© Suhrkamp, 1997
Arguably the most impressive of Hogan's novels, A Curious Street takes as its beginning the suicide of Alan Mulvanney, a teacher and unpublished writer, in Athlone in 1977. The story is presented in the form of a memoir by its half-English narrator, son of the woman with whom Mulvanney enjoyed a brief, frustrating affair. Scanning these two lives and the lives of those closest to them, the narrative glides freely in and out of time, going back to explore previous generations, returning to touch on an intense threefold friendship involving the narrator himself. The novel appears to expand outward, branching through families and friends, delving by way of Mulvanney's unpublished writings into the traumas of the past — the Cromwellian invasion, the devastating famine of the 1840s, the 1916 Revolution.
A Curious Street probes at the purity and the loss of innocence, the brutal violence that lurks in family relationships, the destructive power of creativity. Images of the quest, of constant journeyings in search of peace through a war-torn land, and of the ever-present threat of death and madness haunt the pages.
Hamilton 1984
Translated into: German, French
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