The Swing of Things by Sean O'Reilly

Weaving a patchwork of gritty stories

Sean O'Reilly's latest novel couldn't have been published at a more opportune moment. In the run up to the Bloomsday celebrations comes a new Dublin-set story of malaise and ennui. A flamboyant, but flawed, addition to the literary tradition of Dublin angst, The Swing of Things has the hallmark of a writer whose best work is still to come.

Noel Boyle is an ex-loyalist paramilitary fresh out of jail and attempting a new start in the south, but he's caught between an H Block and a hard place as his lethargy scuppers his attempt at redemption. This inertia is shattered by Fada, a repugnant, drugged-up street performer. Boyle's life begins to unravel after a misplaced attempt to help this loser, and with the ghosts of his past returning so the tide of violence swells. The novel's title is both a reference to rejoining life's jig and a nod to the see-saw nature of the Irish conflicts.

Although this is territory previously covered by Neil Jordan and Bernard Maclaverty, O'Reilly makes it his own. He weaves a patchwork of a novel out of gritty minor stories. The thousand tales hidden behind the tired eyes of checkout girls, the casual brutality of bouncers and the sweaty labour in fast food joints are the real muscle of this book.

O'Reilly has been hailed as a talented stylist but it's precisely his inability to play things straight that undermines his story. Speech is left unpunctuated throughout. Why? Playing with form needs to have a specific purpose: Roddy Doyle's use of a staccato shorthand to nail the sound of The Commitments is a case in point. You don't need to possess the rigid expectations of Lynne Truss to get fed up constantly re-reading a paragraph in an attempt to understand who is speaking, when and to whom. However, beneath this overwrought finish there remains a striking account of the human debris left in the wake of "the Troubles"; like Raymond Carver played out to the sweet rhythms of The Pogues.