Oddballs by Manchán Magan

Despite some superb prose, surreal twists and strong characterisation this first English-language novel from the Gaeilgeoir, travel writer and documentary maker doesn't quite work.
It is a pity, for there are many insights into the human psyche – especially those who live in the hinterland of what is perceived as normal.
Magan is also strong in his descriptions of place – particularly the coast of Kerry where much of Oddballs is set – nature and wildlife.
Three of the main protagonists, Rachel, Charlotte and Colm might have carried a novel by themselves.
The descriptions of Rachel – an American teenager, grieving at the loss of her boyfriend, who is self-harming by making incisions into her stomach with a knife – are truly moving and her rational for doing so totally convincing.
Colm, an autistic teenager, who seems to have insights into the higher selves of those he meets through the 'light' that they emit, is baffled by the world in which he lives and which seems absurd when viewed through his eyes.
Charlotte, the coke-snorting, self-styled white witch is absurdly delusioned, her hippy ideals random and subject to change depending on circumstance.
The fourth main character, Donal, a hard-drinking, bitter young fisherman, angry at the hand that life has dealt him, never really convinces. While his angst is understandable, he doesn't particularly elicit any sympathy.
The main problem seems to be that having established the outsiderness of his various characters Magan has built an expectation that when they inevitably get together the offbeat narrative will fall off the wierdness scale. But it doesn't.
It is a bit Samuel Beckettish in that nothing happens – twice in the case of Waiting for Godot and in Oddballs quite a few times more.
The plot is too fragile, the scenarios in which Magan places his players too limp to be really that interesting.
Maybe he is just trying to be post-modern, for he scatters his narrative with arcane pieces of knowledge, philosophical musings and a barely articulated spiritual (for want of a better word) subtext.
There is much to be enjoyed in this novel and as anyone who has read any of Magan’s three travel books (see my review of Truck Fever) will know he is a superb descriptive writer with unusual but pertinent insights into the human psyche.
I wanted this novel to be good, but while the writing and the characters did make it worth persevering with my high expectations, based on Magan's previous output, were not met.

Angels and Rabies by Manchán Magan

Manchán Magan graviates towards outsiders and drifters, people who by choice or for cultural reasons have been sidelined by society and hover at its perifiary.
He tends to be suspicious of those who have done so by choice but truly empathetic with the socially excluded.
When he comes across the remains of an Irish commune called the Screamers half way up a mountain in a Colombian jungle he is keen to visit but his inability to buy totally in to their philosophy leaves him isolated among the isolated.
I clearly remember passing a brightly painted house in Donegal during a family holiday in the 1970s and my parents saying that the house belonged to The Screamers, giving each other knowing nods as they did so.
The name stuck with me and an image of the house, although it was only years later that I discovered that the Screamers were a commune who practiced a form of group psychology by literally screaming their anger from them.
They scandalised Ireland at the time because of their communal living and gained a reputation as being a religious cult, eventually decamping across the Atlantic to South America.
When Magan meets them only a few of the original members remain and the group seems close to fracturing.
He earns their leader's wrath when he tells her that rather than ridding themselves of anger it seems to him that they have become addicted to it and he finds himself increasingly subject to it.
Magan portrays himself is a psychologically damaged person seeking healing, one of life's loners who doesn't seem to fit in with society but who wants to be accepted for who he is. He says that he doesn't fear death, that he sees it as simply passing into another way of existing.
However, his stoicism is pushed to a pragmatic battle for survival when he is bitten by a rabid dog in Equador.
The retelling is almost comical but the sense that he is facing a slow agonising death unless he finds expensive medication is tangible.
He survives and becomes a minor legend on the South America backpacker trail which is full of others who feel a similar outsiderness to him but who he seems unable to relate to.
There are some who he admires. Rory, a Welsh man who has fled civilization and bought 1,000 acres of mountain rain forest to try and create a utopia in Equador.
But farmers planting sugar cane are chopping down the forest all around him and encroaching closer and closer on his “temple” leaving it vulnerable to fire.
He also meets a number of indigenous tribes whose leaders seem to have message warning man kind of environmental devastation and particular insights into Magan’s condition.
He meets and falls in love, then separates with a Hollywood brat packer – all within three days – whose true identity he never reveals but drops enough hints for those care about these sort of things to deduct.
In the second half, and probably less interesting half, he travels to Canada where he becomes involved with militant conservationists, a drug dealer and takes part in a Native American pow wow. He ends this adventure in California where he has managed to track down his starlet.
Machan's travel books are much more than mere reportage, detailing offbeat adventures and quirky stories. There is a sense that the stripping bear of his psyche to be presented in such a public way is, or was, part of a healing process.
This is travel writing in both through the geographical terrains and those of the psyche.
For my review of Magan’s travels in Africa, which predate Angels and Rabies although were written more recently click here. For a review of his novel Oddballs click here.