Hand in the Fire [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Hugo Hamilton, relying to some extent perhaps from his own Irish-German background, uses a traditional but still no less effective means to examine modern Western society, lifestyles and attitudes through fresh eyes, by using an outsider alien to the culture and the finer points of language and behaviour - specifically here through the means of Vid Cosic, a Serbian immigrant looking for work and the chance to start a new life in Ireland - as a means to examine the less edifying attitudes that they often hide.

The book's opening line observation that "You have a funny way of doing things here" proves then to be an accurate one, with potential misunderstandings leading to some humorous incidents as well as more serious ones, pinpointing the fine dividing line between camaraderie and enmity, between joking and seriousness, between word and intent that lies at the heart not only of the nature of the Irish - although its observations here are sharp and pertinent particularly within a certain class - but in the normal everyday interaction of wider society, relating to people, families and friendships in general and particularly in how we each carry with us the weight of the past.

Vid Cosic is a personable and an interesting character to adopt in the making of such observations. Coming from Serbia, his family victims of the violence there, he himself has been injured in a car accident that he claims has made him forget much of his own past. Young and in a strange place, escaping from a violent conflict back home, he could be forgiven for seeing things in black-and white terms. The need to fit in however is a vital impulse within everyone and Vid's dilemma, as it is for everyone, is how far one must go to be accepted while retaining one's honesty, dignity and integrity. Even though he forms a close friendship with a lawyer, Kevin Concannon, and becomes a close friend of his family, Vid still seems to remain an outsider. It's as if all the troubles of the Irish seem to be expressed or reflected through the strained relationships of the Concannon family, where Vid is a welcome and helpful visitor, but one who is kept at a respectful distance by a culture and a past that he cannot completely comprehend. It's a distance however that also keeps the different generations of the Concannon family from relating to one another.

As interesting as these ideas and the central character are (and there are quite a lot of other relevant contemporary social issues raised in passing), it's the means that Hugo Hamilton chooses to illustrate the story through a contemporary violent incident and by one or two in the past, linking the underlying sentiments behind them, that give the novel an additional element of suspense and tension. Hand in the Fire is a wonderfully readable book then, one that has real characters facing real-life dilemmas to draw you in, but with the subtle touch of an insightful and brilliant writer capable of drawing out deeper elements of self-examination and recognition in relation to modern society and our place in it in a manner that any reader can identify with.

"... Like friendship, for example. Nobody does friendship like you do in this country." The way friendship is offered, or withdrawn, in an "all or nothing" way.

These opening thoughts in Hugo Hamilton's new novel, "Hand in the Fire", set much of the tone and theme in this thought-provoking story of one man's unrelenting efforts to fit in and make a home for himself in a new country: Ireland. Vid Cosic (accents not shown), a recent immigrant from Serbia, recounts his observations and reactions to his new surroundings that reveal as much his bemusement as his confusion. He approaches people with a naïve trusting innocence, willingly participating in whatever activities he is invited to. Insecure in his own judgement of what he observes, he, nonetheless, carries a strange sense of foreboding of a disaster that he might cause without intending to, due to his "misreading" and "mishearing" of people's language and gestures. Drawing on his personal experiences of growing up in a two-language and two-culture family, surrounded by a predominant third, Hamilton is familiar with this sense of "alienation", of not belonging to the society in which he lived. His mother was German, his father a staunch Irish nationalist, who forbade the use of English and insisted on writing the family name in the Irish way. His childhood memoir, "The Speckled People", captures his own experience brilliantly. Effortlessly, Hamilton slips into the mind of Vid, who has not - yet - developed any of the inner protective sensors that are required to discriminate between what is true and what is false or exaggerated, how to avoid misinterpreting what is being meant rather than said. Starting with his strong central protagonist in a midst of a whole range of well depicted diverse individuals, the author builds an increasingly dramatic story that delves into fundamental themes of friendship and loyalty, rejection and betrayal, and above all, the vital need to belong: to a family, to a place and to a country.

Coincidence and a violent encounter outside a pub, tie Vid's life together with that of Kevin, a young, ambitious lawyer. Surprisingly for Vid, an immediate friendship develops: "A true friend was somebody who would put his hand in the fire for you." Vid believes Kevin's definition even when their friendship is heavily tested. Even more so, after Kevin offers him work in his mother's house, thereby suggesting an opening into "joining" a family. Vid captures Kevin's character with a few effective descriptions, pointing out the parallels between them: "never look back... Like me, his aim was to escape. Only, he made it look like fun. All the bad things erased." Vid is a contented man, until the recent past catches up with him and Kevin... Later on he muses: "I didn't know what was so funny, until I realized that being treated like one of the family was maybe not always the best thing you could hope for..."

Vid's growing involvement with Kevin's family, the Concannon, brings out deeply held secrets and, without really understanding why, Vid turns into a quiet private eye. In particular, the mystery of a pregnant young unmarried woman's untimely death by drowning, preoccupies him. It happened a couple of generations earlier and the information is scant and only reluctantly given. Interspersing Vid's pursuit of the old story, Hamilton touches on social behaviour patterns, prominent then, yet still reaching into the present of the novel. It is evident that more than an uneasiness remains in the family's actions. Eventually Vid meets the man who can shed more light on the past and who offers him a different kind of friendship.

How can an offer of friendship be more movingly and poetically captured than by the description of a handshake? "...It was asking me to believe him, to trust him, to speak well of him. A handshake of ten verses... His hand contained the entire journey of his life... All the stories and memories, the laughs and triumphs and failures and injustices... A handshake that remained imprinted on my hand long after I had walked back down the street." In him, Vid finally finds a person with whom he can share his own emotional baggage, that he has carried since he fled Serbia, barely alive.

In a recent interview Hugo Hamilton suggested that this novel is for him, in many ways, an extension of his own earlier memoirs. The sensitivity in which he captures Vid's perspective stands out for me. As an immigrant(twice) myself, I relate very personally to the way in which Hamilton illustrates Vid's perspective and his sense of being "in between places, neither here nor there." Among the many fictionalized accounts depicting the lives and struggles of new immigrants, I have not come across any that is so predominantly focused on the new country and the immigrant's reflections as well as his active efforts, despite many obstacles, to fit in: " My problem was not having the language skills to stop things being straightforward, black and white. I was playing the duplicitous game of being myself." A exquisitely crafted novel that, while starting slowly, builds into a dramatic story around diverse and plausible characters and memorable scenarios, sustained by the thoughtful reflection on what it means to start a new life in a foreign country. [Friederike Knabe]