Neil Hegarty’s Inch Levels tells the story of a sister, brother-in-law, and mother gathered around a young man’s deathbed. In a nonlinear, stream of consciousness style, Hegarty unfolds the family’s secrets.

World War Two and the Troubles form a haunting dual backdrop for the two narratives unraveled in this tale. Sarah Jackson, the family matriarch, was a clever, bright young girl during the war. As an adult, she is a woman whose emotions have long been buried and locked tightly beneath the surface, a mother who finds herself incapable of showing any feeling toward her children. Patrick, her dying son, Margaret, her subdued daughter, and Robert, her angry son-in-law, are children and young adults during the height of the Troubles, and there is a harrowing sense of normalcy and acceptance of the bombs and rampant violence.

Even more than a powerful history of the turbulence in Derry, Inch Levels is a pointed exploration of the thorny dynamics of family, of the juxtaposition of cruelty and loyalty of siblings, of the lasting impact of trauma and abuse, of the ripple effects of a mother’s absent or withheld love. Hegarty’s grasp of the internal landscapes of his characters is impeccable, and each narrator’s thoughts and emotions are authentically and skillfully rendered.

Hegarty’s writing style is literary and poetic, filled with vivid detail and keenly human observations. Inch Levels is a grim, bleak tale, filled with the fraught malice of family, but ending on a faint strain of hope and reconciliation.

Highly recommended for fans of literary fiction that explore family dynamics and the troubled history of Derry.