Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O'Donoghue
Review by Lucy Kent
‘My father is dying and I don’t know what to do about it.’
Charlie Regan is stuck. Lost in the timeless abyss: a parent dying, a acreer stalling. With a side hustle in amateur pornography and a job in a cafe, Charlie is determined to start living — but how can she move on when her dad might die in a week, a month, a year?
Colm Regan is the last of the gang to die. The lone survivor of the Clipim school accident, living out of the rest of his days in England. Charlie’s independent film ‘It Takes a Village’ chronicles Colm’s life and eventual death: her last chance at success and artistic credibility. When the Cork Film Festival picks up the feature, giving Charlie’s film career a last hurrah and the chance to understand her father’s past, her desperation is palpable. With one foot firmly in England, the other tentatively in her dad’s Irish roots, she returns to Ireland looking for some sort of resolution or at least, home comforts.
The past is a foreign country for Charlie, as is her present. Wrapped in layers of deception, false memories and her own expectations, her life is seemingly inaccessible and yet right in front of her. The sense of alienation in her own family tree often feels overwhelming — both hostile and welcoming. This unfamiliarity with her family —-‘My roots. It feels like an insane term to use. It sits in my mind, as foreign and waxy as a Hershey’s Bar’ —- questions wider notions of national identity.
Scenes of a Graphic Nature explores the open arms of Ireland: its promises of a green welcome, as well as the doors of its history that remain firmly shut. It runs towards unwritten elements of Irish history, fiercely embracing laundry houses, mass warehousing and church brutality: things that Clipim’s community would prefer to stay buried. The reality of Irish heritage is seemingly a cheque, yet to be cashed by Charlie. Through her, we question national identity, as she knocks, nudges, and then kicks down the door to her own Irish identity.
Scenes of a Graphic Nature is not an easy read. It battles head on with generational trauma alongside twenty first century womanhood. As Charlie sells amateur porn online, the classic dichotomy of sex and power is not lost on us: ‘I am the exact intersection between Madonna, schoolgirl and whore. I am the teenager on the bus that married men feel guilty about fancying.’ As the masses have seemingly taken to online sex work, the irony of a Charlie — a gay woman with a film degree — making pornography for men, speaks to the complexity of adult femininity.
The male-dominated history of Colm’s Ireland crashes into Charlie’s present. The overwhelming weight on her shoulders — ‘I’m thinking about the endless streams of fathers and sons, and how they all end of me, a gay woman who hasn’t had a long-term girlfriend since University,’ weighs on top of her queerness, sexuality, and artistry: a collision of two contrasting selves she has to reconcile.
Scenes of a Graphic Nature could have been a simpler novel. But, in its refusal to follow the expected trajectory of a prodigal return, it offers us intricate, layered humanity. Charlie Regan, in all her messy glory, is a protagonist we are willing to follow, from England to Ireland, from the past to present, and everything in between this world and the next.
Scenes Of a Graphic Nature is published by Virago, 6th August 2020
www.virago.co.uk/titles/caroline-odonoghue/scenes-of-a-graphic-nature/9780349009964/