Brian Moore

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Moore, Brian (1921-1999), novelist. Born in Belfast into a Catholic family, he did not follow his father and elder brother into medicine, and after leaving St Malachy's College in 1938 joined the Air Raid Precautions Unit in 1940, an experience reflected in The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1965). In 1943 he enlisted in the British Ministry of War Transport, working in North Africa and, later, as a port official with the Allied occupation forces in Naples and Marseilles. Moore emigrated to Canada in 1948 and took citizenship in 1953. His experiences as a new immigrant, when he took uncongenial work as a proof-reader, gave him material for The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960). In 1951 he married Jacqueline Sirois; he moved to the USA in 1959, first to Long Island and New York, then to Malibu, California, where he lived with his second wife, Jean Denney, whom he married in 1967. In addition to novels, he has written short stories and film scripts. Judith Hearne (1955), republished as The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1956), The Feast of Lupercal (1957), and The Emperor of Ice-Cream, all novels set in Belfast, deal with the struggle to achieve personal autonomy in a narrowly religious and repressive society. The determinism of these first novels, in which individual identity is virtually overwhelmed by religious, social, and family pressures, is undercut in An Answer From Limbo (1962), I Am Mary Dunne (1968), and Fergus (1970). Set in North America, these works begin a reassessment, where responsibility for one's adult being cannot be deterministically apportioned to nurture. The quasi-fictional The Revolution Script, dealing with the kidnapping and murder of a Quebec politician, appeared in 1971 and the novella Catholics in 1972. The protagonist of The Mangan Inheritance (1979) confronts the image of what he could become were he to repudiate traditional familial values and follow his fantasy of artistic self-fulfilment. The Temptation of Eileen Hughes (1981) was followed by three novels involving different attitudes to religious belief and authority, Cold Heaven (1983), the historical novel Black Robe (1985), set in 17th-cent. Canada, and The Colour of Blood (1987), set in a Soviet bloc country. Lies of Silence (1990) and No Other Life (1993) embody Moore's concern with ethical questions in a political context. The first, a thriller set in the contemporary Ulster Troubles, centres on the moral dilemma of a man forced to drive a bomb to a human target while his wife is held hostage. In No Other Life, a retired white missionary priest examines his role in the education and rise of a messianic Caribbean leader. The novel is loosely based on contemporary events in Haiti. In The Statement (1995) Moore explores the mentality and the combination of patriotism and compromise that lead a Nazi sympathizer in Vichy France to collaborate with brutality. The Magician's Wife (1997) is concerned with showing the human cost of sacrificing personal integrity for vanity and ambition. When he died Moore was working on a novel dealing with the poet Rimbaud's years in the desert, after relinquishing his art.

Bibliography

Jo O'Donoghue, Brian Moore: A Critical Study (1990).

Quotes:

"There comes a point in many people's lives when they can no longer play the role they have chosen for themselves. When that happens, we are like actors finding that someone has changed the play."

"The world's made up of individuals who don't want to be heroes."

"Research is usually a policeman stopping a novel from progressing."

"The silent majority distrusts people who believe in causes."

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