In my last post I wrote about Paul Lynch’s Booker prize-winning novel Prophet Song set in a near-future dystopian Ireland. We stay with Ireland for this post about Louise Kennedy’s 2022 novel Trespasses, though Trespasses, shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, is set in Northern Ireland (not the Republic) and in the past, the 1970s, during what is commonly referred to as ‘The Troubles’.
‘The Troubles’ is the colloquial term used to refer to the Northern Ireland conflict that lasted for about 30 years (from the late 1960s until the Good Friday agreement of 1998), though the origins of this conflict date back centuries. At heart it was a struggle between two sides, split down religious lines (though not primarily a religious conflict), regarding the status of Northern Ireland. Unionists and loyalists, who tended to be Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom, whereas nationalists and republicans, who were mainly Catholics, wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join a united Ireland. During the Troubles more than 3500 people were killed, over half of whom were civilians.
Trespasses is set in 1975 at the height of the conflict. At the heart of the novel is a story of forbidden love, forbidden on two counts: because it is adulterous; and because the two lovers come from different sides of the conflict.
24 year old Cushla Lavery is a Catholic primary school teacher who works evening shifts in her brother Eamonn’s pub; one evening Michael Agnew, an older married Protestant barrister, comes into the pub for a drink. The attraction is immediate – and when they meet by chance at the theatre, and Michael discovers that Cushla speaks Irish Gaelic, he invites her to come and teach it to him and a small group of friends who are trying to learn the language. Thus the affair begins.
Almost inevitably this ‘trespassing’ into forbidden territory does not turn out well. Whilst I won’t reveal the finer details of the plot, the tragic ending of the story is anticipated by a parallel relationship that Cushla experiences in her work as a Catholic primary school teacher. In her class is a young boy, Davy McGeown, who is the product of a Catholic (father)-Protestant (mother) union, a situation which places the family under constant criticism and attack.
The idea of the ‘troubled’ political situation being mirrored in troubled relationships is also seen within Cushla’s own family, which is far from harmonious. And Louise Kennedy uses food and the eating of meals as a way to symbolise that troubled relationship.
Cushla’s father has died, and her brother Eamonn is married with a young family, leaving Cushla in the family home with her once glamorous but now alcoholic mother, Gina. Gina is often at odds with Eamonn’s wife, and Gina and Cushla frequently argue.
A meal which illustrates this perfectly is one prepared by Cushla and Gina on Easter Sunday, and to which Eamonn and family are invited. Cushla is in charge of pudding and makes a rhubarb crumble which turns out to be far from appetising:
She took the crumble from the table, the only pudding she had made since O-level Domestic Science, and stabbed at it with a spoon. It was shrunken and jammy, the topping an unappetising dun colour.
It’s not just the food that lacks appeal – so too does the meal as a social occasion, as family tensions rise to the surface. Cushla compares the meal unfavourably with the evening conversations over food she spends with Michael and his friends:
She had fancied when she asked her mother to host lunch, that there would be hours of good food and conversation, like at Penny’s table. Michael said there were all kinds of families. Cushla’s was an unhapppy one.
Later on in the novel Cushla and Michael go to Dublin for a weekend, and go out to a restaurant for an evening meal:
A slow meal, lulls between courses when he asked to see the wine list… She thought of the lunch at Easter that degenerated into a row, how little they cared about what they ate, the crumble untouched amidst the main-course plates. Her gut burned with want. That she might get away from her family, her mother, and be with this man.
The link between happy relationships and good food – or conversely unhappy relationships and bad food – occurs again at the end of the novel after a tragic event. It’s time to eat but, as Gina tells Cushla, ‘”I’ve no food in“. She pulls out a tin of tomato soup and serves it up to Cushla with ‘pieces of bread suspended in it that had bloated into fleshly lumps‘ . The recent event is at least partly responsible for the nausea Cushla feels, but the food Gina serves doesn’t help and intensifies Cushla’s feelings of unhappiness about her troubled family relationships.
I had never made tomato soup until I read Trespasses, and my experience of it was confined to fond childhood memories of Heinz tomato soup. But I was delighted to discover how delicious and creamy a homemade tomato soup can be; served with crisp croutons I like to think that eating my version would give Cushla something to feel positive about.
ROASTED TOMATO SOUP WITH CROUTONS
Ingredients (serves 4):
For the soup:
1kg vine tomatoes
1/2 white onion, cut into wedges
4 unpeeled garlic cloves
Olive oil, salt and pepper
A handful of basil leaves
500ml vegetable stock
To serve:
2 pieces of bread
Olive oil
Creme fraiche (optional)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 190C / 170C fan / Gas mark 5.
Place the tomatoes, onion and garlic in roasting tin, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 45 minutes until the vegetables are soft and the onion wedges are turning brown and crisp at the edges.
Empty the contents of the roasting tin – including any tomato juices – into a large saucepan with a few torn basil leaves and 500ml vegetable stock. Use a stick blender to blend the soup into a liquid. Alternatively you could pour the contents into a liquidiser and then pour into a large saucepan.
Check the soup is seasoned to your liking and heat to the required temperature.
To make the croutons, cut the bread into small squares and fry in a small amount of olive oil until crisp. Pour the soup into bowls, scatter a handful of croutons onto each bowl and – for a touch of luxury – add a dollop of creme fraiche too.
