The Spinning Heart

Lloyd is Trevor’s closest friend, and like Trevor, he suffers from delusions. He considers himself a solipsist, or a person who believes that “I am alone in the universe; the universe is created by me and for me and nothing exists outside of my consciousness” (105). Lloyd kidnapped Réaltín’s son, Dylan, because Trevor asked him to. Lloyd believes that Trevor is only a figment of his imagination; therefore, Lloyd thinks that he himself wanted to kidnap Dylan. Lloyd tries to make himself not feel bad about this, because “I have to not care about the feelings I ascribe to my creations. Why did I do this to myself, cripple myself with consciousness?” (105).

Lloyd dreams about killing Dylan, and this worries him because it means that he could actually do it in real life. He’s worried that he might get caught, but then he remembers that nothing outside of himself is real. Everything beyond himself is really “inside forces; the things I’m afraid of are the weak parts of myself that I have to deal with” (107). 

Rory, Bobby’s best friend, was excited at the possibility of working with Bobby on environmentally sound insulation. Because Bobby is now in jail, Rory is planning on going to London to work despite his parents’ objections. Unlike many other people in town, Rory knows that Bobby didn’t cheat on Triona with Réaltín. Rory says that if “Angelina Jolie gave [Bobby] the come-on he’d leave her hanging. He’s like a fucking priest, so he is” (109). However, he assumes that Bobby must have killed Frank: “He was a bad yoke, Bobby’s da, a real twisted old fucker. Bobby must have finally had enough of his shit” (109).

Rory wishes he were more like Bobby: “I haven’t that thing that he has in him that makes all that stuff easy and makes people believe he can do it. […] Something that makes you know he was born to give orders, not take them” (110).

While looking at a poster for an upcoming rock show, an attractive girl approaches Rory, and they talk about music. The girl gives him her number and says that he should call her if he’s going to the show. He decides that he will never call her because he can’t go to the show alone, and he’s terrified that he’ll disappoint her. He decides that instead, “I’ll be in town next week. I’ll stand looking at the same poster, for a gig that will be over, wondering about the odds of her appearing again” (113). When she doesn’t show up, he’ll feel stupid and delete her number.

Millicent is Lily’s granddaughter, and the daughter of Lily’s estranged son. Millicent is a young girl who often witnesses her parents fighting over “Mammy” working full time while “Daddy” stays home with Millicent. However, Millicent’s father hopes to find a job once Millicent goes back to school at the end of summer (116). Everyone in town is “scared of the Children Snatcher Monster,” now that Dylan’s been kidnapped, and Millicent’s parents often fight about Daddy’s lack of babysitting skills: “Mammy said sure I don’t know what way you mind her when I do be at work, sure you’re an awful eejit, you could let her run out onto the road or anything” (117). If the child snatcher comes, Millicent will hide under her covers rather than scream for her parents because she doesn’t want them arguing over her anymore.

Denis is Kate’s husband, and he has been lying in bed in the fetal position for days. Kate thinks he’s sick, but he’s paralyzed with guilt for killing Bobby’s father. He did it because an uncontrollable anger had been building in him for a long time—from everything with Pokey and the hostility between Denis and Kate, and because they lost their only source of income, the nursery, after Dylan’s kidnapping.

Denis wanted to question Bobby about Pokey, which is why Denis went to Bobby’s father’s house. When Denis gets there, it’s clear that the old man “was expecting his son. I didn’t know until then that I had a length of timber in my hand, I swear on my life” (124). When Bobby’s father sees him, he laughs, and his “laugh reminded me of my own father, the time I came home […] and he told me I was nothing but a useless cunt” (124). Denis says that as he killed Frank, he “thought I was killing my own father, just for them two or three seconds” (125). 

Mags is Josie’s daughter and Pokey’s sister. She is no longer close to her father because he’s ashamed that she’s a lesbian. She first realized his shame during a family and friends gathering. She brought her girlfriend, Ger, and was talking about how “Man holds the key to wiping out the disease, in his enquiring mind and insatiable appetite for knowledge” (128). Her father interrupted her, saying, “You’re all about man all of a sudden, aren’t you? I thought your crowd was always down on man” (129).

When her father referred to “your crowd,” she knew that he was talking about lesbians. Mags is hurting ever since that moment because she had always been so close to her father. Thanks to Ger, Mags understands what happened that day: “[P]arents have a vision for their children and their disappointment when that vision isn’t realized can manifest itself in anger” (130). Mags’ father is “drowning in prejudice,” but she wants him “to remember how he loved me. I want him to know I’m still his little girl” (131). 

Jim, Bridie’s brother, took Bridie’s son fishing the day her son drowned. He’s a cop, and lately he can’t sleep because he’s too worried about Réaltín’s kidnapped son, Dylan: “All I think about is that little boy, and where in the name of God he could be. I lie there under a sheet of sweat and wonder is there a sort of a balance, a symmetry that the universe must achieve, the way water must always find its level” (133).

He participates in a daily search party for Dylan. While there is no luck there, Jim may have a lead: Timmy comes into Jim’s office and says he heard a man in town saying weird things about a missing child. From the description, he knows Timmy is talking about Lloyd, and he has “a feeling that that twitchy prick and the Montessori teacher are kind of, I don’t even know how to put it—the same, sort of, like they’re the same type of fella” (136). Jim has a feeling that Trevor and Lloyd are both involved, and he has a similar feeling that Bobby didn’t kill Frank. 

Frank is Bobby’s father, and this chapter is told from Frank’s posthumous perspective. Frank provoked Denis on the day Denis killed Frank: “I always had a knack for hitting people where it hurt. Sometimes it was as if the words were whispered into my ear by the devil himself” (140). After Frank dies, Frank looks down at Bobby standing next to Frank’s limp body and says, “You’re a good man, Bobby” (140).

Frank thinks he’s been dead for a month but can’t be sure. He supposes he’s in limbo because he hasn’t left the house since he died: “I’d say I’m meant to be contemplating my life and feeling sorry for my wrongdoing” (141). He hasn’t had much time to think as he’s preoccupied with the commotion around his death, including the autopsy and Bobby’s visits. He can’t understand why Bobby doesn’t tell the truth: Bobby didn’t kill Frank.

Frank wonders “is this meant to be punishment, to be confined to this cottage where I lived my whole life and where my father lived before me” (141). He wonders why his father—a mean, violent man—isn’t there, too. As a young boy, Frank told his father about his perfect test score, eager to make him proud. Instead of praising Frank, his father beats Frank with a pipe. His father tells him that Frank knows nothing and that “pride is a deadly sin” (144). Frank was unduly critical of Bobby, wanting to teach him the same lessons he learned from his father. Though Frank was never physically violent with Bobby, Frank was verbally abusive. 

Triona is Bobby’s wife. Her chapter opens with an anecdote about her Auntie Bernadette:

[She] liked things to be unadorned and liturgically correct. Like the rough cross she had my cousin Coley carve from a limestone block. Coley wanted to smooth it and add Celtic rings and swirls to its front (146).

Coley spends an entire day perfecting the flourishes, but when Bernadette sees him, she “smacked him into the side of his head, sending his chisel flying from his hand and his sinful pride flying from his heart” (146). When she walks away, he calls her a “Fucking old c-cunt” under his breath, and Triona thinks, “I suddenly saw beauty in him, as the darkness of anger and frustration threw his angular jaw and blazing eyes into sharper relief. I’ve always needed to be shocked into awareness” (147).

Triona is first drawn to Bobby because he’s the “first person to ever remind me of Coley. Like Coley, he’d never have said the things the other lads around here would say” (147). Just like Coley, she sees “fear, doubt, shyness, [and] sadness” in him brought on from a childhood deprived of tenderness. Triona’s family thought Bernadette was too harsh and critical of Coley: “Coley didn’t survive Bernadette’s terrible reign over his childhood. At a tender, gangly fourteen he hung himself from the branch of an elder in their back garden that looked hardly stout enough to hold his weight.” (147).

Triona doesn’t believe the rumors in town that Bobby is cheating on her with Réaltín; Triona knows that Bobby would never betray her. She also doesn’t care if Bobby murdered his own father. She knows she’d lie for him: “Why wouldn’t I? I’d use the same Good Book that Bernadette used to bruise poor Coley’s soul” (148).

Triona has never pushed Bobby to talk about his past, but she “knew his pain was there and that I’d help him with it and there was no rush, no need to tell me anything until he wanted to” (148). She admits that she hated Frank because of how he treated Bobby, and she admits “I constantly compared Frank to my own father and felt an awful, hollow bitterness at Frank’s continued existence” (151). Her father was self-sacrificing and loving, and he adored Bobby.

Jim finds Dylan and follows Timmy’s hunch that Trevor and Lloyd are the kidnappers: “The child’s little body was covered in weird marks when he was found a few days ago: pentagrams and crosses and lines from poems and drawings of naked people, all in permanent marker, like tattoos drawn by a lunatic” (155). When Triona tells Bobby the good news, he cries and doesn’t say a word. The novel ends with Triona saying to Bobby: “oh love; oh love, what matters now? What matters only love?” (156).