海角大神

鈥淭ender鈥� is not the first word you think of when you think of either Northern Ireland or Papua New Guinea, each place green in its own way but also harsh in its own way. Yet Nick Laird鈥檚 new novel, set in both places, is above all tender. Which, in this case, does not mean sappy. The violent prologue to Modern Gods makes that clear. 鈥淎 surge of bodies away from the door now, pushing across the lounge bar and much screaming.... There was a loud dull pop-pop-pop-pop, and a little puff of redness erupted from the side of the head of an old man.鈥� Two masked gunmen kill five people (鈥渇our Catholics, a Protestant鈥�) in a Northern Ireland roadhouse in 1993, in the past that Laird goes on to show is never past.

Decades later, in quiet Ballyglass (鈥渂acon factory, cheese factory, cement factory鈥�), life putters along. The Donnelly family is getting ready for a wedding: Alison, schoolteacher and mother, is marrying again; Liz, the intellectual, is flying in from London; Judith and Kenneth, the parents, are keeping Judith鈥檚 returned cancer a secret. This could be the setup for a Maeve Binchy or Anita Shreve novel, and it is no insult to Laird to say that he moves things along as expertly as any bestselling novelist would. In a few exquisite vignettes, he introduces his characters and conveys the essence of love or pain, often with a simple gesture. 鈥淪omething in her voice,鈥� he writes of Judith fretting over flowers, 鈥渟ome new alarm, some warning 鈥� made him turn to her. He softened as he always did at the sight of sadness and stood up in his new, tentative way, and went to her. She was sobbing now and fell into him, and held him while he repeated 鈥� although he knew the answer 鈥� 鈥榃hat鈥檚 wrong, what鈥檚 wrong, whatever鈥檚 wrong now?鈥� 鈥�

While Liz still smarts from her latest boyfriend鈥檚 infidelity, Alison, about to marry bland Stephen, persuades herself that 鈥渢here was something attractive about a mind that moved in a straight line.鈥� Never mind Stephen鈥檚 sectarian tattoos and his violent nightmares. Adding to the unease are glimpses of the long-dead shooting victims, captured in a few brief descriptions of their last day, their final minutes. In one flashback, for example, a man at the bar commiserates with another, recently widowed:

鈥� 'Now it鈥檚 a shame.'
'It is.'
'You haven鈥檛 had to seek your troubles.'
'We all have our crosses to bear.'
In silence they looked down at their drinks and considered their crosses, then looked up at the band going full throttle."

The pub door bangs open and death enters.

Then it鈥檚 back to the present, to Alison鈥檚 wedding preparations and a perfectly timed revelation that spawns fresh anguish. As her sister鈥檚 honeymoon turns into a hostile standoff, Liz travels to the jungle outpost of New Ulster in Papua New Guinea to narrate a BBC documentary on a new religious cult founded by a woman called Belef. This sounds contrived 鈥� and it is a little. Only toward the end, however, does Laird belabor the themes of tribalism and religious fanaticism that connect two places, worlds apart. 鈥淟iz lay there now in the dark and thought she had spend her lifetime studying the differences, how one tribe does this, another that 鈥� and all the time there was no difference, not really, just tiny variations on a theme of great suffering, great loss.鈥�

Belef, a wonderfully odd creation, is disfigured by grief just as the widower who confronts his wife鈥檚 killer in Ballyglass is undone. Yet the suffering prophet remains weirdly clear-sighted. In her view, the lure of American evangelicalism, for example, is no mystery: 鈥淏efore the mission came, there were many families here,鈥� Belef explains of her village. 鈥淭hey grew scared of the darkness and moved to Slinga. They were all afraid of Hell, this new place they heard of. And all the villagers who went got shoes given 鈥檈m. All the others were getting on and they were not.鈥�

In a domestic drama 鈥� and "Modern Gods" is at heart just that 鈥� shuttling back and forth between Ballyglass and Papua New Guinea is a risky maneuver. But Laird is an agile writer who effortlessly switches location and point of view without sacrificing the empathy we feel for each character. Even on alien terrain where 鈥渋n the all-day permanent gloaming, beasts crawled on their stomachs, crept on all fours, stalked and pounced, rutted and died and rotted,鈥� the mood remains intimate and often lyrical.

But Laird is at his best on his home turf. A poet as well as a novelist, he has a well-tuned ear for the speech of his native place and a keen eye for Northern Ireland鈥檚 shifting light and brooding sky. Here鈥檚 Kenneth, for example, surveying a morning: 鈥淭he sky hanging over the black hills was heavy with rain about to get falling. Sidney, his older brother, would be heading up to the cattle in an hour or so.鈥澛犅� And here is Judith, awakened by terror, contemplating her attenuated life: 鈥淪he鈥檇 wanted a nice home with nice things. On the farm there was never enough of anything. Except for work. There was enough of that.... She wanted to sift her life through her fingers, to weigh the thing and not to find it wanting. To find that everything was worth it in the end.鈥� Laird wisely leaves that question open.