Book Review: Fork in the Road by Denis Hamill Monday April 9, 2007
I was attracted to this book because of the recommendation on its cover, suggested by Frank McCourt who wrote Angela’s Ashes. That, plus a browse which revealed that it was quick-paced and featured Irish life and a fiery, red-haired woman.
I don’t know what kind of reputation Denis Hamill has; sometimes this is useful, and sometimes I enjoy novels – and films, for that matter – which are not widely recognised and yet have much to recommend them. I enjoy them not because everyone else is, but for other reasons. In some way, they express or connect to some of my inner thoughts, feelings and interests.
Fork in the Road concerns the tempestuous relationship between Colin Coyne, an American film maker, and Gina Furey, an Irish traveller. She tries to pick his pocket in a crowded Dublin pub, and he falls for her wild beauty. They travel backwards and forwards across the Atlantic, Colin feeling committed but not necessarily in love, because she carries and gives birth to his child. His mother has recently died, and he promised her he would never abandon a child.
It’s a long book – about 470 pages – and I think it’s main achievement is the pace it manages to sustain. It’s a fast moving story, addressing the interior life of Colin Coyne but not dwelling on it. Characters are satisfactory, but not comprehensive. The main thrust is the collision between civilised 20th century life and the embattled, conniving and thieving lifestyle of Gina and her family. They live on the dole, steal from anyone at every opportunity, and enjoy drunkenness, smoking, and a feeling of being accountable to no one. Gina’s extended family includes a pyromaniac, demented grandparents, violent and murderous men, and sexually manipulative women.
Colin’s family are successful, normal, US citizens who cannot understand his infatuation. Colin supports Gina and family members who stay with them for many months, their flights from Dublin also paid for. They wreck his brothers apartment and Colin’s own house, burn down Colin’s local bar, steal his father’s tools and some hanging silver bells with immense sentimental value, constantly embarrass him with their primitive, hostile and coarse manners, survey everyone for casual theft, and get mixed up with formidable American gangsters.Hamill includes a section where you learn about Gina’s earlier life, which explains her behaviour: years of poverty, neglect, privations and abusive uncles.
If the most powerful man in the world was almost toppled by a poorly judged sexual relationship famously involving a cigar, then Colin’s sexual attraction is believable. Sometimes, the body leads the mind unwisely.
It’s fun reading about Gina initially, because of her sexual appeal. However you start to dislike her immensely, and not care very much about her earlier life, because it cannot excuse the way she exploits Colin and everyone else. She avoids censure and retaliation for her behaviour in Ireland, but gets into trouble when she continues in the same way in Los Angeles and New York. In the end, she tries to steal a wallet in a public crowd and the man tells his girlfriend to recover it: she knifes and kills her. Hamill suggests that the menace and potential violence of America is more savage and formidable than Irish mischief.
You are meant to feel sympathy for Gina, and the way Colin’s lifestyle is imposed on her. She is stranded in a huge and foreign country, with no reference points and the “crack” that she always wants. Hamill is interested in the culture of Irish travellers, and researched it for his book. However, Gina’s behaviour starts to annoy you – the reader – and you hope she will get her comeuppance. Hamill’s portrayal is bleak; Gina’s earlier life does not excuse her adult irresponsibility, which includes insisting on drinking and smoking when pregnant, entirely unconcerned for her baby’s well being. We learn that in Europe, Ireland has the highest incidence of FAS – foetal alcohol syndrome, and it’s sad and appalling deformities.
Colin finally decides he will not tolerate it any longer, and confronts both her and her family when he returns from a film making trip. He beats up her pyromaniac brother and enlists the help of bar friends to beat up the other men, in satisfying revenge. Finally taking a stand is a complicated decision, because he loves his small son and Brianna, who is effectively his step-daughter. He wants custody of both, and will not allow them to return to the neglectful and squalid subculture on the outskirts of an Irish city.
Hamill is probably accurate in his portrayal of subculture hostility towards mainstream and more civilised values. In this respect, it illustrates not Irish travellers, but any disenfranchised and violent community with its own primitive and internal values. We experience this in any city whenever we see reckless disregard for the property, life and well being of other citizens. Hamill is not political, but this dimension to his novel clearly exists. However, I am not especially interested in cultural politics here – which is often the idiom by which novels and films are ultimately judged.
The other main theme of this book is Colin’s interior thought process, as he imagines the cinematic and narrative potential in his outer experiences. In the beginning, you wonder if the novel is about imperialist America exploiting the real life circumstances of less privileged people. Gina herself protests to Colin that he has stolen from her – that he has used her life and his experiences with her as the basis for a film script. The inequality of power is clear, but Colin is essentially generous and decent, and gives her new experiences and opportunities; her remark is no more than an angry attack, and is one of many. He endures wide ranging abuse, not because he wants to make a film about it – although he does remind himself it is like research and development – but because he is committed to the children. Everyone around him thinks he is crazy to allow his life to be seriously disrupted, and he misses the opportunity to direct a lucrative film because he returns to Ireland to see Gina.
I only had one real problem with the book, and that is the element of male-fantasy in Colin’s characterisation. Firstly, women phone him and he ignores them, as they want to re-establish prior relationships. He beds an interesting, beautiful and sexy Californian with a rich and influential father, who probably has considerably more sexual power than he does. He has women chasing after him, and never doubts himself. Secondly, he is able to beat up one of Gina’s cousins who is enormously strong and far more familiar with fighting than he is; he knocks out Gina’s husband when he finally appears (Colin did not know he existed), who is also tough and muscular; and he knocks out Gina’s pyromaniac brother with a short, six inch punch to the jaw.
None of this is really accounted for – you are asked to believe that Colin is sexually magnetic and physically formidable, and it is not convincing. He is a creative, an American film maker, but these parts of his character make him more like a stereotyped tough-guy.
Fork in the Road is a good read; as it says on the cover, it “hooks you and keeps you to the end” (Frank McCourt).
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