One of the reasons I love reading is so I can get a sense of people's lives and situations that are very different from my own. So it presents an interesting personal challenge to encounter a novel about a man who I feel like I already understand as he's similar to many men I've known throughout my life. The narrator of MacMahon's “Nothing But Blue Sky” is David, a middle class, middle age Irish journalist. He's a bit grumpy, unfailingly practical and drags his feet when he has to go to social occasions. In some respects he's probably like the man I'm rapidly becoming. But he also has a morbid sense of humour which is imbued with an underlying contempt for the people he's blithely making fun of and I find this kind of masculine comedy particularly odious. His jovial, kind-hearted wife Mary Rose provides the perfect counterbalance to him. But she died in a tragic event and when the novel begins we meet David as he is grieving for the woman he might not have ever fully understood or fully appreciated. He recounts his memories of her, the awkward process of continuing to holiday with friends without her and discovers new familial connections which he never knew existed.
MacMahon presents the pain of his grief and his lingering regret in a sympathetic way. Of course, I have empathy for his situation but the difficulty for me is that he's not the kind of character I'm naturally interested in reading about. I know this says more about the kind of person I am than it does about MacMahon as a writer and I think the novel is partly about the question of whether privileged men like David are often unfairly overlooked. Is there more to a man like David than I'm willing to give him credit for? I'm still not sure after having finished the novel. Certainly, the pain of his situation is no less sincere or deeply felt than anyone else's. David is exactly the sort of character Anne Tyler often writes about with great profundity. But, while there are moments of insight and pleasure in MacMahon's novel, I found spending so much time in David's head somewhat tedious as if I were forced to sit next to him and make conversation. However, MacMahon does present interesting dilemmas which I continue to wonder about. What would have happened to David and Mary Rose's relationship if it hadn't abruptly ended in tragedy? Like all the unrealised possibilities in life this question haunts David's ongoing existence in an intriguing and troubling way.
