"Footnotes" by Glenn Patterson

"Footnotes" by Glenn Patterson   (2011, 12 pages)

March 1 to March 31

Year Three

Glenn Patterson

Belfast

Event Resources

Please consider joining us for the event.  All you need to do is complete a post on any Irish Short Story, maybe on a story that means a lot to you or a writer you admire, or any related matter and let me know about it.  I will publicize your post and keep a master list. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.  

One of my goals during Irish Short Story Month III (ISSM3) is to read and post on  new to me Irish short story writers.   

Glenn Patterson is one of the best known and most commercially successful writers from Belfast in Northern Ireland.   The world wide public image of Belfast is as a place of danger and sectarian and religious based violence. Maybe this no longer fair, but for sure it is how the city is seen.

Glenn Patterson's very sharply observed short story, "Footnotes" deals directly with the consequences of troubles in Belfast.   The story begins with the lead character at attendance at a funeral.   It was he that gave out the information about where the man keeps his car that allowed a bomb to be placed that killed him.   He was basically told either he informs on his neighbor, or he will also be killed and they will just find another way to kill the neighbor anyway.   He tells himself he lives in tough times and he goes on with his life, just like most would have done, like to admit or not.   The house of the man who was killed after his family move out in a year or so is turned into rental flats.    

A woman with teenage kids rents one of the flats and the man strikes up a friendship with her.   The woman has her issues, her husband left her, she drinks too much, her kids are out all night doing who knows what and are always "effin' and blinding".  (I admit I had to use Google to find this means swearing and cursing.)   Slowly she and the man, he is single we know nothing of his history, develop a relationship.  He helps her, gets her to quit drinking and gets her kids on a better path.   The woman, she is 52, used to work in catering and she wants to have  her own food place.    They look around and they set up a restaurant.   Then something tragic happens, really as random as the violence he helped happen.  I do not want to tell the ending of this story.  It is tragic but you can see in how well the children of the woman are now doing, adults on their own, that the man's life was not just for nothing.  

There is a very interesting article by Glenn Patterson in The Guardian in which he lists the top ten literary works set in Belfast.

Author Data

Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast and educated there and at the University of East Anglia where he studied for an MA in Creative Writing under Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. He is the author of eight novels and two works of non-fiction. His plays and stories have been broadcast on Radio 3 and Radio 4 and articles and essays have appeared in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Independent, Irish Times, Dublin Review. Before coming to Queen's as writer-in-residence (1994) he was Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia and writer-in-residence at University College Cork. He has also presented numerous television documentaries and an arts review series for RTE. A film, Good Vibrations, co-written with Colin Carberry is due for cinema release in 2013. In 2008 he was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He is a member of Aosdana.

I have his novel, set in 19th century Belfast, The Mill for Grinding Old People Young on my to read in 2013 list.  

I read this in New Irish Short Stories edited by Joseph O'Connor.

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