Customer Reviews

Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have read many books on the struggles in Northern Ireland but this book stands apart from them all. Toolis has the unique ability to remain both objective and passionate about this topic. As the subtitle suggests he truly gets into the soul of the IRA. His book is based on research, interviews and perosnal experiences that could have placed Toolis himself in harms way. Some may see this as a weakness, but Toolis's conclusions are clear. Prior to reading this book I knew a lot of facts about the struggles of the IRA. After reading Toolis's book I suddenly understood some of what created and continues to fuel these struggles. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Irish History, the history of the IRA or interested in the violent struggles that mark the 20th century.

Leaving this review short, I will say that "Rebel Hearts" is an amazing book. I believe that Kevin Toolis does an excellent job in telling the stories of individuals, families, and groups involved in the Troubles of Northern Ireland. I found his personal commentary made his stories more interesting. Not only is it a documentation of people's lives and experiences, but a first person account as well. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this topic, and even those who may not be.

I read _Rebel Hearts_ as part of my research for my senior thesis on the Northern Question and found it better than I ever imagined. While it does indeed profile the lives of particular IRA members (as already mentioned by other reviewers), it does so much more: it delves into the psychology of how and why the IRA exists and operates. To me, this is a much bigger issue than individual biographies, as good as they are. From the book's preface, Toolis is clear about his position: he foresees peace in Ireland only through "a transfer of power away from the British Crown." He explores Irish martyrdom, politics, history, and methodology, though I would caution that this book is no crash-course on Irish history. If you are looking to know more about that subject, _Rebel Hearts_ already presumes a fair amount of knowledge. (But Toolis does include a list of abbreviations at the beginning.) Toolis delves into the link between politics and religion without browbeating the reader and he thoroughly explains the deep-seated spiritual issues that accompany the political conflicts in Northern Ireland. His compelling conclusion at the book's close gave me goosebumps as I read it: "There will be peace in Ireland and it will be a republican peace." Here, here.

I have to disagree with the reviewer above who calls Toolis "infantile." Toolis has an honesty that I think makes Americans uncomfortable, especially when it comes from a nonfiction writer. Early on, for example, Toolis talks about masturbating as a teenager, & admits he hit on one of the women he was writing about. This honesty carries on through to the end, with Toolis admitting that listening to the taped confession of an IRA turncoat made him feel sick & filthy and finally confessing that he's a "constitutional republican" - sympathetic to the IRA's ends, but repulsed by its means.

The format of this book gets a little tiresome - increasingly long stretches of verbatim interview transcripts, punctuated by Toolis's own voice, which tends to sound overly dramatic. And it's hard to tell how representative any of Toolis's subjects are of the "bigger picture" in northern Ireland. But those are small criticisms when weighted against the insight imparted throughout the book.

One interesting note: I attended the first U.S. forum on the recently-approved "Good Friday" agreement. David Trimble & Sinn Fein & SDLP representatives were there, as were some Irish students, and they got into a debate over the still-unresolved murder of an Irish lawyer named Patrick Finucane - an apparently still hot issue, the history of which Toolis covers in detail.

Kevin Toolis, a British journalist of Irish heritage, provides an emotional personal account of the IRA as he visits the homeland of his ancestors and tries to find a rational interpretation. His own confusion about his opinions, however, never seems to be wholly resolved, so the reader must put that aside and merely enjoy the story he tells as if reading anecdotes about a highly interesting subject. The subtitle of the book, A Journey Into the IRA's Soul, should have been revised by the editor to read A Journalist Wrestles With His Soul. Fewer copies would have been sold, but the honesty would be there. Not that Toolis himself is dishonest, he is sometimes disturbingly candid about himself, going the extra mile to let his readers know in an entertaining way that he isn't to be confused with a fearless reporter. He talks about fears that prevent him from escorting the brave sister of a slain IRA Volunteer to her brother's death site, his fears that he may be killed at an IRA grave site and his concerns about his own safety while interviewing the IRA leader, Martin McGuinness, and admits his relief that the British recognize him as a journalist and don't confuse him with one of the Rebels he uses for his sources.

Having said that, one must value the personal accounts and direct quotations Toolis extracts from the Rebels and their relatives. The contempt of the occupying forces as they trample on the rights of the Irish, the personal taunts of the soliders against family members of slain IRA freedom fighters and the accounts of the families suffering under the Ulster regime rise above the minor diversions into Toolis's personal feelings, to allow a perceptive reader to get an understanding of the atmosphere. Another true value of the Toolis report lies in its attempt to sort the whole thing out for those who know little about the Irish troubles. A reader will be able to discern the difference between the various factions after reading Toolis, and will have a greater understanding of the complexities which so confuse the American public into thinking simplistically that the strife is sectarian. For those students of the issue, Toolis offers a valuable addition to the personal consequences of the broader picture.

This could have been a great book. The stories that the author tells and the individuals that he profiles are extremely engrossing in and of themselves. If the author had just stood back and told the stories, this would have been a much stronger book. Instead, he persistently interferes with self-loving asides, snide commentaries, and pointless and uninteresting personal anecdotes. No one's going to buy this book because they're interested in the life and times of Kevin Toolis. But that's what we get far too often. This modern concept that every author has to express his opinions and feelings ad nauseam has got to go! A strong editor should have gone through this book and eliminated every sentence in which the word "I" appears in reference to the author. That would include the entire first chapter, in which Toolis tells about his summer holidays as a child (?!), Toolis' embarrassing and pathetic attempt to date the sister of a dead IRA volunteer, the entire last chapter, in which Toolis gives his grand conclusions on the situation, and every attempt at historical analysis. It's really just too much for an effete British journalist, who seems to consider "working-class" an epithet, to spend page after page attacking the likes of Pearse when he's not busy looking down on anyone of lesser social status. Even author Tim Pat Coogan (all of whose books are highly recommended), who probably knows more about modern Irish history than any other author alive, has the good sense to let the facts speak for themselves. That being said, the stories in this book are all very interesting and well told. The book is basically a series of unrelated essays profiling different individuals and families within the Republican Movement and the IRA. Toolis' snide commentaries aside, the people he profiles, through their principled dedication to justice and equality, even at extreme personal risk, make their cases quite well.

Rebel Hearts outlines the conflict in Northern Ireland with specific focus on a time known as The Troubles. The book opens with the assassination of High Court Judge William Doyle. That event, more or less, sets the tone for an intimate look at the IRA, its active members, methods, and associated misery. The chapter called "Brothers" (which is my favorite) is about brothers in the literal sense. The Finucane family embodies the republican struggle with various members being indifferent, supportive, or actively involved in the hot and cold ends of the conflict. The murder of Patrick Finucane, a lawyer, gets to the core of the problem. It's a multi-faceted, protracted war of bullets, bombs, guerrilla tactics, riots, religious animosity and apartheid, legal maneuvering, injustice, long prison terms, hunger strikes, political posturing, murder, accidental deaths, atrocities, militant funerals, fortified border zones, counter insurgency, dispossession, and smoldering grievances from a bygone (but omnipresent) era of colonialism and subjugation. Yes, this is just one book about one segment of an age-old conflict. It's not comprehensive, and perhaps not even the best book on the subject (as other reviews have noted). But it is a very good book, well written, easy to read, nicely organized, and informative. It opens windows into the soul of the IRA and the painful conflict in Northern Ireland.

Early in the book, the author gives us a beautiful description of his ancestral homeland and the austere lives of his pastoral relatives. That's the true seed of the author's republican heart. Subsequent chapters are variations on a theme and hang together nicely. Some parts of the book are riveting, liked the escape from Long Kesh maximum security prison. Some of the statistics are horrific, for example, 1,382 bombings in 1972. And some facts are astounding, like the amount of money and men that the Crown has used to support and defend Northern Ireland. The main characters are different in each chapter. Toolis gives us an up-close and personal view of these people: The defender Tony Doris, the Finucane brothers, the volunteer Frankie Ryan, the informer Patrick Flood, the chieftain Martin McGuinness, the martyr Joe MacManus, and their mothers, wives, widows, sisters, and girlfriends. This is the first book I've read about this conflict. It's not an academic book, but I feel more educated for having read it. I've also read Trinity by Leon Uris, which is historical fiction, but still a good book. Additional books on this subject will likely land in my Amazon cart such as Making Sense of the Troubles or something by Tim Pat Coogan. In any case, Kevin Toolis has given us an excellent book.

I first of all would have to disagree with those who found Toolis' asides about family vacations and his personal feelings to be a bad thing. I thought those insights provided a look into the author's mind and to an extent allowed the reader to take into consideration, his biases in the book. Furthermore, I found the book to be hard to put down. The accounts offered by Toolis give a real quality to the generalizations found in most texts about "The Troubles." These accounts illustrated the "madness" of both sides in their unending struggle.

I started the book deeply against the IRA's methods and ended the book just as deeply against them.

However, what the book did do for me is, I think, begin to understand why people who in a more normal society would be "normal" members of that society, turn to violence and the rank hypocrisies of the IRA.

In the years of the conflict the British have perpetrated one panicky and senseless massacre - Bloody Sunday - and jumpy soldiers have killed a few innocents. Mass hysteria in the UK after the IRA killed 20+ innocent people in a pub (2 Bloody Sunday's worth) wrongly imprisoned some people - and for the only time during my life those bombings fuelled a really nasty antipathy by the British against the Irish for a few months. This has fed the myth of British evil. On the other side the IRA claims it is fighting a war, but when the British Army has reacted as a real army (the SAS ambushes, Gibraltar) the IRA has called foul AND when it has captured a Brit , it has hardly applied the Geneva convention.

So, having said that, it shows how deep the roots of the conflict go and how they are based on emnities that are intensely parochial. It brings out the essentially class based membership of the IRA based in very inward looking communities that appear to have no real idea that the Evil Brits have no greater wish for Northern Ireland than to get out of it. Fear of the Protestants and a reluctance to use its full military might (since it will only "lose" politically) has let this situation persist for 25+ years. The book also shows that until the Protestants are faced down or get outvoted and some political action occurs that pushes Ulster into a united Ireland, the campaign will continue. Of course if the British do that, then the protestants will turn on the British too....

An excellent, but sobering and depressing read.

Because of his background Kevin Toolis can probably not so the same job on the Protestants, but there is a need for a book of equal quality

I am not at all Irish but have been reading about Ireland's history since high school. After reading alot about the Rising and past history, I was looking for something that tells of more recent accounts in the land. Rebel Hearts was it. The stories are excellent and left the way they happened. Toolis was not afraid to leave commentary run on. If that is how long an interview lasted then that is how it was written. I did not find this book bias either wich is always a plus for me. My only problem was getting lost in a few places. Seemed like a story would jump around from beginning to end back to beginning. Maybe this was just my error though.