An Evil Cradling

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But inevitably there are reminders, some of them funny. "We were in a taxi together in London, and the driver kept looking at us in his mirror," says Keenan. "And then he came through on his intercom and he said: 'Sorry to interrupt you gentlemen, but I couldn't help asking … wouldn't you be more comfortable travelling in the boot?'" Keenan's parents are both dead – his father's death was pivotal in his decision to go to Beirut. It was as he carried his father's coffin that he made the decision to leave Belfast, and to seek a new life overseas as a teacher at the American University in Beirut. At the time of the kidnap he was wearing one of his father's shirts, and that connection was a crumb of comfort to him – in An Evil Cradling, he writes movingly about how his dad became "not simply a memory but … a real presence … a presence I could feel more than see, a comforting reassurance that eased the hurt into a deeply filled sadness, yet that same sadness as it became reflective, lifted me". His mother died in 2004 having survived his captivity – something she rarely spoke about, Keenan says. "It was her way," he explains. "When I came home she didn't ask, and I didn't tell much at all. My sisters told me that when I was away she didn't speak much about what was happening. When there were rumours that I might be coming home, though, she knitted me a sweater."

This is the book Keenan has written. An imaginative exploration of the man. Another kind of cradling, you could say, though this time benevolent. Keenan visits Turlough on his deathbed, comes into the room where he is dying, much as Turlough came to him in his room when he was in despair. And through Keenan's book Turlough is reborn not as a musician, not as a historical character, but as a man. "Fleshy, honest, frail, complex." And if this sounds like a self-portrait, it may be that, too. There are echoes here, too, of Eliot's lines in his great poem Journey Of The Magi: "I had seen birth and death/ But had thought they were different; this birth was/ Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death." And ... "I should be glad of another death."Fury swelled in Maedhros’ heart as he saw their lines break into a sprint, the outrage of betrayal squalled in his veins but tightly he gripped to it, he mastered it, and as Fëanor’s son revealed in the fey glory of his wrath he drew his sword, and aloud he cried: “Hold fast! Ortaerë, mehtarnya! Ortaerë!” The tender cradling of a woman by a man, an echo from his 1962 "Aureole," suggests his love for women and his favoring of heterosexual stage liaisons.

What was known about Turlough was his music, his art. He is honoured and revered by many musicians through the centuries, in contemporary times particularly by the Chieftains, who have been playing Turlough's music for 30 years. Yet nothing was known "of Turlough's head and his heart". It is an intriguing study of the emotions of human beings under such adverse circumstances and how, even in these most restricted conditions (for much of his time in captivity he was blindfolded and chained) we are able to experience a range of emotions, adapting to our circumstances and battling to survive. In Atwood's 'A Handmaid's Tale' Offred conveys a large amount of nostalgia towards her past. In the opening chapter Atwood contrasts the senses of the past. The lights are vividly described as "a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of light. " Atwood chooses this poetic metaphor to show her fondness towards previous times. Atwood describes the simplicity of the lights under the regime "The lights were turned down but not out. " Offred's feelings of extreme claustrophobia are exacerbated through the juxtaposition of the former senses. In Offred's case she is more sensitive towards these feelings of freedom. Much as Turlough was able to reconcile his two worlds - Ireland the physical place with all its history, "which, though he couldn't see what was going on around him, he could sense", and his own inner life, through music - this book becomes Keenan's reconciliation, the means finally by which he can take control again of his own destiny. You could also say that it signals Ireland's destiny - which is not English control. "I do believe that this island should be one land." All of which makes it a bold book. Keenan is nervous, he says. "It hasn't gone out to the public yet. I think that maybe the people who have read my books before will find this a strange departure." But then this is, of course, its point.

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Correspondingly, Offred is able to escape into her private world of memory and desire. Offred uses storytelling as a means of personal survival her narrative is the only way of bridging the gap between an isolated self and the world outside. "It is also a story I am telling, in my head, as I go along. " Offred is able to escape the intense feelings of claustrophobia through expressing her feelings. Atwood chooses short sentences to emulate the natural nature of speech resulting in a flowing structure. Slay any left alive!” A thin voice barked behind him, and with its words and the roar of orcish glee that met them, blank despair crested in Maedhros’ heart as he was led away. “Leave the dead to rot.”