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The award-winning historical novelist does justice to a sombre examination of a soldier’s shame and guilt in the decades since his army service in Northern IrelandAt the beginning of Andrew Miller’s ninth novel, a letter arrives. The narrator, a 51-year-old recovering alcoholic named Stephen Rose, is being summoned to Belfast from his home in Somerset by a body known as the Commission. The letter assures Stephen that this is not about bringing anyone to trial, but giving those involved in an incident that took place 30 years ago an opportunity to tell their side of the story. In short, the past is being dragged into the light. We know something terrible happened during Stephen’s service with the British army in Northern Ireland as a young man; the promise of learning the grisly details is what entices us through this sombre examination of shame, guilt and the long aftershocks of trauma.Set in 2011, The Slowworm’s Song takes the form of a lengthy confessional letter that Stephen is writing to his 26-year-old daughter Maggie. While inching up to the tragic event that has blackened his life and led him to ruinous drinking, we hear about Stephen’s past and present. He works at a garden store named Plant World and fitfully studies English literature on an Open University course. He comes from a family of Quakers and is semi-estranged from Maggie and her mother Evie. At the tail-end of an adolescence marked by alienation and aggression, he enlisted for the army; his father, a devout Quaker, was startled, but quickly became supportive of his son’s choice. Continue reading...