Philip Casey

“An ordin­ary, almost staid, couple are over­whelmed by crisis when their third child is born. The book starts off fairly ordin­ary and staid too, but this makes the crisis all the more real­istic when it hits and easier to sym­path­ize with.

Once the new baby is born, the writ­ing becomes sens­it­ive and involving, the char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion sharper and deeper and it’s pos­sible to really care about what has happened and what will hap­pen. As the trust and com­mu­nic­a­tion between the par­ents break down, threat­en­ing the fab­ric of the fam­ily, Dan, the hus­band, bolts to his father’s house in Ire­land. He becomes bet­ter acquain­ted with his father, with his fam­ily his­tory and with the his­tory of Ire­land, a coun­try he’s never before thought of as his own. Kate, his wife, is left to cope with two chil­dren and a new baby. Dan’s beha­viour is enough to make the reader want to give him a good shake but Casey explores his motiv­a­tion with such sens­it­iv­ity that it’s impossible not to be on his side too. In the midst of this emo­tional agon­iz­ing, the action moves two hun­dred years to the Irish Rebel­lion of the late 18^th cen­tury and Carib­bean island of Mont­ser­rat, where even Irish­men could be land­lords and sla­ve­own­ers. In its own quiet way this novel is unset­tling and even shock­ing as it chal­lenges the reader to step into Dan’s shoes: are you as open-minded, as trust­ing, as loyal as you think you are?“
–Kirkus UK

Philip Casey at Amazon.co.uk
Philip Casey at Amazon.com

A seam­lessly achieved, ques­tion­ing work

This is the story of two adults forced to grow far bey­ond the bound­ar­ies of their own expect­a­tions. It is also the story of his­tory, and how the sep­ar­a­tion of past and present which we cas­u­ally insist on in day-to-day dis­course, is chal­lenged by chance, one-in-a-million events, in this case, the inex­plic­able birth of a black child to London-based white par­ents, Kate and Dan. Kate is fas­cin­ated by the pres­ence of black fig­ures in Renais­sance paint­ings, and there is even a hint of her attrac­tion to the black hus­band of a friend. After the birth of their (black) baby girl, Dan’s blind rage in the face of the seem­ingly impossible is one of the cent­ral emo­tional notes in the nar­rat­ive, and thus begins a jour­ney in which he is com­pelled to look at his own past and how this past has impinged on his present. Noth­ing is com­fort­able. No char­ac­ter in these pages is allowed the easy option. Com­pla­cency is the great moral fail­ure that almost over­whelms Dan time and again. Gradu­ally, he explores stor­ies and situ­ations which — one ima­gines — he would never have envis­aged. He learns about his own ancest­ors’ involve­ment in the 1798 Irish Rebel­lion, about inex­plic­able rages and pas­sions equal to his own, and he comes to under­stand the great, ardu­ous jour­neys of those forced to flee abroad to Amer­ica and to Montserrat.

The tec­tonic over­lap­ping of black and white, of love and what? pre­ju­dice? com­pla­cency? past and present? con­tin­ues bey­ond the novel’s clos­ing words. Casey began his writ­ing career as a poet. One senses that the poet in him con­trib­utes to a com­plex and often meta­phoric refine­ment of the prob­lem of con­front­ing what seems alien and ‘other’. There are no right-on pro­noun­c­ments in The Fisher Child, no “cor­rect” views on either race or nation­al­ity. Instead, the char­ac­ters are human and as such they explore what they need within their own terms and within the terms of history.

The novel’s final image is start­ling, enig­matic, beau­ti­ful and chal­len­ging. Through it, Casey appears to urge a re–examination of that which we assume to be philo­soph­ic­ally ordered, and to con­front our own dreams just as Dan does: which implies that noth­ing is sep­ar­ate and that the world has a wild inter-dependance that rises even from the genetic, cel­lu­lar mine of our own bod­ies. A fresh and intriguing book that many writers would love to have writ­ten.
Mary O’Donnell Amazon.co.uk review, 3 Decem­ber, 2001

a beau­ti­ful, evoc­at­ive tale of love tested

Philip Casey’s third novel, The Fisher Child, is a beau­ti­ful, evoc­at­ive tale of love tested. Kate and Dan, hap­pily mar­ried with two chil­dren, have their lives turned upside down after the birth of Meg.
The novel is divided into three parts: the first told through Kate’s eyes and the third through Dan’s. The novel changes style for the force­ful middle sec­tion deal­ing with the Rebel­lion and sub­sequent life in Mont­ser­rat through the eyes of Dan’s ancestor, Hugh Byrne.
The his­tory told in this engross­ing sec­tion makes sense of the novel as a whole. From its mes­mer­ising open­ing chapters in Florence, through the shock­ing cli­max to the close, the com­plic­ated inter-family rela­tion­ships threaded with echoes of the past are woven with exquis­ite skill.
Sue Leonard, The Irish Exam­iner Feb­ru­ary 23, 2002

this wise, tender novel

Dan is never gran­ted as much his­tor­ical know­ledge as the reader, but even without all the facts he learns he can have a little more trust, in his wife, but also an impli­cit trust; one shared by the other char­ac­ters in this wise, tender novel, in the muddled con­nec­tions and con­tinu­it­ies of their lives.
Paul Magrs, TLS Novem­ber 9, 2001

a care­ful, dili­gent storyteller, and, as he has shown here, daring

Casey, one of the quiet men of Irish writ­ing, is a care­ful, dili­gent storyteller, and, as he has shown here, dar­ing.
Casey’s attempts to describe the emer­gence of mod­ern Irish soci­ety, its myths, its real­it­ies and bit­ter truths, through his Bann River Tri­logy, remains brave and hon­est.
Eileen Bat­tersby, The Irish Times Novem­ber 10, 2001

a rare treat

Its link­age to The Water Star is highly inter­est­ing (even if occa­sion­ally there is a lot of hav­ing to explain details of per­sonal his­tor­ies). The only com­par­ison I can think of is the films The God­father and God­father II, which man­aged to func­tion as both a sequel and a pre-sequel to the ori­ginal, a dif­fi­cult ima­gin­at­ive feat which Casey more than suc­cess­fully pulls off. In doing so he has cre­ated a com­plex novel of con­trasts and par­al­lels within the emo­tions, pre­ju­dices and self-awareness of two males linked by a name and a secret and the irres­ist­ible pull of a Wex­ford moun­tain call­ing them home. The Fisher Child is a stand-alone novel that can exist without ref­er­ence to any other book. But read along with The Water Star is to have a rare treat in store.
Dermot Bol­ger, The Sunday Inde­pend­ent Novem­ber 25, 2001

pb review by Isa­bel Montgomery

Dan and Kate appear the epi­tome of smug mar­rieds. We first meet them, with two chil­dren behind them and a home in Isling­ton, on a week­end break in Florence. So far so dull, as they take in the sights, but Meg, the unplanned fruit of hol­i­day love­mak­ing, shows how quickly a com­fort­able, even com­pla­cent, exist­ence can be des­troyed. Casey’s por­trayal of Kate, rejec­ted and depressed, yet exper­i­en­cing a fierce need to defend her child, is finely real­ised, and Dan’s sense of mas­culin­ity betrayed and his flight to Ire­land also ring true.
Isa­bel Mont­gomery, The Guard­ian, August 17, 2002