Nessie School of Languages

A Novel on the conflict: Brian Moore?s ?Lies of silence?

BRIAN?S MOORE
SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Brian Moore was born in Belfast on the 25th of August
1921 to fervently Catholic parents. He emigrated to Canada in 1948 and then
moved to California. He had twice won the Canadian Governor General?s Award for
fiction and has been given a special award from the United States Institute of
Arts and Letters. He won the Author?s Club First Novel Award for ?The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne? and
the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for ?The
Great Victorian Collection?. ?The
Doctor?s wife?, ?The colour of blood?
? winner of the Sunday Express 1988 Book of the year, and ?Lies of Silence?, were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Five
of his novels have been made into films: ?The
Luck of Ginger Coffey?, ?Catholics?, ?The lonely passion of Judith Hearne?,
?Cold Heaven? and ?Black Robe?.

As critic Robert Fulford properly analysed[1]:
In the last months of his life, as he fought the pulmonary fibrosis that
finally killed him on Sunday night, Brian Moore was working on a novel about
Arthur Rimbaud, the 19th-century French symbolist poet, a subject far distant
from anything he had written before. His many loyal readers will know what that
means: even at the end, the most versatile of the world’s serious novelists was
planning to astonish us once more.

There was no writer more surprising than Brian Moore.
In the breadth of his curiosity, empathy and moral intelligence, he was unique.
He wrote persuasively and memorably about terrorists in Ireland, journalists in
Montreal, war criminals in France, revolutionaries in the Caribbean,
17th-century Jesuits in New France–and about lost, desperate, yearning people
anywhere from Belfast to California. He was a writer of great audacity and
literary ambition, as he demonstrated even in his first serious novel, Judith
Hearne.

It was published in 1956, when he was a Belfast-born
Montreal journalist, honing his craft by writing pulp novels. Judith
Hearne’s early rejections became a legend: it was turned down 10 times in
New York, and didn’t get an American publisher until after it appeared in
England, to excellent reviews. But it was like no first novel before or since,
and it’s not hard to see why it dismayed the first editors who read it.

In Judith Hearne, Moore depicts a desolate
life, stripped of warming humanity. This is a bleak post-Catholic novel, like
several of his subsequent books. Judith, a lonely Belfast spinster, has lost her
faith in a better life to come and is now losing as well her hope for a little
grace in this world. More than four decades later, I can recall the shame I
felt for her when she makes herself a pathetic fool, in her own eyes, by
groping for a few crumbs of happiness. Somehow, the shame seemed as much mine
as hers. I took that as a sign that I was in the hands of an exceptional
writer.

Moore’s ability to depict women convincingly was not
limited to Judith Hearne. Over the years he became known as a male novelist
with a rare talent for creating female characters. I Am Mary Dunne,
published in 1966, was a spectacular case. A feminist novel written before the
wave of feminist novels began, it set out the predicament of a sophisticated
young woman who realizes that she’s defined, even in her own mind, by men.
Moore once wrote: "there isn’t a man alive who has the faintest idea of
what a woman is, how she thinks and feels….are we ever going to get through
the Iron Curtain of male generalizations about women?" Stepping through
that curtain in several books was among his great accomplishments.

In retrospect it seems clear that Moore habitually
created large obstacles that he could then conquer. When the world was growing
weary of books about writers, Moore produced An Answer from Limbo, a
dazzlingly good story about a young novelist’s angry need to write a
masterpiece. After making a reputation as a realist, Moore turned to elaborate
fantasy in The Great Victorian Collection and again in Cold Heaven.
Having long since escaped from his early pulp books into serious literature, he
set out to redeem his old trade. In Lies of Silence (about Irish
terrorists), and The Statement (about a Vichy France war criminal on
the run), he used the techniques of a thriller to shape subtle parables about
guilt and betrayal.

Moore tried other forms of writing, with some success.
He wrote the script of Torn Curtain for Alfred Hitchcock, a TV
adaptation for Claude Chabrol, and a stage version of his novel, Catholics.
But he was happiest writing his novels, and perhaps happiest of all whenever he
could say, as he remarked of Black Robe, that his current project was
"a different book from anything I’ve done."

There were those who questioned Brian Moore’s
credentials as a Canadian writer; when The Great Victorian Collection
won a governor general’s award for 1975, the Globe and Mail critic
wrote that Moore shouldn’t be eligible because he no longer lived in Canada.
That raised an awkward question: is acquired Canadian citizenship valid for a
lifetime, if the citizen wants it to be? Moore always said he was a Canadian
writer because it was in Canada that he became a writer (in the 1940s and
1950s), and he carried a Canadian passport to his last days. He lived much of
his life in Malibu, California, but he was never emotionally far from Canada.
He returned in 1970 to write The Revolution Script, about the October
Crisis; he wrote Black Robe, about the Jesuits of New France, in 1985;
and Canadians showed up often in his other books. He and his second wife, Jean,
often spent summers in her home province, Nova Scotia, and a few years ago they
built a house near Lunenburg, which Moore described as "our second
base." Was he a Canadian? In my opinion, Canadians would be fools to suggest
otherwise.

LIES OF SILENCE

Lies of Silence was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1990. Lies of Silence is an exciting novel
because it is full of suspense, which derives from the fact that the dilemma
faced by the main character, Dillon, has both personal and political
implications. He puts his wife?s life, Moira, at risk if he informs on the IRA.
However, he places dozens of other lives in danger if he does not. The
psychological wrangling that results for him is made more complex by his
intention to leave Moira and by the question of whether or not the IRA
themselves have issued a warning about the bomb.

The novel is a scathing attack on the "wink and
nod" and "turn a blind eye" mentality that has allowed the
conflict in Northern Ireland to continue over the decades, as well as being a
thriller. Dillon is apolitical. He is a successful manager of a Belfast hotel
hoping to escape his unsatisfactory life by moving to London. He is perhaps an
ideal character through whom to explore the many Lies of Silence synonymous with Northern Ireland because he has no
interest in becoming entangled in the conflict surrounding him. He is forced to
confront these silences, both in himself and in the wider community over the
course of the novel. "It’s better you say nothing", advises Detective
Randall after the bombing incident. The priest’s counsel carries the same
sentiment and, although Dillon initially breaks the silence by telling the
police about the bomb, he subsequently oscillates between silence and speaking.
Meanwhile, Moira embarks on a campaign to shatter the silence by going on TV to
tell about being held hostage. She seems to be the only solution Moore offers
in relation to the acquiescent silence. "It’s people like us who’re the
only ones who can stop them", she asserts to Dillon and her family.

Social Setting

The novel is set in Belfast in Northern Ireland during
the 20th Century. The atmosphere is dominated by fear and tension because of
the political situation. Tension as a result of the Troubles in Northern Ireland
forms the social setting of this book. Violence and conflict are both a
constant feature of life in the novel. The novel deals with a divided city in
both religious and political beliefs shows the attempts of the IRA (the Irish
Republican Army) to target a large hotel for a bomb attack.

Plot Summary

Set in Belfast, Lies
of Silence deals with the moral dilemmas faced by Michael Dillon, a hotel
manager who is drawn into the political conflict by the IRA. He must choose
between helping the terrorists to bomb the hotel where he works or saving his
wife, Moira, who is being held hostage by the gang to force him to comply with
them. The choice is complicated by the fact that the action takes place on the
day Dillon plans to tell his wife he is leaving her to go to London to live
with his girlfriend, Andrea, a researcher with the BBC. His decision has far
reaching implications that play themselves out over the course of the novel,
culminating in a horrific ending.

Relationships

Dillon and the
IRA: Dillon first comes into contact
with the IRA when they hold him at gunpoint in his own house one night. He
feels angry and bitter towards them. When he meets the priest later on, he is
disgusted and refuses to accept his offer not to inform. At the insistence of
Andrea and for the sake of peace he decides not to inform. However, he makes
this decision too late. The IRA shoot him at the conclusion of the novel.

Dillon and
Andrea: They are very much in love. For a
great deal of the novel, Dillon is divided between his loyalty to Andrea and
protecting Moira from the IRA. In addition, their relationship suffers after
the incident with the IRA. Dillon is clearly confused about whether to inform
or not. This creates much tension between Dillon and Andrea. She is clearly in
love with him and stands by him right through to the end.

Dillon and
Moira: Although Dillon is married to
Moira, he is not in love with her. She realises this and is angry. Their
already tense and strained relationship worsens when she discovers about his
affair with Andrea. Moira reacts in a rebellious and aggressive manner when the
IRA holds she and Michael hostage. On their release, Moira decides to give
interviews to the media and exposes the IRA. She is hurt by the way she has
been treated and in some way wants to gain her revenge on Dillon.

Heroes,
Heroines and Villains

Hero: Michael Dillon is from the middle class area of
Belfast. He hopes to move to London. He is manager of the Clarence Hotel in
Belfast. He is married to a woman called Moira although he is love with another
woman. He shows courage in informing the police about the bomb in the car.
However, he is an indecisive character.

Villain: The IRA is seen as a hostile and negative presence in
the novel. Dillon and his wife are held to ransom by the IRA while they force
him to plant a bomb in the car park outside the Clarence Hotel. Their
representative is a priest who pleads with Michael to withhold information
about one of the IRA men called Kev, his nephew. The IRA carry out their revenge
on Dillon by shooting him because they fear that he will testify against Kev.

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