Séamas O’Reilly’s brilliant debut novel, Prestige Drama, begins with a Hollywood actor flying into Derry to star in a new TV series about the Troubles called Dead City, only to mysteriously disappear. But the real intrigue lies in what happens when a place becomes defined by a historical moment, reducing its stories to tired formulas. As one character quips about the series: “A young lad coming of age in a time of violence, will he get caught up in everything or find another way through blah blah blah.”
A Chorus of Voices
O’Reilly is determined to show that the people of Derry defy easy stereotypes. He uses Dead City as a springboard to circle through various characters connected to the production—from a stressed scriptwriter to a local historian who wonders, “How do you talk about the past as a person still living it, in a place that barely survived it?” As the narrative unfolds, their interconnections create a patchwork portrait of the city, reminiscent of Tommy Orange’s There, There, which used a chorus of voices to explore Native American lives.
Each character speaks directly to the reader. “The whole place has gone mad with Hollywood arriving,” says Dympna, noting hopes it will boost the economy “like Thrones did for Belfast.” Her daughter wants to audition and quizzes her about the 1970s, “like some fella from the UN on a fact-finding mission,” while Dympna recalls the secrets she has kept from her children. “I wondered there and then if awareness is all it’s cracked up to be if you can’t tell the whole story.”
Satire and Commodification
Who tells the story and why is a central concern, though O’Reilly’s light touch prevents it from feeling heavy-handed. He has a keen eye for absurdities, especially how tragedy becomes marketable: the artist who painted murals on Bogside walls now does lecture tours with a “wee moustache and crucifix earring like a plastic Provo”; the ex-IRA hitman offers his services as a “consultant.” Those once bound by a code of silence now happily demonstrate how to make a bottle bomb. “Say Nothing my arse,” says one character.
Economic necessity forces people to perpetuate clichés. Local painters are hired to recreate an old mural for the film set. “I can do the gunman, you can start with the dove,” says one. “If I do another dove as long as I live, God help me.” Aspiring actor Turlough admits: “This crock of shite is the only chance I have of getting out of here.”
Outsiders and Hauntings
The locals note it is mainly Americans and Brits working on the series: Americans who sentimentalise their Irish roots—one theory about the missing star is that she has “gone native like a load of Yanks do”—and Brits who “treat their own violence like the hiccups, something mad and terrible that was happening for some mysterious reason.” There is also Eileen, who hopes her home will be used as a filming location to pay for a new extension, watching the crew examine her ornaments like “artefacts they pulled from a bog.”
This recreation and commodification of the past becomes a form of haunting. The novel is infused with the inescapable presence of the dead. Ann-Marie’s son was shot by a British soldier, his image now endlessly reproduced on book covers and “bloody tea-towels.” With her cold rage and clear articulation of grief’s contradictions—“My heart is small and hard, wind-bleached like seaside beach seats”—Ann-Marie is one of the novel’s most powerful voices. Reflecting on the lads who returned safely after her son’s death, she says: “It wasn’t their fault and I’ll never forgive them.”
Humour and Language
O’Reilly’s first book, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, was a heartbreakingly funny memoir about his mother’s death, and he again demonstrates a rare gift for moving between opposites. The humour in Prestige Drama is skillfully deployed, allowing him to tackle subjects often avoided. His language is gloriously vivid: a hungover man wakes up “slowly, like a column of dog food muscling its way out of a tin.”
Some may wish the missing actor thread was more prominent, but the novel is more interested in ordinary people behind the televised version of events. James Plunkett, author of the polyphonic Dublin novel Strumpet City, once explained his success by saying he “didn’t lift my eye away from people at any stage, didn’t lift my eye away from the parish … for the whole of life is in that parish, where else can it be.” Prestige Drama by Séamas O’Reilly is published by Fleet (£18.99).
