In the Forest by Edna O'Brien

IN THE FOREST, set in the west of Ireland and based on a horrendous true crime, is the story of a young man who shoots dead three people in a forest glade. The young man, Mich O’Kane, is ‘not all there in the head’ as one character puts it; he hears voices, he cannot stop mourning the death of his mother. By puberty he is already committing petty crimes, ending up in a Christian Brothers borstal. By the time he is back home he has also served time in a British jail and is an institutionalised criminal. Incapable of telling the truth even to himself, he steals. His sexual fantasies - revolving around women in the village - eventually centre on Eily, an artist and single mother, who lives with her son Maddie in a house that Mich once camped out in after his mother died. One day Mich pounces, dragging her with Maddie out of the house and ordering her to drive them in her car to the woods nearby. Edna O’Brien leaves what actually happens to our imaginations, but we assume he rapes before shooting her. Next Mich is persuading a new priest to come. As well as from Mich himself, IN THE FOREST is told from many differing points of view, including that of Eily. There is compassion from his granny, from a priest, but not from anyone else. If anyone was brought up to fail, it is Mich. And what happens to him? It will surprise no-one that he tries to commit suicide and then dies.