Overview
In a house on the Inish, an island off the wild western coast of Ireland, an old man sits by the light of a turf fire spinning the ancient Irish myth of Diarmat & Grania for his grandson, and kindles in the boy a love of the old ways. Set partly on the Inish, and partly on the streets and highways of Massachusetts, A Riddle of Stars is the story of Matthew Quigley, a latter-day Irish immigrant who cannot forget the old country. Although he can't bring himself to live in the house he inherits after his grandfather's death, neither can he ignore its hold on him. He spends his days in the new world endlessly driving a rusty Pontiac he dubs "the green monster." Driving is an escape from reality - a meaningless factory job, an off-and-on love affair - and a way of discovering this strange new place; but it is also a vehicle of memory.Editorials
Robert Taylor
Matt Quigley, the likable hero of Pierce Butler's lyrical novel A Riddle of Stars, is a man trapped in the middle. He grew up in a western Ireland of turf fires and pounding surf, but currently he's enchanted by a secondhand Pontiac Le Mans he dubs ''The Green Monster,'' in which he spends his days aimlessly driving around Boston.When Matt buys a car - his first - at the behest of his girlfriend Lily, the purchase is as ritualized as a rain dance. Fresh from the Inish, an island off Ireland's coast, the immigrant is unaccustomed to the ceremonials of American salesmanship; nevertheless, these delight him. Although he assumes a jaunting-car approach to his new vehicle, it exceeds his every expectation.
The automobile symbolizes his relationship to America, but he cannot leave the Old World behind, or its legends and memories. This provides the novel's structure, and the materials are spare but sturdy.
''It seems to me I had a plan when I lived with my grandfather on the Inish,'' Matt broods, ''to get out of there by hook or by crook. But as soon as I got to college in Dublin, things started to go wrong. I had a stroke of luck when I met Lily. I never expected to meet anyone like her, much less to spend the rest of my life with her. In a way, it was too good to be true. Now, I just sit around my apartment all day. It's beginning to scare me. The only time I'm happy is when I'm driving my car.''
The mood of A Riddle of Stars is, in general, wistful and understated, but it has scenes of substantial drama. After a momentary falling-out with Lily, Matt drives to Cape Cod with glamorous Erica, then discovers she's afflicted by lupus. In search of Norwegian cod liver oil, Matt and Lily's father, Sam, bike across Boston in arctic weather, from the Financial District to the Fish Pier. Matt finds a grease-smeared job in Kendall Square that evokes Chaplin on the assembly line in ''Modern Times.'' Basically, however, the plot pits the relative freedom provided by the automobile against the confines of the immigrant's inherited experiences.
Butler's realistic novel moves along reflecting glimpses of a Massachusetts seen through a car's windshield. Among Matt's destinations are Plum Island, the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, and the Berkshires, and he learns immediately that Route 128 is not for the faint of heart. But the Irish scenes are neatly balanced, too; the sense of place assumes a significant role, enhanced by Matt's grandfather's stories of the monastic Skellig islands, the legendary Diarmuid and Grainne, and the Irish kings, historical and mythical.
If there are passages in which the Pontiac threatens to take over the story (for the car is, in a sense, the novel's principal comedian), Butler knows the fundamental theme is about cultural adjustment and keeps the story in gear. One may perhaps recall John Updike's Rabbit novels and Rabbit's period as chief sales representative of the Toyota franchise in Brewer, but his attitude toward the automobile is typically American, concerned with its hardware and its four-speed synchromesh transmission.
To Matt, his dilapidated used car is a species of magic: ''I shift to drive and move my foot from the brake to the accelerator. The incredible happens. This huge thing moves smoothly and almost silently into the street. I can't believe it. I'm so hypnotized by the sensation of a movement at once precise and fated that I almost forget to steer.''
The world of his grandfather's stories captivated Matt, and it is this world, ''presided over by strange unknowable constellations'' that supplies the novel's title. In the end, waiting for a light to change on Cambridge Street, Matt re-encounters the Pontiac's erstwhile owner. ''It's a lucky car,'' Matt says, and is told ''no such thing as luck'' - but receives a thumb-marked business card for a garage. The price of assimilation may include the loss of magic; the light turns and the traffic surges forward.
— Boston Globe