Holiday in Milwaukee

>> Simon Kerr's The Rainbow Singer is a killer debut

by JULIET WATERS

These are some of the things Irish "Prod" teenager Wil Carson wants to do while on an exchange program in Milwaukee, in the summer of 1985. "See Van Halen live from the back of a pink Cadillac wearing a Green Bay Packers helmet and stuffing a burger into my gob whilst getting a blow job from three naked sorority girls..."

These are some of the things he will do instead: hang at the mall, fall in love with a soulful Irish Catholic girl, ride a motorcycle, be visited in his dreams by the Fonz, show off his terrorist training at the shooting range, confess his involvement in atrocities that would have most 14 year olds waking up every night in a cold sweat, befriend an American teenage sociopath, and worse.

The Rainbow Singer, Simon Kerr's first novel, is timely and provocative. It tells the story of an exchange program designed by Americans clueless to the point of negligence. The "Rainbow of Hope" brings together 10 Irish Catholic and 10 Irish Protestant teenagers from Belfast. The idea being that if they can see how things are in a peaceful, freedom-loving country, they will return with the spirit of fraternal love.

In Wil's words "I was sold the Rainbow of Hope on the last Sunday in the pissing wet May of 1985. Yeah, it's been 15 long years, first in Lincoln Hills School for Juvenile Offenders and then in Green Bay Correctional Institution, but I can still say what May day it was."

It never occurs to anyone that a kid who's grown up in a war zone might have something to teach an over-stimulated, restless American teen with easy access to guns.

What starts out as a funny Irvine-Welsh-type soliloquy told by Wil from his prison cell, slowly evolves into a deeply tragic, intense situation that resonates long after you've finished the book. The way Kerr grapples with the male psyche may remind some readers of Russell Banks. The sensitivity with which he deals with even the most repugnant characters may remind moviegoers of Boys Don't Cry.

What nobody knows it that young Wil is a trained terrorist for the UFF (Ulster Freedom Fighters). A boys' night out for him and his mates back home is throwing molotov cocktails into the upstairs bedrooms of a Catholic family. A bad boys' night out can result in worse, but that's a story best left for him to tell.

At the same time, Wil's a teenager, however violent and twisted his mind's become. The same kind of goofy, humbling things happen to him as any other teenage boy: first crushes, humiliating hard-ons, overwhelming naïve passions for anything cool. On his last day of freedom he dons a KISS T-shirt.

If he's a sociopath, it's debatable how much choice he's had in becoming one; his father was a bigot, as was his grandfather. "There is another choice to loyalty," Wil explains. "Excommunication, Group Death, the removal of approval, and with it the protection of others. But that is not something a 14 year old could rightly be expected to choose is it?"

Wil's story raises serious questions about the moral accountability any boy at a time in his life when the tendency to terrorize is so clearly coming from his own terror. Kerr lets Wil be what he is, without pity or sentimentality: a bigoted thug. But he also allows him to make a compelling case for his innocence.

Some people will buy Wil's argument, some won't. Either way this remains a heartbreaking story about how easy it is to manipulate adolescents to serve the ends of adult power. Whether that power comes from extreme right wing hatred, or naïve detached liberalism, it's still too common for adults to walk away from the consequences of their "projects."

The Rainbow Singer by Simon Kerr, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pb, 233pp, $22.95