Spanning fifty years, The Red Mouth follows four people whose lives are influenced by the discovery of a preserved corpse in an Irish peat bog in the 1970s, and a pair of enormous antlers decades later.
Since the banning of peat-harvesting, the bog has become a nature reserve where Tomás works as a ranger. It was Tomás who helped Liam Fleming with the discovery of the Belroe Woman using the peat cutting skills that were soon to become redundant. As their father grew in professional stature, Brigit and Laoise move away from the life Brigit remembers when she visits the new museum installation, celebrating her father’s work and legacy, now housing a reconstruction of a stag using antlers pulled from the bog by Patch. Maeve’s contribution has been assisting research into new finds, using the contacts from her environmental studies, a contribution that may foster a newfound if frail confidence.
Full of gorgeous, poetic descriptions of the natural world, almost hallucinatory in the final section, Armstrong’s novel follows an annual cycle, switching between the four main protagonists, unfolding their back stories within the framework of the peat bog excavations, each of them changed by what was found there. A striking, immersive novel which I hope to see on this year’s literary prize lists.

This is a story about two discoveries made in an Irish Peat Bog- antlers from an ancient Elk and the body of a young woman brutally killed two millennia ago - known as the Belroe Woman. It is the location of the bog and its hidden secrets that the key context for this haunting and poetic novel.

Over a period it follows four characters whose lives are impacted upon by the peat bog and the discoveries and the book progresses their stories begin to intertwine and connect building up the impact of the world associated to the Bog.

The man who discovered the antler reflects upon his life and his need to unearth this mysterious form; the person whilst cutting peat discovers the woman's body finds her existence permeates within and haunts; the daughter of the archaeologist who works on the body finds her life overshadowed by the ancient corpse and a young scientist feels herself drawn back to her roots.

There is a melancholic thread that imbues the novel- the sense of sinking within the peat bog - a dark pull into this past world and a disconnection from the present day.

Sheila Armstrong's writing powerfully pulls us into each life and vividly creates the brooding atmosphere of the landscape.

Intriguing and brooding- a novel full of imagery that will linger

Thank you to Bloomsbury Circus publishing and Netgalley for the advance copy.

"This has been here all along, she thinks, and it is a strange thought: that the world exists without observation, that violence does not burn itself out."

Sheila Armstrong's second novel, The Red Mouth, is told from the point of view of four characters preoccupied in some way with two sets of discoveries generations apart from the same bog - a landmark discovery of "Belroe Woman" and later one stag, then a herd.

The nature of the discoveries as well as the wider reception to them is varied, with attitudes and narratives shifting over time. I went into this book expecting something a little like Falling Animals, which is a kaleidescope of voices converging on the discovery of an unknown dead man sitting on a beach in Sligo. There is overlap between the two novels; a discovery, a mystery, changing points of view and tension between those narratives as well as preoccupations with nature and the deterioration of the natural world, violence and trauma.

However, while Falling Animals allows for the reader to flit from impression to another, capturing glimpses from a community as a whole, The Red Mouth asks us to sit with the same characters over a period of time, to watch carefully as their stories unfold at the same time as the story of Belroe Woman shifts in the public imagination.

This is a clever choice for this particular novel which slowly uncovers buried secrets time and again, and while the story remains on shifting, uneasy ground, there is a certain catharsis for the reader. When it comes to the past, an archaeologist in the novel tells us, uncertainty is not a weakness. In that moment, we are invited to let go - of our focus on getting to the bottom of some mystery, of imposing our own narrative to the unearthed bodies and the wounds that haunt the landscape and those who live on it - and understand that we cannot bend history or nature or other people to our will.

The mastery of this novel sits not only in the incredible attention to detail and satisfying turns of phrase or keen observations, but in the ability to weave together disparate strands and offer a satisfying ending, even if it isn't the one we expect, or what a less ambitious writer felt they should give us. I was brought to tears in sitting with that uncertainty and wonder, and appreciating again the overwhelming power and beauty of Armstrong's writing.