Prestige Drama by Séamas O’Reilly review – brilliant wry comedy of Derry and the shadow of the past
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A British and American film crew descend on the Northern Irish city to film a drama about the Troubles, in a keenly observed and snappily written debut
The premise of Séamas O’Reilly’s brilliant debut novel is that a Hollywood actor has flown into Derry to star in a new TV series about the Troubles called Dead City, then mysteriously disappeared. But its real interest lies in what happens when a place becomes defined by a particular historical moment, to the extent that stories told about it lapse into formula. As one character says of the TV series: “A young lad coming of age in a time of violence, will he get caught up in everything or find another way through blah blah blah.”
O’Reilly is determined to show us that the people of Derry are not so easily stereotyped. He uses Dead City as a starting point to circle through different characters connected to the series, from a stressed scriptwriter to a local historian who wonders, “How do you talk about the past as a person still living it, in a place that barely survived it?” As we move through the novel, we discover the links between them, creating a patchwork portrait of the city, similar to the way Tommy Orange’s novel There, There used a chorus of voices to explore the lives of Native Americans.
المصدر: The Guardian — Books