The Visit by Neil Tully: ‘Brilliant and intriguing’

Neil Tully’s The Visit is the first book I’ve read published by Bonnier Books’s Dublin-based imprint, Eriu. Given that it was launched in 2022, I’ve no idea how I’ve managed to overlook it but I’m looking forward to exploring more of its output if Tully’s debut is a typical sample. Set in in June 1963, the month of President Kennedy’s visit to his ancestral County Wexford homestead, Tully’s novel follows Sergeant Jim Field whose concern for a young man ostracised by his community becomes more pressing by the day.

That sort of small talk is what makes small towns. It’s why I keep my distance – friendly but not a friend. Not a sergeant who’ll come in for a few pints and stay for a lock-in.  

Jim has lived in with his wife, Siobáhn, and their daughter in New Ross long enough to have seen Patrick Hatten stigmatised for his eccentricities and the committal of his father. It was Jim who drove Sean to the local asylum where he died in misery. Since then, the sergeant has kept an eye on Patrick, living alone after the death of his mother earlier in the year. The Garda have their hands full with all the brouhaha surrounding JFK’s imminent visit; Peter Casey’s provocation of Patrick, parking two diggers against the wall of his land, is an unwelcome addition to Jim’s load. Casey continues his seemingly unstoppable bid to buy more land for his stud of which his prize stallion will be the star draw. His campaign to oust Patrick pushes the young man further into isolation and loneliness, trusting no one least of all Jim who he blames for what happed to his father. When Jim finds Patrick’s home cleared out, he enlists the help of a young colleague, one of the few Garda not in Casey’s pocket, in the hope of tracking him down before it’s too late.

He rubbed his thumbs and index fingers together in slow circles, swallowing the urge to talk  out loud, a habit he was busy trying to break – formed in the weeks after his mother died, just to hear a voice in the house. 

Alternating between Jim and Patrick’s perspectives, Tully has chosen a clever structure for his debut with its built-in countdown to the President’s visit leading to a page-turning denouement. He paints a portrait of small-town Ireland, some looking to Kennedy’s visit as a harbinger of a modern era while struggling with poverty, prejudice and the loss of its bright young people to overseas work. The plight of women, abandoned or beaten, is explored through Siobhán’s efforts to help, herself struggling with loneliness and boredom in a town where working women are frowned upon. Corruption is rife with those who take a stand made to pay. I was partly persuaded to read this one thanks to a glowing puff from Colm Tóibín describing the novel as ‘brilliant and intriguing’ which must have delighted both Tully and his publisher.

Eriu: Dublin 9781804441992 304 pages Hardback (Read via NetGalley)