To start towards the end of the book,in late 2019,following an assault by the Irish Professor,Ryckmans went to the emergency department of her nearest hospital. The Irish Professor was arrested and charged,but the charges were dismissed by the Downing Centre Local Court in April 2020 on the condition that the Irish Professor comply with a mental health treatment plan. “Trust,” Ryckmans said in an interview at the time,“is a nebulous concept.”
A little more than three years later,Ryckmans has produced this fine little gem of a book on the nebulous concept,grabbing the reader’s attention and imagination with her attention to the tiniest of details. One of the many lightly humorous touches in a story that deals with the bleakest of subjects – abuse,coercion,control,narcissism and corruption – is the nomenclature given to all the characters. Thus,we have an Important British Banker,the Almost Third Wife,the Clever Psychiatrist and the Playwright,to name but a few – giving a somewhat ironic twist to the concept of Happy Families.
Ryckmans has employed clever techniques for describing how she became enmeshed in a relationship that ended in violence and apprehended violence orders,exploring not only her personal involvement,but also the paper trail of disastrous jobs,grants unaccounted for and constant swindles – most of which are disturbingly ignored or swept under the carpet by the academic institutions taken in by the Irish Professor.
Trust is the currency the Irish Professor seems to believe he deals in,while seemingly oblivious to the fact that it is trust that he breaks over and over again.
The book opens on the remote island of Inishbofin off the west coast of Ireland after the death of the Irish poet and playwright Tom MacIntyre,who lived there for a few years in the early 1970s with a young woman American graduate student. The relationship didn’t last,but the romantic notion of life on a remote island continued to call in creatives,including the Irish Professor,who persuaded Ryckmans in early 2016 to accompany him to his beloved island. (An island where he will later buy land,not pay for it,start building a house and not complete it,and generally leave behind his usual trail of destruction.)