Stones Corner: Turmoil
Reedsy Discovery, July 2021
Must Read 🏆
5 stars Plus, beautifully written, heart-wrenching saga of Northern Ireland troublesAfter Bloody Sunday, things are still volatile in Northern Ireland. The British forces in Derry, exhausted from lack of success, are zealous for payback. Private Robert Sallis is in his barracks, trying to understand the hatred with which he and his mates are daily bombarded.
19-year-old Caitlin McLaughlin is terrified by the sounds of invading helicopters. The Brits already have her brother Martin, who’s friendly with the Provos. Now they’ve come, causing as much destruction as possible, for her father Patrick.
A girl is wooed by the fervent Republican Kieran. Kieran convinces her to set up a honeytrap for soldiers.
Caitlin and her sister Tina try to carry on. Caitlin, her face black and blue from the soldiers’ blows, goes to work at the only remaining shirt factory. The boss’s nephew, James Henderson, catches her eye.
Her father has a heart attack in custody, and a neighbour rushes them to the A&E, through aggravating checkpoints and impossible traffic. There’s been a bombing, and the A&E
is swamped. Her father is badly beaten, unresponsive, and not expected to last the night.
James, in his uncle’s opulent dining room, finishes his partridge dinner, surrounded by Protestant businessmen, politicians and policemen. The factories are threatening a strike against internment. At work, James needs a secretary, and her supervisor suggests Caitlin, warning him that she’s ‘a Papist’.
As he and Caitlin pursue a clandestine love affair, James plans a conference with both sides of the sectarian divide, hoping for a rescue strategy for the factory and peace for Derry.
All these characters interconnect in complex and heart-wrenching ways, finally climaxing at the fateful conference at the City Hotel. Stones Corner-Darkness, Part II of the series, deals with the fallout from this event.
The characters are rich, and the plot moves along at a good pace. The dramatisation is great and the dialogue believable.
My only niggle was that I found Robert’s naïveté a bit surprising. Surely British troops in Northern Ireland knew precisely what their historic role was. James seems a bit clueless, too. The characters at the extreme ends of the Republican/Orange spectrum—Kieran and Charles Jones—are a bit one-dimensional, but that’s alright, as all the other characters are well developed.
This novel is gorgeously written, with careful editing. We feel the terror of the raid on Derry—the downdraught of helicopter blades, the rattling of rooftiles, the salivating German Shepherds—the agonising grief at her father’s death. I rate this 5 stars Plus.
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C.S. Holmes for IndieReader, May 14, 2021
Hard-hitting, informative, richly detailed, and filled with food for thought, STONES CORNER, TURMOIL by Jane Buckley is a historical novel fit to sink one's teeth into. Best of all there is a follow-up: STONES CORNER, DARKNESS coming, September 2021.Set in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, Turmoil paints a vivid picture of life lived amidst armed struggles. It's a story of people trying to get on with their lives against a backdrop of discrimination, bigotry, revolutionary conflict, and state suppression. And it's the little things of bravery and kindness that make this book such a joy.
The uncle who buys his niece a pair of tights for her new job, knowing she can't afford them. The woman who berates the masked gunmen by telling them she'll complain to their mothers.
The wealthy boss who visits his injured secretary, naïve to the impact his flashy car will have in her impoverished and dangerous part of town. There is universality at work here. We may be in Northern Ireland, but we could be in any country where there is conflict - where bosses are trying to save their factories, where young men are seduced into a cause, where psychopaths use conflict as cover for their own dark work, and where people - despite everything - are flirting, laughing, and falling in love. The author has created a set of characters here that the reader can quickly identify with, and in some cases, genuinely care about. The various sides of the conflict are represented with an even-handedness which aids our understanding of the complexities of
Northern Ireland's conflict. Turmoil is a confident and entertaining debut from the author whose next instalment, Darkness, is eagerly awaited...."
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"…Just finished reading "Stones Corner, Turmoil" by Jane Buckley. I read a lot, mostly in the Thriller Genre, & I have to say this book was absolutely enthralling from start to finish.
I can't wait for the next instalment." ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
-March 2021
"…This book is a compelling page-turner. I did wonder about reading it - 'The Troubles' haunted decades of my life, even though I wasn't directly affected. But once I picked it up, I couldn't stop reading. The book dives into a violent scene on the first page or two, but don't let this put you off. Though it doesn't shrink from violence, the book is even-handed and shows empathy with the various sides." ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
-April 2021
"…This book ended on a cliff-hanger leaving the reader wanting more, and the way it is composed kept me so engaged. If the next book is anything like this one, it will be money well spent. Well done, Jane, on a fantastically written book and thank you again." ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
-May 2021
"…Wow. From start to finish, this book was hard to put down. A genuine page-turner that had me gripped the whole way through and has me itching to get my hands on the pre-ordered Stones Corner Darkness!" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
-May 2021
"…A superbly constructed thriller, written in a style that is accessible to those of us who may never really understand what it is like to live in a war zone; the backdrop for their lives, it's not extraordinary to them, it is, shockingly, their everyday lives. A novel with a lot of backbone and an enormous depth. It keeps the reader holding his breath to see what is going to happen next." ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
-June 2021