What Broderick is attempting is a French novel set in an Irish town; he wishes to put dangerous liaisons into the Irish midlands, to allow his Irish characters the freedom to pray to God for their ...
Saint, terrorist, fishwife. Stench that appals. Famines, machine guns, the Great Plague (your sickness), Rending of garments, cries, mass burials. I'd watched my beard sprout in the mirror's grave.