Frogs for Watchdogs Review: A Charming Child's-Eye View of Rural Ireland
Novels narrated from the perspective of small children possess a unique energy, combining humour from their misinterpretations, pathos from hidden feelings, and jeopardy from unseen dangers. As any relative or babysitter knows, even the sweetest child can become tedious when they are one's sole company, so it requires skill to charm without boring. Another challenge is enabling readers to piece together adult dramas that a child's egotism or innocence obscures.
A Stranded Family in County Meath
In 1988, the longsuffering mother in Seán Farrell's debut novel, Frogs for Watchdogs, finds herself stranded. This Englishwoman has two children with a handsome Irish actor who has abandoned them. After leaving a commune unsuitable for children, she rents a cheap farmhouse in rural County Meath, where she grows vegetables, raises livestock, and attempts to make a living as a healer. Her practice, observed by her son, appears to be a form of homeopathy with new age elements.
While her parents insist on sending her daughter, B, to an English boarding school, her younger son spends months running freely. At eight, he will join his sister to be anglicised. Unnamed, he becomes an Everyboy—vividly unwashed and scabby-kneed, filled with protective love for his mother and sister, and governed by private rituals tied to the landscape, birds, and animals.
Eccentric Encounters and Growing Tensions
The boy is drawn to an eccentric, lonely old woman in the village, who repays him with biscuits, scandal, and superstition. Initially, life seems idyllic, but tensions arise when Gearóid Ó Direáin, a farm worker from Inishmaan living in a caravan, takes an interest. The boy, mistrustful and fighting his instinct to seek a father figure, dubs him Jerry Drain and responds with silence. When this fails, and even his sister seems charmed, the boy mixes rat poison into a cure for Gearóid, recovering his voice to instruct multiple doses.
Praise and Poignant Themes
Frogs for Watchdogs received acclaim upon its Irish publication last spring, and it's easy to see why. The novel is funny, evokes a child's vivid sense of place, and becomes deeply touching as Gearóid trains the boy for a chip van venture, teaches him decency, and gradually wins his trust as the threat of English schooling looms.
However, a minor criticism is that Farrell occasionally slips into Gearóid's perspective, revealing little new information and disrupting the child-centred narrative. Despite this, the novel's crinkle-eyed charm is hard to resist. Frogs for Watchdogs by Seán Farrell is published by John Murray (£14.99).
