Starving Men, by S.E. Finkielman

A brilliant character driven story built upon historical atrocities in Northern Ireland, Starving Men combines mystery and psychology to deliver thrill and distress when revenge is delivered in the name of justice.

Who is the narrator in Starving Men? That’s an easy question if you answer it when you first start reading (ignoring the Prologue, of course). The narrator is Dr. Michael Gleeson, and he is beginning his first person account of the story. By the time you finish the novel, however, the answer is not as clear. The narrator could, in fact, be Maggie O’Malley, for whom you are given a third person account. Also, there are the insertions of the O’Gliasains, giving you accounts from the grave. And then, there are accounts from Turlough and his victims, Suzanne, Dr. Gleeson’s erstwhile friend, Grady, from the Irish parliament, Cathal McConnell, of the former IRA. and officer Quinn in Dublin. These multiple narrations, each giving a separate point of view, break all the rules of fiction writing. But Finkielman is a master of wielding them to create a depth for her characters that couldn’t be done with a single first person account by Dr. Gleeson, or a traditional third person telling by an omniscient narrator. The juxtapositions of their points of view gives grit to the story and brilliantly pushes the mystery to its thrilling conclusion. The reader invests in the story in the first chapters, enjoys and is simultaneously appalled by acts and justifications woven from history and fiction, and reaps the rewards of a startling finish, which questions the veracity of everything that came before. And there’s a bonus on the last page, a last comment that turns the whole story on its head.

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