Taboos

Back at the end of the 20th century, I received a rejection letter from a magazine that had started to publish my short stories. I was assured that it was a good piece (it later appeared in 1998's The Best American Mystery Stories) but they declined to publish it because their readers did not like this sort of thing.

"This sort of thing" was about a small girl and her mother, undocumented Irish immigrants. They are very much under the thumb of their "protector," their landlord and the proprietor of the restaurant where the mother works, who uses his power to extort sex from the mother. The events in the story are precipitated when he turns his attention to her small daughter. 

There was nothing graphic in "Secrets" but the sexual abuse of children was taboo in some publishing quarters. And, as we now know, such abuse had long been a forbidden topic elsewhere. The Me Too Movement was not so much the start, as the culmination, of a series of scandals involving schools for Native Americans, Junior Hockey players, elite female gymnasts, and religious institutions of nearly every persuasion.

Nowhere has the breaking of this taboo been more significant than in Ireland if recent Irish journalism, films, novels, and short stories are any indication. The title of Fiona McPhillips new novel, When We Were Silent, says it all. Secrecy, a culture of sexual shame, and the immense power and prestige of the Catholic Church conspired for centuries to hide the sins of the powerful and, instead, to punish their victims.

That's very much the deal in When We Were Silent which presents two story lines. Now- when Lou (Louise) Manson is a successful teacher living with her daughter, Katie, and her wife, Alex, and Then, when Lou was repeating her level six year at tony Highfield School, where as a poor girl she is definitely an outsider.

 Lou at 17 is tough and clever, a good student and a gifted athlete. Besides her poverty and her lack of a posh accent, she has two other distinguishing features, both well hidden from the powers that be. She is attracted to women and she has a secret agenda: getting the goods on the swimming coach whom she believes ruined her best friend's life.

McPhillips is very good on the inner lives of adolescent girls and on their passionate friendships and rivalries. In general, the girls' characterizations are superior to those of the Highfield adults who are vividly one dimensional and even to the adult Lou, who is perhaps necessarily less dynamic than her reckless early self.  

Also good is McPhillips account of Highfield School which is very nearly a character itself. Of course, exclusive private schools and colleges, the more isolated the better, have long been a favorite of mystery writers. Their inbred cultures, their sense of social and intellectual superiority, and their distasteful entitlement not only inspire thoughts of homicide but provide a good deal of satisfaction when institution and/or perpetrators are brought down to earth.

So is it with When We Were Silent – but not for a long time. McPhillips novel reflects the changes over the last 30 years that were essential before teachers, parents, authorities, church officials would listen to children and before same sex relationships ceased to be considered a damnable catastrophe. 

When the situation that ended in near disaster for Lou at 18 is replicated with another accusation of sexual misconduct and another coach, Lou and her friends find themselves with big decisions: to remain silent and become complicit or to speak out and reawaken old wounds and old dangers. The contemporary section both opens and closes the novel as McPhillips skillfully presents the costs of silence – in both the past and the present of her characters' lives.

This is a mystery writer to watch.

Janice Law's The Falling Men, a novel with strong mystery elements, has been issued as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. Also on kindle: The Complete Madame Selina Stories.

The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations, is available from Apple Books at:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-man-who-met-the-elf-queen/id1072859654?ls=1&mt=11

The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations is available at: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-dictators-double/id1607321864?ls=1&mt=11