Bon jour Belfast

This month’s Magill has an interview with the writer Robert McLiam Wilson by Max McGuinness. McLiam Wilson and Glenn Patterson were, by far, the two most recognisable writers of their (40ish) generation in the North and, fortuitously, came from different parts of Belfast: McLiam Wilson from nationalist west Belfast and Patterson from loyalist south Belfast. Both their first novels were published to critical acclaim.

McLiam Wilson was certainly the more outspoken of the two. Patterson – who I know – can be ferocious in print about paramilitaries but has never courted the same controversy as his contemporary. McLiam Wilson, on the other hand, undertook a very brave one-man mission to take on IRA violence in west Belfast. He made a television documentary on punishment beatings based around the baseball bat and turned up at Sinn Féin’s Falls Road headquarters trying to find the local republican baseball team.

I interviewed McLiam Wilson on the publication of his second novel, Eureka Street, which it transpires was more than 10 years ago. He was pleasant but the novel was uneven and unimpressive. At the time, he was talking about moving to Paris where he seemed to have a bit of a fan base and that indeed is where he is currently living. He is putting the finishing touches to two new novels. (What’s that old adage about buses?)

McLiam Wilson is unimpressed by Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness’s double act. He worries that the potential for violence in the North will not disappear and argues that the Irish are “predisposed towards the fight, the scrap” – a trait of McLiam Wilson’s it must be said. Certainly, he has been less than complimentary in print about Seamus Heaney’s work and hints at that again in this interview.

Still, the literary jury is still very much out on McLiam Wilson. Patterson has continued to publish novels on a regular basis and, while not being commercially successful, has a built up a substantial body of work. Will McLiam Wilson’s new novels give us something new to chew over in the New Year? I will certainly buy the first one – just out of curiosity.