A haunting debut from a gifted writer, set in the harsh and beautiful landscapes of Ireland’s north coast, from the Second World War to the violent struggles of the 1980s.

Patrick Jackson, a young teacher, lies dying on his hospital bed in Derry and recalls a family history marked by secrecy and silence, and a striking absence of conventional affections and pieties. He remembers the death of an eight-year-old girl, whose body was found on reclaimed land called Inch Levels on the shoreline of Lough Swilly. And he is visited by his beloved but troubled sister Margaret and by his despised brother-in-law Robert, and by Sarah, his hard, unchallengeable mother.

Each of them could talk about events in the past that might explain the bleakness of their lives, but leaving things unsaid has become a way of life. Yet guilt and memory beat against them, just as shock waves from bombs in Derry travel down the river to shake the windows of those who have escaped to the suburbs.

INCH LEVELS traces the fissures which thread the story of a family. Taking us from quiet suburb and shingled Irish seashore to the shabby bedsits of 1970s London and further back in time to an Ireland electrified and divided by the Second World War, Hegarty meshes together distant lives and demonstrates the power of the past and of silence to shape the destinies of future generations. In so doing, he creates a portrait of loyalty and disloyalty, love and possible redemption that is by turns lyrical, tense and deeply moving.

 

Neil Hegarty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland and received his BA and PhD degrees in English from Trinity College Dublin. He’s published five non-fiction titles: Frost: That was the Life that Was (WH Allen), the authorised biography of Sir David Frost; The Secret History of our Streets (BBC Books, 2012); the bestselling Story of Ireland (BBC Books, 2011; with a US edition, 2012); Dublin: A View from the Ground (Piatkus, 2007); and Waking Up in Dublin (Sanctuary, 2004). In addition, he has published short fiction and essays, and his play The Story of Peggy Mountain was shortlisted for the PJ O’Connor Award, Ireland’s principal award for radio drama; a second script, Gene Silencing, received a Wellcome Trust public engagement bursary; and his radio documentary Talamh an Eisc: The Irish in Newfoundland was broadcast by RTE Lyric FM. His features and travel writing have been published in, among other titles, the Irish Times and Daily Telegraph; and he’s a regular reviewer and contributor on BBC History magazine.