David Butler reviews The Language of Remembering, by Patrick Holloway
by David Butler
Over the last half-century life expectancy has been extended dramatically. One downside of this is a concomitant increase in instances of dementia and other gerontological ailments. In recent years, authors have begun to explore the ravages that time and mental decline wreak not merely on independence but on identity itself. One thinks of such Oscar winning films as Still Alice (2014), which treats of the devastation of early-onset Alzheimer’s on a professor of linguistics, or The Father (2021), based on Florian Zeller’s multi-award-winning play which ingeniously makes the viewer share in the confusions of the protagonist.
As its title suggests, Patrick Holloway’s debut novel is an exploration of the condition viewed through the lens of language. In essence, the story concerns the return of Oisín (what’s in a name?) after a decade’s sojourn in Brazil to look after his mother, Brigid, who has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The novel is recounted in alternating chapters headed (rather needlessly) ‘Now’ and ‘Then’, the former written in the present tense and narrated in the second-person from the son’s point-of-view; the latter a third-person narrative in the simple past following Brigid’s teenage pregnancy and rushed marriage.
From the beginning, in both strands, issues of language, its interstices and inadequacies are foregrounded
From the beginning, in both strands, issues of language, its interstices and inadequacies are foregrounded. Thus Brigid’s father Tommy ‘only spoke Irish at home’ — it will become the language to which she reverts as her condition deteriorates — and while her mother Kathleen sings songs as gaeilge, she doesn’t understand the words. As though to compensate, she surrounds young Brigid with an outré vocabulary – deleterious, ineluctable, meretricious, surcease. Despite such inherited verbosity, Brigid has now found herself in a predicament for which mere words seem inadequate, while certain taboo words — abortion, for instance — must not be spoken and are replaced by ellipses.
Meanwhile, in the ‘Now’ strand, though she is proficient in English, Oisín’s Brazilian wife Carolina (or Nina) is a Portuguese-speaker unused to colloquial Cork-speak. When she looks for translations of batí and nojo, Oisín provides her with ‘whacked’ and ‘minging’. In the context of a noisy party, or faced with a job in a call centre, she doubts the adequacy of her English. It is one source of an increasing tension between the two which provides the motor of the ‘Now’ strand.
On the other hand, while Oisín has never had difficulties acquiring Portuguese and continues to work online as a translator/interpreter (‘you knew the weight of your words, the nuance between choosing one verb over another, the effect of using a colloquial expression or not’), he has no Irish and must now attend adult classes so as to communicate with his mother. We learn that as a schoolboy, when asked to read aloud, ‘words were beautiful shapes that scattered down the page like black rainfall’.
Adhering too rigidly to a structure of alternating chapters is not without its problems. Put simply, if one narrative strand is doing most of the heavy-lifting, as is the case here, some of the chapters in the second strand will lack dramatic tension or the tight focus on the central theme. To an extent, the familiar story of a teenage pregnancy, a rushed marriage with a reluctant bridegroom from a snobby / well-to-do family who has career prospects elsewhere, feels a little ‘paint-by-numbers’. The ‘Now’ strand by contrast has the feel of drawing fruitfully on the author’s lived experience. Holloway, who completed his PhD in Creative Writing in Porto Alegre, Brazil, dedicates the book to ‘Cí, o maior amor da minha vida’.
One of the more poignant aspects of the story is that Kathleen is witness to her daughter’s premature senescence
In ‘Then’, does a chapter outlining the choice of wedding-dress really earn its place? What would be lost if it, and several like it, were excised or abridged and merged? Yes, Oisín’s story is enriched and deepened by the historical strand and its revelations, and it gives a useful perspective on both Brigid and her redoubtable mother, Kathleen — one of the more poignant aspects of the story is that Kathleen is witness to her daughter’s premature senescence. But not to the extent that it earns equal billing in terms of word count.
The Language of Remembering may not attempt the heft and playfulness of Diego Marani’s remarkable New Finish Grammar, which likewise investigates the existential links between language and lost identity, or the disconcerting ingenuity of Florian Zeller’s The Father. Nevertheless, it is a heartfelt and suggestive exploration of language and its limitations when interpersonal relationships are put under pressure.
The Language of Remembering|Patrick Holloway|Époque Press
David Butler is a novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet. He is the author of City of Dis (New Island), All the Barbaric Glass (Doire Press), Liffey Sequence (Doire Press), and Fugitive (Arlen House). His latest novel Jabberwock (under the name Dara Kavanagh) is out now with Dedalus Books. A new short story collectionWhite Spirits is forthcoming with Arlen House, and launches on March the 20th, 2025.
