“Write what you know”: sound advice that Séamas O’Reilly has clearly taken to heart. His memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? was a tragicomic delight, and debut novel Prestige Drama takes us back to post-Troubles Derry, situated on the faultline of a divided Ireland and torn between dwelling in (and monetising) the past and moving on. The book traces how the filming of TV series Dead City, set during the conflict and written by local scriptwriter Diarmuid Walsh, churns up the memories, anxieties and tensions of what one character notes are regularly unironically referred to as “the good old days”.
The novel’s central protagonists are the jaded hack Walsh, whose segmented narrative threads everything together, and the star actor he bitterly brands “Miss Hollywood herself”, Monica Logue, who’s gone missing and is conspicuous by her absence. But O’Reilly conjures up a sizeable supporting cast, from a bereaved mother and a former IRA assassin to a journalist, a psychic and a mural painter whose designs now adorn tea towels. Each is allowed to expound their own thoughts in a way that creates a colourful cacophony of different voices faintly reminiscent of Under Milk Wood.
O’Reilly’s turn of phrase is once again exceptional: Walsh describes waking up slowly with a hangover as being “like a column of dog food muscling its way out of a tin”, while another character has “skin you could strike a match on, as if he’d spent some time in the International Space Station with the windows open”. Both uproariously funny and poignant, Prestige Drama is an affectionate portrait of Derry that will not disappoint any fans of the memoir.
