What happens when you spend your whole life waiting for something good, and then get too much of it at once?
Gus Watt might not be considered an obvious catch, being on the dole, living in a caravan in the woods, and making a living from under-the-table construction work. In fact, a relationship with a woman has been out of reach for most of his life. However, one fateful day he meets the girl of his dreams…twice.
All of a sudden Gus is entangled in two love affairs. Miss Kilroy is a Support Services worker with inky black hair and a “palatable” shape, while Miss Needham is a blonde-haired blue-eyed secretary at a doctor’s office. Either one would give Gus the sort of happiness that he’s never experienced before. However, can he bring himself to choose before it’s too late and he loses everything?
Keaveney picks up where John McGahern left off in chronicling rural Ireland (and in fact, there’s an unfinished shed in Caravan that reminds one of McGahern’s That They May Face the Rising Sun). Set in post-boom Ireland, it is tempting to read the Celtic Tiger into the novella, Gus’ dilemma being an overabundance that may lead to his ruin.
Like in his other work, Keaveney’s strength as an author lies in giving us the details of rural life in Ireland that makes the dynamics experienced there seem familiar to us, regardless of our personal experience. From the brother who got the farm, to the parents that pry into his business, to the neighbor who made it big somewhere else—in Caravan all the tropes of the countryside we have seen before, but they are presented with an authenticity that allows them to remain in our imagination after we’ve closed the book.
Perhaps Caravan’s greatest achievement is to attain humour without being condescending. It could be easy to present Gus as the “low country person” bumbling through life. Instead, we have sympathy for him as he as attempts to manage an increasingly complicated situation. We all have reached for something that once seemed unattainable. We may laugh at Gus when he falters, but we also feel for him.
Delivered in only 102 pages, this short read from Penniless Press offers a rural Ireland full of acute details and nuanced relationships that stay with the reader once the book is finished.
Caravan was published in 2022 by Penniless Press and is available here.
Martin Keaveny is the author of three novels and one short story collection. He also offers creative courses in person and online. More information can be found here.
Looking for more rural stories? Check out Best Rural Novels: A List of 10 to Get Started.