The press release for this novel from Dermot Bolger, an author who has been examining Irish mores and ways since the 1970s when the Raven Arts Press, says it’s “quite possibly his last work of fiction”. As well as this publication, there’s a new play Home, Boys, Home currently playing at Dublin Theatre Festival, so it’s not like he hasn’t earned some rest, but it would be a shame if this is his last hurrah because Hide Away is as good as anything the multi-faceted writer has given us thus far. It begins with a night-boat crossing to Dublin in 1941.
The “lights glittering in the distance” look unnatural to the English doctor, Fairfax, after two years of enforced blackouts in England. Cardboard had to be placed over the headlights of the car that spirited him away, with only the barest pinpricks of light visible. Hard-to-obtain work and travel documents had been procured in establishments “where gentlemen could enjoy the company of fellow gentlemen in the billiards room” and in more secretive clubs where men enjoyed each other’s company “in a more surreptitious manner”.
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