The Review of Contemporary Fiction

More Bread or I'll Appear by Emer Martin
George O'Brien

Emer Martin. More Bread or I’ll Appear. Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 288 pp. $23.00.

Emer Martin’s second novel is, like her Breakfast in Babylon (1995), a road novel of sorts. But whereas the first novel dwelt on the troublesome stasis of life on the bum among the self-appointed wretched of the earth, More Bread or I’ll Appear is a wild goose chase. Or, seeing that the novel is a portmanteau of contemporary Irish themes (along with much, much more), maybe it should be called a Wild Goose chase. (The Wild Geese is the pet name given the Catholic aristocracy who went into exile at the end of the Williamite wars to become, in time, sources of international inspiration to those left behind.) Three hundred years later, Emer Martin gives us the story of Aisling, who is pursued around the world—or at least from Japan to the Mosquito Coast—by her sister, Keelin. She’s accompanied intermittently by an assortment of dilapidated siblings, whose stories intersect with, overlap and go against the grain of the main quest; the overall imaginative environment might be described as amphetamine-picaresque. All concerned are bankrolled by a Manhattan-based, whiskey-priest uncle, himself the long standing boy toy of a Jesuit gynecologist.
In Irish, aisling means vision. In this case, Aisling embodies the complete escapee: a gender-bending, multicultural, eco-fetishising, Third Worldist. She contains multitudes. But the rest of the characters can barely contain themselves and fall afoul of AIDS, OCD, Vegas mob justice, heroin, etc. However, if Keelin doesn’t go along with Aisling, she risks becoming like their deranged neighbor from childhood, whose signature phrase gives the novel its title. Narrative bustle, sweeping ambition, sensational events, exotic locales, long on opinion, short on thought: the phrase “the shallow pond and the finicky peacocks” proves hard to shake. [George O’Brien]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction More Bread or I'll Appear by Emer Martin George O'Brien Emer Martin. More Bread or I’ll Appear. Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 288 pp. $23.00. Emer Martin’s second novel is, like her Breakfast in Babylon (1995), a road novel of sorts. But whereas the first novel dwelt on the troublesome stasis of life on the bum among the self-appointed wretched of the earth, More Bread or I’ll Appear is a wild goose chase. Or, seeing that the novel is a portmanteau of contemporary Irish themes (along with much, much more), maybe it should be called a Wild Goose chase. (The Wild Geese is the pet name given the Catholic aristocracy who went into exile at the end of the Williamite wars to become, in time, sources of international inspiration to those left behind.) Three hundred years later, Emer Martin gives us the story of Aisling, who is pursued around the world—or at least from Japan to the Mosquito Coast—by her sister, Keelin. She’s accompanied intermittently by an assortment of dilapidated siblings, whose stories intersect with, overlap and go against the grain of the main quest; the overall imaginative environment might be described as amphetamine-picaresque. All concerned are bankrolled by a Manhattan-based, whiskey-priest uncle, himself the long standing boy toy of a Jesuit gynecologist. In Irish, aisling means vision. In this case, Aisling embodies the complete escapee: a gender-bending, multicultural, eco-fetishising, Third Worldist. She contains multitudes. But the rest of the characters can barely contain themselves and fall afoul of AIDS, OCD, Vegas mob justice, heroin, etc. However, if Keelin doesn’t go along with Aisling, she risks becoming like their deranged neighbor from childhood, whose signature phrase gives the novel its title. Narrative bustle, sweeping ambition, sensational events, exotic locales, long on opinion, short on thought: the phrase “the shallow pond and the finicky peacocks” proves hard to shake. [George O’Brien]

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