All The Little Guns Went Bang, Bang, Bang by Neil Mackay

“Blood’s everywhere,” says Pearce Furlong, one of the two 11 year old protagonists in Neil Mackay’s splendid debut. “Most people don’t get punished. It happens and then it’s forgotten.” Except, of course, that the reader of this heartfelt novel already knows from page one that Pearce and his best friend May-Belle Mulholland, two kids “of whom people have heard a lot, but know little,” did some terrible things, and were caught, “punished and sent away.”

The pair meet one summer in small town Antrim, Northern Ireland, in the early 1980s. They bond, not least because they have in common violent and abusive parents—in particular her mum and his dad. From early on, though, their games and stories have a dark, violent inevitability that Mackay portrays with an assured touch.

At the heart of the novel is the simple idea that violent kids are likely to have violent pasts, but Mackay’s skillful writing, grounding the pair in authentic family histories, makes Pearce and May-Belle rounded souls despite the terrible things they do. “But no-one will remember us unless we get into trouble,” says Pearce early on. Agree or not, you won’t forget this pair in a hurry. [Paul Cockburn]