The Last Crossing

"This is a book about three former IRA operatives, who are under orders to recover bodies that they buried 30 years earlier in Scotland, when they were active paramilitaries. They are Tony, Hugh and Karen. Two of them have moved on with their lives: Tony is now a very respectable, middle-class teacher. He’s put the past behind him. Like many people who got caught up in the Troubles in the 1970s and early ’80s, he was a teenager then, and his politicisation grew out of deprivation and a lack of human rights. I don’t want to nail my political colours to the mast. But I can tell you that writers from across both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland have saluted this book, because it presents a very human picture of how people can be dragged into a conflict, and how that conflict can follow them throughout their lives. It can show how, when confronted with the awful consequences of their actions 30 years later, all of the emotions that they have buried rise to the surface. “Writers from across both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland have saluted this book” There’s also a romantic element to it as well. There’s a will-they-won’t-they between Karen and Tony. And there’s a young boy who’s on the trip with them, who is getting involved in this new wave of paramilitarism. They are trying to protect him, and keep him out of it. The third character, Hugh, is still a staunch Republican who has not moved on. If you ask Irish people if they want to read about the Troubles , almost everybody will say no. But this book is one that will give you an understanding of both sides. There isn’t a wasted word, there isn’t a word that is ill-used or over-used. He’s a great, great writer, and I really admire him for writing these books while teaching full-time. It’s a book for anybody who has any doubts or has any questions about what went on, and whether people have moved on or not. This is the book for them. It’s funny. I grew up in Dublin, so I was completely unaffected, even though it was all happening just 100 miles up the road. It might as well have been happening in Timbuktu as far as I was concerned. It did not affect anybody in Dublin. I didn’t know anybody from the north of Ireland until I met my husband, who happens to be from Belfast, and then his friends. But even he and his family, because he grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood, were less affected. The Troubles hit the working classes and the underprivileged hardest on both sides. People were dragged into the conflict out of boredom and unemployment or a struggle for human rights and territory. It gave them a certain status that they wouldn’t otherwise have had. “There is pressure on Northern Irish writers not to write about The Troubles” A lot of Northern Irish crime writers don’t write about the North at all. Adrian McKinty wrote a book called The Chain , which became this huge, massive multi-million-selling thing. But prior to that, he had written a string of brilliant detective stories set in Northern Ireland, and I think he’s going to go back to them. But he is somebody who had to write a book set in America in order to become a global success. Stuart Neville writes brilliantly about Northern Ireland, but he writes about contemporary Northern Ireland, post-Troubles. Again, under the name Haylen Beck, he wrote a couple of novels set in America. So I think there is pressure on Northern Irish writers not to write about the Troubles. All the time I hear of publishers telling Northern Irish writers not to write about The Troubles because nobody wants to read about it. But, if you’re a writer, how can you not write about your own experience? It’s daft to expect them not to write about something that is their own experience. Eoin McNamee is an example of a writer who does it exceptionally well."