into the relationship more out of convenience than anything else, and his attraction to her is very mixed up with the fact that she was someone Robin liked, and being with her is a means to keep Robin alive.
So this is trucking along, and it's obvious that Nicky is just letting life happen to him even though he's not excited about any of it, and he's starting to view his relationship to this girl through a very ugly (and lowkey misogynistic) lens when he meets a plucky fifteen-year-old named Gareth.
This was where I started to get the prickly, trickling feeling of discomfort because it's very apparent early on that this is going to take a weird turn. Because unlike the relationship between Nicky and Robin, which was innocent and sympathetic, the relationship between Nicky and Gareth is... not.
Nicky at this point is 23, and really truly has no business palling around with a fifteen-year-old. At all. But the way Morrison frames this is as though their age gap is a tragedy and as though the problem with it is the way society would view this rather than it actually being a problem.
And this is made even more uncomfortable by the fact that Danny Morrison isn't even a queer person writing this; he's a straight man writing a story that plays into the 'man-boy love' stereotype that to this day links gay identity with pedophilia. And this is a stereotype with actual real-world consequences in terms of how gay men working in education or working with kids in any way are unduly scrutinized or assumed to be guilty of predatory behaviour and having to fight their entire careers against that damning assumption from a society that has been fed stories like this one that prop that stereotype up.
I really, really did not like that. Because it doesn't matter that Morrison tries to maintain plausible deniability by never having anything actually sexual happen between Nicky and Gareth; this is written explicitly as a love story, and moreover, it's written sympathetically. So, the only possible takeaways from this are either: 'this is fine,' or 'this is not fine.' And I think (I hope) we've grown enough as a culture to realize that no, 23-year-olds should not be in relationships with 15-year-olds. So, then, this is just more fuel on that aforementioned fire, and for that reason, I would have to say that entire part of the plot was bad, actually.
Ok, so where does Morrison go from here? Well, the boy's father reports Nicky to the police, and he is arrested and charged, basically, with committing 'gross indecency' with a minor. Which like... no, not actually, but it was very sketchy what he was doing so like, was it 'wrong' to put a stop to this? No, probably not. But again, the weird framing of all of this suggests it was bad that he was arrested on trumped-up charges... As I said: morally, it's a mess. Organizationally, it's a mess. Just a chaotic climax overall.
Then, we get the third part which is about Nicky's experience as an 'innocent' man in jail, and how corrupt and awful the prison system is (which, yes, true, big problems in the 'justice' system). I kind of got the impression that this was really what Morrison wanted to write about, and his biography would also support that (he was an activist who experienced imprisonment in Northern Ireland), but there was very little room for characterization much less a character arc between all of the scenes we're shown of the terrible conditions, etc. And then it all just...ends. Another reviewer called it a tacked-on 'It's a Wonderful Life' twist and I completely agree. Morrison did not seem to know how to end this, certainly seemed unsure how to create a through-line from beginning to end, and so it just felt abrupt, vaguely surrealistic, and flailing.
But, hey, at least the first 50 pages were really good, and the writing was lovely. Would I recommend this? No. But was it a waste of time? No.
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