|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Paddy Meehan wants to be a journalist. But as a Catholic teenager from one of the less fancy ends of Glasgow in 1981, the best she can hope for at the moment is a job as a copyboy (sic) on the Scottish Daily News. It's an eccentric place to be, with plenty of drunken old hacks littering the place and nearby bars, some of whom would sell their grandmother to get a scoop. It's a newsroom overloaded with testosterone, although Paddy soon learns that the women are equally hard-nosed in search of a story. The front page news of the day in Glasgow is the murder of three-year-old Brian Wilcox by a couple of youngsters. Things start to hot up for Paddy when she realises that one of the accused boys is related to her fiance Sean. With the help of ambitious young reporter Terry, the pair try to prove that the boys couldn't have killed the toddler. Paddy herself is a tremendous character; a plump 18-year-old with a teenager's insecurities, but quite a gob on her to defend herself in the macho newsroom. Mina explores both sides of her life -- the Catholic family who think she's getting above herself, and the cut-throat newspaper world where women, if they exist, get the soft jobs. I can confirm from personal experience that Mina's portrayal of a 1980s newsroom is spookily real, although there are a greater number of 'characters' than I encountered! And Glasgow itself comes across as a living, breathing city, complete with religious tensions and grotty tenement blocks. The only bizarre thing about this gripping book is the sub-plot, such as it is, featuring the real-life Paddy Meehan, who was imprisoned for murder and later pardoned after much lobbying on his behalf. The real and imaginary Paddys never meet, and in fact the parallel story is rather a bore and adds nothing to the book. And I think we've been here before . . . this is an American edition where the title has been changed slightly (in the UK it was THE FIELD OF BLOOD). And yes, someone has gone through and erratically Americanised some of the book. There's no logic to it, and it wouldn't be an awful lot of help to a reader, given this is a book rooted firmly in a city with its distinctive slang and accent. According to Mina's website FIELD OF BLOOD is the first of a series of five books "following the career and life of Paddy from the newsrooms of the early 1980s, through the momentous events of the nineteen nineties until her early death in 2008." So she's set herself a huge challenge, particularly when it comes to showing her hand so early. In the past she's been a writer I can take or leave, but I'll be watching eagerly for the next in the series.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, August 2005
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
