Book review: The Discovery of Finnegan Wilde, written by Caroline Pgnat, Illustrations by Alan Cranny

 “The Discovery of Finnegan Wilde”

Written by Caroline Pignat, Illustrations by Alan Cranny

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.95  ISBN 9781771872874

  

It’s daunting to receive a 406-page novel for review. If poorly-written, it’s a tremendous slog to read. On the flip side, if the story’s seeped in richly-described settings, features distinct and memorable characters, and showcases deft plotting (including a major twist), the pages quickly slip by. Fortunately, The Discovery of Finnegan Wilde—a historical novel for young adults by Governor-General Award-winning writer Caroline Pignat—fell firmly into the latter camp.   

 My first surprise was that the title character is a girl. Fifteen-year-old Finn lives rough on the streets of 1913 Dublin. She “was in the business of surviving,” which included pickpocketing, and “lying was Finn’s mother tongue.” The scrawny lass has no memory of family, is targeted by another young urchin, Dooley, and—when she can escape the Woodhall Workhouse orphanage where she’s kept in a medicated fog—she sleeps beneath “a rusted sheet of metal,” cold, hungry, and among rats.

This lively book’s two other important characters are Eddie, a lonely apprentice archaeologist (under his archaeologist father) at the National Museum, and the 9^th century monk, Tomás, who penned a mysterious illustrated manuscript, recently unearthed in a bog. The tattered “Bog Book” is “a mulchy brown mess,” and Eddie’s painstakingly trying to piece it back together while his widowed father struggles to decipher it.

Pignat expertly weaves the monk’s dramatic story between chapters concerning Finn and Eddie. She shares the youths’ growing emotional bond and mutual mission to find “the legendary Cauldron” (that’s long obsessed Eddie’s father), Irish lore, adventure, Viking invasions, archaeology, and more than a wee bit of magic. The Ottawa writer drops a major plot twist almost 350 pages into the story, which makes the tale even more compelling.

The Irish are storytellers, and Pignat, who was born in Ireland and raised mostly in Canada, frequently honours the art and importance of story with lines like “My chapter may come to an end, but the tale always continues in the telling” and “̒There is no greater truth than tales if you but dig a little beneath the surface’”.  She even includes an Irish legend, “The Children of Lir,” within the novel. And the Irish lilt is frequently present, ie: “Affection has many faces, so it does.”

Pignat paints early Dublin viscerally and credibly, and in an interview (\included at the back of the book she explains that “Often [her] settings are as important to the story as the characters.” Here is Pignat’s Dublin:

 

     The city smelled like a soup of many simmering things—engines and

     horseshit, blacksmiths’ soot and bakers’ buns, butchers’ blood-covered

     sawdust, that ever-changing stink of a crowd, all cigarette smoke, pomade,

     perfume, and workingmen’s sweat, the unmistakable hint of malt and barley

     from what brewed at the Guinness factory, and of course, under it all, that

     briny scent of the sea.    

 

This fast-paced, well-researched book transported me, and I thoroughly enjoyed all things Irish while I was away, and Finn’s important discovery that “though the way be winding, it gets you there. Eventually.” 

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM