“My mind found an old shoebox full of memories, and as I opened it, the moths of the past flew out”: in The Singer, one of the short stories in Paul McVeigh’s vivid and memorable new collection, we meet a nameless female protagonist as she sifts through the stuff of her life. The scene is an ordinary family home in north Belfast – but as each of these stories reminds us, there is no such thing as an ordinary family or home. Rather, each family, home, life is invariably extraordinary, in myriad ways – and all we need do to see this is to pay attention.
The Singer is a story of sibling rivalry, envy, tension – and to add further to such pleasures, this is also a complex retelling of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The protagonist’s sister (and indeed, her name is Jane) has always been the favourite one, the talented one, the one who triumphed at the local talent competition three years running – though also the one who even as a child liked to take nips from the bottle of cooking brandy in the kitchen cupboard. The other sister has gone off and earned a degree, has been good, has carved out a sensible place in the world – has been thoroughly eclipsed: but now she teeters on the edge of something remarkable, of a longed-for switch in life; and to add to her satisfaction, Jane has taken to calling from London, looking for money. There is sleekness in the telling, there is satisfaction in the glimpse of a happy ending – and best of all, this happy ending will not be for everyone.
The Singer is one element in The Circus, a sequence of linked stories that shows us a multifaceted society, and provides a much-needed corrective to the version of north Belfast glimpsed from time to time in the television news. Each story was originally written for radio, and this genesis explains the collection’s depth of colour and vividness of voice. And its variety: Paul McVeigh’s writing has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to working-class and queer representation, and this sustained energy flows through this collection, to illuminating effect – for this is a world of change, of openness, of the drunkenness of things being various.
