Kingdom of Scars

By Eoin C Macken


Book Review and Thoughts

On the face of it Sam is a scowling, belligerent, adolescent with an arrogant gait who'd make you want to cross the road to avoid him. Kingdom of Scars prizes open Sam's fabricated facade, revealing the complex and surprisingly sensitive workings of a teenage boy's mind as he stumbles down the potholed path of first sexual encounters, negotiates local bullies and struggles, above all else, for the acceptance of his peers. 

Eoin Macken's vivid prose paints a detailed picture of adolescent life on the outskirts of a pre-mobile phone Dublin. He offers the reader a 'no holds barred' window into the world of a group of seeming rebels without a cause, who vie and buck for attention and standing amongst themselves. Macken grabs your attention and your heart and leads you on Sam's gripping voyage of self-discovery and his route to coming of age.

Men and older boys will relate to this book and women and girls will have their eyes opened by it. This book transported me back to a time when all senses were heightened and my own fumbling mistakes were recalled with both horror and delight. It's a fabulously good read.

I wrote the above review for Amazon, here are some more thoughts that were stirred up by this debut novel:

We all carry scars. Like the one on your forehead from the time when, aged three, you got in the way as your mum took your beloved scooter out of the boot. Or the one on your calf that you wore with pride, excruciatingly branded there by the burning exhaust pipe of the boy-next-door's motorbike, who, incidentally, you were forbidden to ride with. Or the one from the time you walked in on the first 'love of your life' and found him doing unspeakable things with two of your 'besties'. 

Sometimes its the invisible scars that last the longest, some fade over time but others stand proud forevermore. Your scars are like a roadmap leading to the spot marked 'You Are Here'. Sam is fifteen and collecting a few scars.

I have to admit that a book about a fifteen year old boy and his tribulations with peers and girls would not normally be my 'go to' subject matter for literary distraction. Boys of that age are and were fairly much a mystery to me, and my own adolescence was an eon ago. Besides, I'm shrewd: I do have self-imposed amnesia in place for reasons you know! I'm sure everyone does to varying extents, especially regarding adolescence which is surly the most awkward, crimson-blush inducing stage in life, when everything is chaotic, erupting and messy and during which time we have to get things (horribly) wrong before we get them right. So, yes, if Kingdom of Scares had not been written by Eoin, I doubt I would have picked it up. 

That's not to say I'm overly discerning when it comes to book genres as all I ask of a book is simply vivid language and a good story. Eoin delivers both these criteria using finely distilled words in his poetry, a hard hitting vignette to set up tone and scene, and an effortless style employing phonetic colloquialisms. He has a particular flare for describing mixed up feelings with brutal, visceral attacks on the emotions. Some of Eoin's prose is deceptively innocuous and it is these subtlety delivered sentences that provide the heaviest blows: As Sam is under threat of being beaten up and is being pulled down by several pairs of hands, he contemplates unzipping his coat to slip away and resigns himself to losing it: "It was a nice jacket that his mother had given him for Christmas to keep him warm on nights like this". This knocked me right back to the anguish of causing my own mother pain and disappointment, due to my direct or indirect actions. There are a lot of examples in this book that awake teenage feelings from their slumber - and I don't mean pictorial memories here - I mean genuine feelings in sudden flashback that linger and which I am actually still savouring.

I have problems with my identity and I loved this passage which is heavy with social comment: 
"Sam's voice changed when he was with the lads. He spoke more like them with the odd inflections, dropping of consonants at the end of words and screwed-up grammar". 
Oh boy, I did that back then and I sometimes do it now! Its all a bid to fit in. Of course Eoin has made a career of this ability, and its the gift of vivid recollection and his acute observational skills that stand him in the highest good stead in acting, writing and film-making. Sam's ardent endeavours to be accepted by his local gang is heartbreaking, and the gang humiliate him, taking cruel pleasure in his discomfort and alienation, only ceasing to chide momentarily in order to take advantage of him for the things that they need, like his sailing knowledge to get them a night on an island. Sometimes one of the gang throws him a bone, leaving him confused when it is whipped away. Boys huh? 

It's with the benefit of a long life that I realise that Jayo, Jesse, Mouse and Washing Machine are all going through the similar raging hormone-fuelled feelings as Sam is, and victimise him due to their own inadequacies and petty jealousies. The things that Sam has in his advantage is a mentor/councillor in Don, his own innate compassion and also pretty darn cool parents I think. Not everyone does. What's interesting and confusing is that at times Sam is willing to shelve his compassion for the sake of manly appearance and the acceptance of the group. Boys will do this, and girls may be hurt be it, its a lesson the book quietly teaches. Boys are programmed that way and there's not much you or they can do about it, until through time and experience they find their footing and realise what is and isn't important. This is what coming of age is. Of course all of this is utterly debatable, and we all mature to varying degrees.... if at all.

And so we move on to the subject of girls. For an only child at an all boys school, girls seem like a species apart to Sam. Beautiful, exotic, confident and unattainable, he just doesn't know how to deal with them. Sam is ardent to please his first loves and makes fumbling mistakes that are sweet and endearing and, well, he likes puppies and just wants to be with the cool kids and have a girl of his own. He doesn't realise he is the cool kid, which is killer charming, so I defy you not to fall in love with him! Yep, the girl-boy encounters in Kingdom of Scars are vivid, awkward and again reminded me of my own experiences, not uncomfortably so I might add, but with heady nostalgia for a time when the good feelings were so very very good, and it took but a look or a brush of the hand to have me walking on air for a week.

The following line delighted me for the image it gives of pure undiluted teenage boy:

"Antoinette looked at him, her lip curling upwards in the bemused grin that only beautiful women can properly do, and Sam felt his self-esteem drop down through his chest and fix itself solidly inside his left foot, giving him an instant limp."

I have never read a book that tackles boys feelings at that age, it's an eye opener and I wish I'd had it to read back in the day. One of the best things about this book is that it made me think about the boy/girl encounters at that age again, and I need to do this because I'm a mum. At that age feelings and sensibilities run deep whatever your gender, you all go through basically the same emotions, think the same things, make the same mistakes, only you don't know it at the time. I have kids who are not in their teens yet, but they will be before I know it. I'm liberal with them, no subject is off limits or embarrassing (not for me at least ha ha); we talk openly about everything under the sun, unlike in my day. When the time is right I'll be handing Kingdom of Scars over to my kids, it will help them to see that they're not the only ones, and that eventually, they will find their own path, with or without the acknowledgement of their peers.

Kingdom of Scars is a stunning first novel which gives glimpses of promise of more and greater writing to come. Eoin crawls back under the skin of a teenager and made Sam get under my skin. I picked up a new book shortly after having finished KOS, but I had to put it down again as it felt like a betrayal! I wanted to savour Sam longer, I genuinely missed him and I can't wait to get more of him. 

Sometimes I wonder what Eoin Macken is first: actor, writer, film-maker, whatever. I've come to the conclusion that he is all of the above, in no particular order. There is something he always is though, in whichever guise he's wearing, and that's a storyteller.