The Slowworms Song by Andrew Miller

This is another of the books of fiction on the Wall Street Journal's list of the 10 Best Books of 2022. Set in 2011, this is more a lengthy confessional letter than a novel. The narrator, Stephen, is writing to his 26-year-old daughter Maggie. He is a 51-year-old recovering alcoholic who has been summoned to Belfast from his home in Somerset by a body known as the Commission. The letter assures Stephen that this is not about bringing anyone to trial, but giving those involved in an incident that took place 30 years ago an opportunity to tell their side of the story. In short, the past is being dragged into the light. We know something terrible happened during Stephen’s service with the British army in Northern Ireland as a young man; the promise of learning what happened is the carrot that entices us through this somber examination of shame, guilt and the long aftershocks of trauma. While inching up to the tragic event that has blackened his life and led him to ruinous drinking, we hear about Stephen’s past and present. He works at a garden store named Plant World and fitfully studies English literature on an Open University course. He comes from a family of Quakers and is semi-estranged from Maggie and her mother Evie. At the tail-end of an adolescence marked by alienation and aggression, he enlisted for the army, with devastating consequences. It is a book that reminds us that trauma has a long memory for both the victims and the perpetrators.