BOOKS
The dark arts
Church paintings, conjuring, Cold War espionage, love among the exhibits, and a secretive plantsman feature in this month’s must-reads
by ROSE SHEPHERD
REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY
Darragh
McKeon
‘What’s your name, son?’ A voice in his head, from the distant past, presages the return of his seizures for New York-based Irish architect Simon Hanlon. The speaker, an IRA man, lives inside him. He knows him intimately and will tell us a story of the boy’s, the man’s, radicalisation, a chance encounter, a bombing, and Simon’s guilt over his silence. An intriguing proposition and spare, elegant, persuasive prose.