When Rónán Hession’s debut novel Leonard and Hungry Paul was published back in 2019, it struck a chord with a lot of people (me included). Here was a feel-good, funny book which tackled masculinity and enforced the value of being kind, yet in no way was the novel saccharine or condescending. Slowly Leonard and Hungry Paul started gathering word of mouth popularity, eventually becoming Irish Book of the Year. Timing is always important, and that book brought me some solace during lockdown.
Rónán Hession is clearly a person who does not repeat himself. His 2021 novel Panenka was about heavy topics such as trauma, mental illness and imposter syndrome. Once again, his deft pen treated such issues with tenderness.
Ghost Mountain, published in 2024 is Rónán Hession’s latest and his most ambitious to date. It all starts with a mountain appearing out of nowhere.
To say that the mountain was this or that. To ascribe it physical or metaphysical characteristics. To describe it in a way that separated it from everything that was not it – these are all habits of the human mind, and so, it could justifiably be said that all and any such remarks described the describer more than Ghost Mountain. Ghost Mountain had no mind. It did not describe itself. It had no self or self-view. Ghost Mountain was Ghost Mountain.
From there, the mountain initiates a chain of events which spans decades. There’s a small clutch of characters who are particularly affected by the Ghost Mountain, and the cynical Ocho and his wife Ruth, who is enamoured by Ghost Mountain.
Ghost Mountain impressed her. The feeling of Ghost Mountain impressed her. The idea of Ghost Mountain impressed her. She could see herself clearly on Ghost Mountain. Ordinarily, her mind was like a zorbing ball and it felt like she was trapped and bouncing around inside it. But on Ghost Mountain, she felt like her mind had no boundary. This impressed her also. But what impressed her the most was the way Ghost Mountain had appeared. Not that it had appeared suddenly. Not that it had appeared mysteriously. What impressed her most was that it had appeared and had no message.
Ruth is the first protagonist to feel enlightened by the mountain but eventually her interaction with it triggers many chain reactions which alters many destinies.
Other characters include the town drunk, a retired art teacher, The Clerk of Maps, his wife and the Town Butcher, who serves as a kind of sage.
For the first time, Elaine (the retired art teacher) began to understand likeness in her painting. It was not about recording what somebody looked like so that they could always look that way. It was about capturing a moment of change. A simultaneous moment of change in the subject and in the artist.
Change is central to Ghost Mountain’s plot. Rónán Hession has publicly stated that he is a fan of Japanese literature, and I felt that Asian philosophy permeates this novel. In western thought, time moves in a linear fashion; in Asia time moves in a circular way. Throughout Ghost Mountain these characters marry, have children, split up, die and then as time passes, the next generation of characters go through the same cycle, There’s a lot of repetition of certain motifs: incisor teeth tend to get knocked out, a theodolite (it’s a land surveying instrument used for measuring angles) frequently makes an appearance, and characters walki around Ghost Mountain.
Rónán Hession has a knack of capturing humanity at it’s best and worst. At times Ghost Mountain is a dour novel which displays the duality of people. No one is perfect in this book! All There are also moments of kindness.
I also applaud Rónán Hession for not spoon-feeding his readers. There are little details which are connected to a certain character, and they are revealed in an offhand way which gives the book some twists.
What is Ghost Mountain about? I saw it as a novel which deals with time and how history has a knack of repeating itself. Ghost mountain itself is merely a MacGuffin [an object or device in a film or a book which serves merely as a trigger for the plot]: the real focus is on these perfectly imperfect protagonists.
At times, this is a book about hope and resilience and how to face problems and cope with change. Either way things do have a knack of fixing themselves maybe not how we like them, but they do.
I’m not the biggest fan of comparisons but lest people think that Ghost Mountain is a self-help book, it’s not. At times I was reminded of Japanese author Shūsaku Endō’s novel, Deep River, where a group of tourists see the Ganges, which indirectly influences each character’s destiny – although a Catholic Shūsaku Endō also included the Asian philosophy into his works.
Ghost Mountain may not have the feel good factor of Rónán Hession’s earlier novels but it’s more complex and layered. There are slapstick moments but it’s more of a breather. Ghost Mountain is the one which dives into humanity, including its ugly factor. Each chapter is between two and three pages, but they are deceptively simplistic – there’s a lot which will leave the reader thinking. Ghost Mountain is a novel which will provoke the reader into thinking and displays a more mature Rónán Hession.
And Ghost Mountain was Ghost Mountain