Montpelier Parade* is an evocative coming-of-age story about 16-year-old Sonny Knolls and his infatuation with, the much older than him, Vera. It’s a quiet, unnerving, evocative and thought-provoking look at seeking solace in people and relationships that can’t end well. It will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page.

Sonny Knolls is the youngest in a Dublin family where there is not enough money to go round and they haven’t got the phone in yet. School is wasted on him and he hasn’t any friends except for Sharon, who has too many male friends of the wrong kind, that is until he comes across Vera when he is helping his Da rebuild a wall at the front of her house.
Sonny is trapped in a joyless existence. His pity for his work -worn mother conflicts with his loyalty to his father, who gambles the money coming in. School is no better, there no avuncular teacher to come to the rescue in this story. The only hope is in the form of his savings from work in the Butcher’s shop after school.

Karl Geary paints a convincing portrait of a boy who is not yet mature enough to reconcile his sympathies for the females in his life with either his need to defend them or the urgent physical waves which consume him. Use of the second person draws the reader even closer to the smell of a nicked cigarette in your coat pocket, the look of the red light on the chip pan obscured by grease, and the feel of the lick of bath water and your knees cold.
The relationship which develops haphazardly between Sonny and the troubled Vera answers a need in both.
Montpelier Parade is a truly engrossing and evocative experience.
With appreciation to Netgalley and Random House UK

A sensitively written love story, which at first reminded me of Bernard Maclaverty's Cal, before developing into something delicate and different. It is a story about longing - for a different life (Sonny, sixteen, has a miserable, time at school and at home and Vera, his lover, offers a glimpse of this life). She is older, educated, better off (she lives in Montpelier Parade and Sonny meets her when he accompanies his Dad one weekend to do some labouring for her). Vera's longing is for something else, and her reason for her involvement with Sonny is not revealed until the end of the book. Each involved for their own reasons, the relationship between them has real significance and heartbreaking poignancy.

Montpelier Parade opens with a scene in a butcher’s shop, with Sonny working alongside Joe and Mick, two men with quick wit and banter with the customers. There’s an observation that the shop is a forgotten place, something used only by the people that can’t drive. Mr Cosgrove is run over shortly after, and Sonny steals the cigarettes from the pocket of the man.

His mother and father row a lot, with her seeing her husband as a somewhat feckless individual, unable to provide for his family. Sonny gives the cigarettes to his father and questions whether he should’ve given them to his mother instead. I felt sorry for his mother throughout the book as we see her struggle through life, let down constantly by her son but regularly showing faith in him and giving him her help and support. He works with his father but thinks he is unable to mimic the work of his father and seems embarassed of his father’s ‘culchie’ way of speaking in front of Vera, a woman from the richer end of society.

From early in the book we see that young Sonny has a very keen interest in the female form. He manages to get hold of a bottle of wine and meets up with Sharon and there then follows several other meetings where something could well have happened between them. There’s a nice development to the story of Sonny and Sharon, with a real sweetness between them for most of their time together. They’re known each other for years and have an easy way with each other.

Most of the novel revolves around Sonny’s relationship with Vera. They appear an unlikely pairing but his visits with her become more frequent throughout the book. Knowing Vera opens up new worlds for him, with her house providing sanctuary and he discovers a world of books and visits the National Gallery. They are each gaining something different in the company of each other. I was constantly wondering about Vera’s background and how she came to be in the position she is. There’s a real air of loneliness and yearning with these characters throughout as they seek to move away from their current position in life.

Social class is something that comes up throughout Montpelier Parade, with Vera seen as being posh and Sonny being advised to stay away with her as this mix wouldn’t ordinarily happen. There’s a feeling that people that stay should stay in their place in life and real suspicion of people from higher classes. In Sonny’s school there’s a sense that he’s taking wasting space and his parents also seem to hold this view, feeling he should start looking for work instead.

Montpelier Parade is a really startling book. The writing is incredibly vivid and I really felt Sonny’s emotions and pain throughout. Vera is a brilliantly drawn character, someone who has a real air of mystery around her. This is a book that really pulls you in and I had to read it in just a few sittings. It maintains its power right up to the heartbreaking ending, which is executed with great power and sensitivity.

Sonny, a sixteen year old schoolboy from the wrong side of the Dublin tracks, has six older brothers, none of whom are named, but there is a real sense of their presence in the tiny house they all share along with their parents. Sonny works part-time in a local butcher’s and also helps his labourer father with building jobs. It’s while working on one of these jobs in Montpelier Parade that he first encounters Vera – English, posh, and old enough to be his mother. He fancies Vera: the feeling is mutual and the two embark on an affair which is sexual and tender. The two of them in a sense parent each other – Vera tending to his physical wounds when he is beaten up, Sonny trying to prevent her overdoses – she is afflicted with mysterious ailments – by substituting flour for medication in her capsule pills.
Like Kes, a book Montpelier Parade resembles in some ways, you know that our protagonist will go largely misunderstood, and indeed he is suspended and then expelled from school. The ‘counsellor’ he is sent to see (having been summonsed publically on a school tannoy) is hardly sympathetic. When Sonny, having seen glimpses, through his time with Vera, of a possible alternate world tells her of his ambition to become a painter – and not the sort who paints walls – she laughs in his face.
Montpelier Parade is written in the second person, thus casting the reader as active participant throughout. This could feel tricksy or affected, and that it is neither of these things is down to the strength of the writing, which is pitch perfect. Sonny, an entirely believable blend of youthful braggadocio and appalling adolescent insecurity, is beautifully drawn. Though this is a debut novel, Karl Geary is apparently also a scriptwriter, and this shows in the writing. Montpelier Parade is a beautiful, cinematic book.

In her review for The Guardian, Claire Kilroy (author of The Devil I Know ) has described Montpelier Parade as an auspicious debut. High praise indeed from such a talented author, but wholeheartedly deserved in my opinion.

Geary’s decision to write in a second-person narrative voice, or more specifically have his protagonist and the story’s only narrator Sonny use the second-person to refer to himself, is something I have rarely experienced in fiction.

"Your mother didn’t say anything when you came in, though you knew she felt you there. You opened one cupboard after another, peered inside, but really you were watching her. Finally you sat at the table. She was old, your Ma. You were the youngest, and she was old."

It felt jarring at first; my mind struggled against it in an attempt to get my bearings. But a few pages in it all just seemed to click into place, and I realised what a master stroke that decision was. This narrative framework has allowed Geary to not only evoke powerfully Sonny’s feelings of isolation, but cement an unbreakable bond with the hearts and minds of readers while subtly developing a darker, simmering tension.

Then enter the catalyst for Sonny’s coming-of-age, the enigmatic Vera.

"She wasn’t old at all, not in the way you’d expected, it surprised you, but she wasn’t young either. She was beautiful. ‘Oh,’ she says, noticing you beside your father. Her eyes were green and worn in, like she was watching from a big room behind them."

Throughout Montpelier Parade Geary’s quiet descriptions poignantly capture the wonder and awe of youth carrying the burden of poverty. He also taps into a compelling awareness of characters’ physicality and his narrator’s awkwardness and timidity in response.

"Principal Burke took his position behind the desk; he was a big man and seemed frustrated with his own lumbering movement. It seemed a private thing, so you did not look up at him until he was finished sitting."

Of Geary’s skilful realisation of marginalised characters, Sarah Gilmartin of The Irish Times notes similarities with that achieved by fellow Irish author Donal Ryan in his debut The Spinning Heart. While I admired the rawness and impact of the approach taken by Ryan, I feel Geary’s judicious balance of class loyalty and fatalism with Sonny’s desire and drive to walk his own path has realised something all can connect with.

The prose within Montpelier Parade is itself a thing of beauty – and for that alone I would recommend this novel. But it is Geary’s characters’ capacity to be buoyed by glints in darkness and this story’s moving denouement that elevate it to the truly memorable.

BOOK RATING: The Story 5 / 5 ; The Writing 5 / 5