Eoin McNamee: The Blue Tango. (The Critical Reader).

Eoin McNamee The Blue Tango (Faber, Sterling 10.99 [pounds sterling]) Review by Eileen Battersby

a young girl is viciously murdered in the driveway of her own home. Or is she? There is no doubt about the killing, it is no accident--she was stabbed thirty-seven times. But when did she die? And where? The evidence is strange and contradictory. The only thing certain is that the beautiful, angry Patricia Curran, whether maligned girl or wanton of the rumors, is not only doomed to death, she knowingly courts it as fatalistically as a moth does the flame.

Eoin McNamee's mesmeric new novel is a breathtaking performance. It is not so much a thriller as an elaborate choreography exploring morality, sin and various forms of cowardice. It has immense poise and sophistication as well as a weary tenderness for the folly of humans lost in their own weakness. Based on a real-life murder case that dominated headlines in Northern Ireland in the early 1950s--on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph for 46 editions--the real Patricia Curran, daughter of a judge known for his gambling as well as his ambition, was killed in 1952, apparently on the driveway to The Glen, the posh if shabby family home. Even now, no one knows who killed her.

McNamee has taken the facts of a brutal story and invested them with a terrifying beauty, a beauty equal to that of Curran herself, a 19 year old ripe for Heaven or hell, or both. The whispered urgency and lyricism of the prose is extraordinary, as is his evocation of the girl. As she stands on the unlit verge of the road beside the entrance to The Glen, it is easy to construct a gothic fancy whereby death lures her towards it. But as she draws on the cigarette, so that the glow lights her face, and exhales the smoke and leans against the wall in a worldly pose, it is equally easy to imagine that she herself is inviting death, beckoning to it like some death-haunted and artful coquette. Victim and perpetrator, the languid Patricia is the central character. In ways she is the most frightening individual in a story of losers and liars. It is McNamee's feel for character throughout that elevates the story from melodrama.

If the real mystery is less the truth about her murder and more the girl's actual personality, the nature of the other characters who surround her give many clues as to why she has become this dangerous misfit, unhappy with herself as much as her world. Judge Curran from his first appearance emerges as a cold, arrogant man incapable of shame, whose every comment is marked by the impersonal formality acquired by handing down pronouncements at the bench. His home and family are little more than statements of status. ...