Review of NORTHERN SPY by Flynn Berry

 3 Stars 

This book was a disappointment.

Tessa Daly, a young divorcee and mother of a young son, works as a news producer for BBC News Belfast.  She discovers that her sister Marian is a member of the IRA after her involvement in an armed robbery.  Wanting her son to grow up in a safe Ireland, Tessa agrees to help her sister who convinces her that she is in fact working to achieve peace.  Tessa’s involvement brings her into contact with dangerous militants and into taking part in actions that are morally compromising. 

Much of the focus is on Tessa’s internal conflict:  what should she do?  Since her priority is the welfare of her son Finn, she asks herself, “would a good mother take Finn away from this place, or keep him close to his father?  Would a good mother work for peace, or stay away from the conflict?  Would a good mother be preoccupied with terrorism during every minute she has spent with her son this week?”  Her notions of right and wrong, her bond with her sister, and her loyalty are tested.  She becomes more and more disoriented as she struggles with what to do to protect her sister and her son and to help create a peaceful Ireland. 

I had several issues with this book.  One is the setting.  Tessa, the narrator, begins by stating, “My sister and I were born near the end of the Troubles.  We were children in 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was signed” yet the Ireland she describes is very much pre-GFA.  Not all issues in Northern Ireland have been solved, but the novel exaggerates the state of violence; the political climate and extensive sectarian violence the author describes are more appropriate to pre-1998. 

Another problem is that the conflict is over-simplified.  In the opening pages, Tessa says, “The basic argument of the Troubles hadn’t been resolved:  most Catholics still wanted a united Ireland, most Protestants wanted to remain part of the UK.”  There is no real effort to capture the complexities of the conflict.  It didn’t surprise me to learn that the author is not Irish but an American whose understanding of the situation is superficial. 

There are many improbable events.  Cameras capture Marian’s face before she puts on her mask prior to a robbery.  This is the behaviour of an experienced IRA member?  Once Marian is identified as an IRA member, her family would be under police surveillance, so having the IRA try to recruit Tessa makes no sense whatsoever.  Marian is known to police but she still manages to keep meeting her sister in public locations?  And don’t get me started on the novel’s conclusion:  there are just so many holes in the resolution.  The IRA wouldn’t know the identity of Tessa’s ex-husband who shares custody of Finn?  The author certainly has little understanding of how police and intelligence operate certain programs. 

It seems that Flynn Berry wants to portray the realities of life in Northern Ireland and the difficult choices faced by those living there, but she is disrespectful and does a disservice by both simplifying the conflict and exaggerating the violence.  I should not be surprised that the novel was chosen by the Reese Witherspoon book club; like many of the book selections, there is a lot of hype and much less substance.