1979'da Bridget Doyle'un hayatta tek bir hedefi vardı: ailesi için ilk İrlandalı papayı dünyaya getirmek. John Paul II'nin Phoenix Park'taki görmesinden dolayı ortaya çıkan bu arzusunu, Papanın kutsadığı, kutsal suyu oğlunun ve gelinin yatağına serpip, onları bir şeyler yapmaya davet ederek başlattı. Ancak dokuz ay sonra, gelini doğumda öldü ve Granny Doyle 'u dört torunuyla bıraktı: beş yaşındaki Peg ve üçüz Damien, Rosie ve John Paul.
Otuz yıl sonra, Granny Doyle’un torunlarının, hiç kimsenin umutlarını yerine getirmesi pek olası görünmüyor. Damien ona gey olduğunu söyleme cesaretini toplamaya çalışıyor. Rosie, gezegeni kurtarmak isteyen ve papalar için çok az zamanı olan, hayalperest bir mavi saçlı asi. Katlanılması güç John Paul ise tam bir değişken ve bir oldukça büyüleyici biri. Aslında Granny'nin gözünde tartışmasız elmasıdır - ama o da, kesinlikle Psikopos olabilecek biri değildir.
Üçüzlerin hiçbiri, New York'ta 3.000 mil ötede yaşayan ve evden bir gençken kaçtığı için görüşülmesi yasak, hatta tartışma konusu olan ablaları Peg ile çok fazla temas kuramıyor Ama bu kural da değişmek üzere.
“Büyümekte olan dört kardeşin bu hikayesinden gerçekten keyif aldım, kim olduğunu, birbirlerinden ayrıldığını ve bir şekilde, İrlanda'daki her geçmişe karşı, kendi geçmişinden ortaya çıkmaya çalışan, birbiri ardına giden bir yol bulmaya çalışan bu hikayeyi gerçekten çok seviyorum. Bu, en iyi şekilde, merhametli, merhametli, ilgili ve ah-öykü öykü anlatmadır. ”
—Alan McMonagle, Ithaca'nın yazarı
Yazar hakkında:
Aslen Dublin'den, Darragh Martin Fulbright bursuyla Columbia Üniversitesi'nde tiyatro alanında doktora yaptı. 2017 yılında İrlanda Kitap Ödülleri'nde Yılın Çocuk Kitabı için kısa listeye alınmış olan birkaç oyun ve çocuk romanı The Keeper yazmıştır. THE FUTURE OF IRISH POPES onun ilk yetişkin romanıdır. Londra'da yaşıyor.
In the vein of Irish family dramas like Anne Enright’s The Gathering or Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves and Swing Time, this is a big-hearted, funny, sad, dazzlingly ambitious novel.
“A teenage pregnancy in the 1990s forces Peg out of the family home in north Dublin, run by the matriarchal religious nut Granny Doyle. First the boat to England, then the hope of forgetting in a new life in the US. Peg marries a lovely Indian mathematician, but a distinctly Irish legacy of shame remains decades later. Peg the sinner manifests in drug-taking and affairs with men she meets through Craigslist—fake names and fake highs in hotel rooms across the city—while her devoted husband waits at home.
In Darragh Martin’s bulging, big-hearted debut novel, Peg’s story is one of a number that chart the hugely altered landscape of Ireland from Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1979 up to the Icelandic volcano eruption of 2010. With this ambitious scope, FUTURE POPES OF IRELAND is more in the vein of the American novel despite its very Irish terrain. Writers such as Anne Tyler and Jane Smiley come to mind, or Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections…The Dublin author’s ability to write with heart, humour and recognition make for an engrossing novel that tackles everything from religion to abortion, contraception to gay rights, the Fianna Fáil tent to the recession. That Martin manages to do this without ever sounding preachy shows his immense skill as a storyteller. The issues instead play out through the lives of the vividly human characters that comprise the Doyle family…
[This is a] beautifully messy novel, whose chops and changes… ultimately reflect the ruptured nature of Irish society over the past 30 years. Epic in scale and a pleasure to read, FUTURE POPES OF IRELAND will have no problem finding its congregation.” —The Irish Times
“Hilarious and timely, a dazzling debut.” —John Boyne, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Heart's Invisible Furies
“It could be the story of any Irish family; the rifts that open up between people, and the silences that stand in the way of their reconciliation. Like so many of the stories that Irish people tell, it’s highly entertaining, clever and funny. It’s also, on another level, not funny at all.” —Sunday Times Culture
“Darragh Martin's family history is set within Ireland's see-saw social and political climate from the 1980s up to 2011. A sharp chronicler, you can practically smell the past as it wafts up at you from his pages. And while there's tragedy, and outrage, too, there's whipsmart satire and riotous comedy alongside a type of scholarliness that provides this novel with its zest and ingenuity. Think Zadie Smith. But much funnier.” —Sunday Independent
“Stylish verve—short chapters (some abruptly so), structural playfulness—and astute characterisation piled on over decades, complete the effect. Martin's novel never sits still. Things are always changing and always the same, much like the nation that plays a starring role in it.” —Irish Independent
“Funny, warm and full of heart.” —Image Magazine
“A comic chronicle of Irish life that starts with Pope John Paul II’s state visit to Ireland in 1979 and ends with Barack Obama’s in 2011, Darragh Martin’s bustling, bubbly debut adult novel plants a flag on terrain Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown novels made their own…Against a backdrop of the era’s headlines, from Ireland’s penalty shootout against Romania in Italia ‘90 to the boom and bust of the Celtic Tiger years, Martin uses his characters to dramatise the country’s shifting attitudes towards a host of issues, including abortion and homosexuality. Four coming-of-age stories for the price of one.” —Daily Mail
“I really enjoyed this story of four siblings who grow up, discover who they are, fall apart, and somehow, against all odds in an Ireland that is itself struggling to emerge from its mired past, find a way back to each other. This is salutary, compassionate, concerned and oh-so-human storytelling at its very best.” —Alan McMonagle, author of Ithaca
“[FUTURE POPES OF IRELAND had me] truly immersed…It was a walk down memory lane and a really enjoyable one…Darragh Martin’s writing is well observed, original, gripping, funny and poignant all at once…This novel is a classic.” —Jo Spain, bestselling author of The Confession
“Raucously funny and genuinely moving. It's the depth of the characters which makes FUTURE POPES OF IRELAND such a compelling, beautifully conceived family saga; the Doyles are going to stay with me as insistently as the people I've met in real life. A humane, deeply witty and intelligent exploration of faith and its contradictions, and a world which combines the quotidian and the metaphysical, in which every object—from a bottle of water to a smartphone to a scratchcard—could be a holy relic. A joy from start to finish.” —Luke Kennard, author of The Transition
