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December 2, 2022

In Fanatic Heart, Tom Keneally revisits the tumultuous life of an Irish rebel

Review: Fanatic Heart – Tom Keneally (Vintage).

As a child, I would visit the old house at the centre of family life and often there would be a conversation running thus:

鈥淗ave I told you about Clarrie Dobbs?鈥� (or others of such names).

鈥淵es, Grandpa, many times.鈥�

鈥淎h, he was a terrible bloke that Clarrie. When he was out well-sinking 鈥︹��

Some stories just don鈥檛 let you go. And as you get older, the urge to get them all heard grows stronger. Tom Keneally has regularly stored away curious details and colourful characters from history, sometimes waiting until he found the form best suited to his dramatising of them, occasionally repeating them in different guises, once or twice finding the moment of topical discussion into which they could be blended.

 

Keneally鈥檚 recent novel (2021), for example, picks up the setting and sub-plot of domestic violence of his earlier novel (1995), focuses it around a Kempsey legend from his childhood, and adds strands dealing with race relations and prejudice against gays. (2007) finally found a framing point of view in which to recount a forgotten military venture in World War II that Keneally first wrestled with as a film script in 1980.

As part of his 鈥減aying respects to ancestors鈥�, as he terms it, Keneally has spent a good deal of his writing career portraying the Irish in Australia 鈥� as famine-driven convicts, as political prisoners, as priests, and as romantic escapees, like the poet and activist and the Irish nationalist , who became popular figures in America.

One of this latter group, (1815-1875) has his story told in Keneally鈥檚 compendious history, (1998), and is mentioned again in his (2009).

Mitchel鈥檚 life became another story that would not let its teller go. This exiled voice for the , later hailed as the country鈥檚 president-in-waiting, was a conundrum that called for imaginative exploration. How could a political idealist striving for his country鈥檚 freedom and his own liberty end up supporting slavery in the America he escaped to?

This is the question behind Keneally鈥檚 latest novel .

Women and nationalism

Another consistent interest in Keneally鈥檚 fiction is women. His female characters have included suffering innocents, like the convict servant in (1967) and the self-mortifying protagonist of (1992), and heroic ones, like Joan of Arc in (1974) and the nurse sisters in (2013).

Keneally has been taken to task for his biologised depictions of his female characters, who either support or fall victim to males at the centre of stories, and he has made a point in the latter part of his career to give centre stage, social context, and voice to woman characters.

In Fanatic Heart, he turns our attention away from John Mitchel at regular intervals to concentrate on Mitchel鈥檚 long-suffering wife, Jenny. Their marriage was born of passion. Jenny Mitchel supported her husband鈥檚 outspoken nationalism, following him into exile in Van Diemen鈥檚 Land, then on to several locations in the United States once American Irish organised Mitchel鈥檚 escape from British control.

The novel is unusual, in that for the average reader it appears to be purely a novel. There are only a couple of hints at the back that John and Jenny were real people central to Ireland鈥檚 political history and that actual journals and newspaper columns inform the narrative.

This is probably because so much of the book does what historians have often objected to in Keneally鈥檚 work: his readiness to dramatise the people of historical record by imagining their feelings and filling in gaps between documented events.

As a novel, however, I鈥檓 not sure Fanatic Heart is entirely successful. Its historical roots prompt an external looking-back that results in a lot of telling rather than showing. The narrative does keep moving, but I didn鈥檛 get a strongly immediate sense of the 鈥渇anaticism鈥� that made Mitchel so dangerous to the British.

Some editorial intervention would have improved things at times. At one point, a girl named Henty is mentioned and we have to track back some way to find that the Mitchels had a daughter, Henrietta, and then intuit that 鈥淗enty鈥� is her nickname. Mitchel鈥檚 arrest is made under 鈥渁n obscene law鈥�, the name of which appears a page or so later, and the explanation of the law not for another page or two; some integration please. Equally, we don鈥檛 need to know that the sentencing magistrate was a former suitor of Jane Austen鈥檚.

The question of slavery

The book is at its best when it presents a dramatic scene, as with the opening one of an entire village of famine-devastated bodies, or later when there is a debate over slavery between John, Jenny, and the abolitionist Reverend Beecher. That encounter is the climax of the novel鈥檚 exploration of Mitchel as a mesh of contradictions.

I shall not be surprised if some readers charge Keneally with offering an apologia for slavery, but they should note that it is Mitchel speaking, that Jenny obviously does not support slavery, that Mitchel is captured by the false race science of the time, and that he does have some pertinent arguments against hypocritical fixation on one Southern social evil while ignoring the slavish conditions of (mostly Irish) workers under the North鈥檚 uncontrolled industrial capitalism.

As Mitchel and many writers since have lamented, a moment of ironic levity in print can leave one trapped between two camps of 鈥渒now nothing鈥� literalists.

The story ends on a high note, with the Mitchel family settling happily on a Tennessee farm (without slaves), freed from Britain and the frenetic rivalries of New York and Ireland. That resolution connects with the other focus of this tale of global movements: the family as held together by Jenny.

Fanatic Heart reworks the historical picture of John Mitchel that Keneally drew in The Great Shame. There, Mitchel was the touchy political rebel, who refused to call his comfortable life in Van Diemen鈥檚 Land anything other than enforced exile; in the fictive version, he is less inclined to escape when the opportunity arises. It is his wife who urges him back into his political role. Her place in the story also pushes John鈥檚 fellow exile, the flashy Thomas Meagher, into the background, faulting him for the shabby treatment of his Vandemonian wife.

There are many fascinating historical details in Fanatic Heart, such as Mitchel鈥檚 ambiguous social position as a Presbyterian/Unitarian Irishman and his almost successful persuasion of Russia to invade Ireland in support of its independence.

But novelistic happy endings rarely match the realities of history. Despite his interest in the American Civil War (seen in his novel and the biographical history ), Keneally excises the last chapters of Mitchel鈥檚 story. Restless by temperament and from force of events, John continued to travel 鈥� to Paris, Washington, Richmond, and eventually back to Ireland. He ran a blockade back to the Confederacy, in support of which both his sons were killed. In a final contradiction, the 鈥渇anatic heart鈥� sought Irish election to the British parliament just before his death.

, 榴莲视频app Fellow (Literature/Humanities),

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