Set in present-day Derry, Seamas O’Reilly’s Prestige Drama centres on the filming of a television series set in the 1980s. Monica Logue, a glamorous American actress and crime drama regular, has been cast as the lead, and residents are divided between apprehension and hoping she ‘would do for Troubles-era Derry what she’d already done for shops that sold satin gloves’.

When Monica vanishes, the community is left to deal with the fallout and their feelings about the Troubles, known as ‘the bad old good old days’. Each section is narrated by a different townsperson – from the show’s historical adviser to a mural painter, the local witch to a clairvoyant taxi driver – all with their own ideas about what has become of ‘the woman always catching sex pests on TV’. Diarmuid, the series’s rather gutless writer, who already has a reputation as a literary ‘outcast’, is the only recurring character and the closest approximation we have to a protagonist. Though he is perhaps the least compelling of the novel’s narrators, it is through him that O’Reilly asks whether the show’s events – particularly the shooting by a British soldier of local ‘dreamboat’ Jamie Devenney – are his, or indeed anyone’s, ‘story to tell’.

Born in 1985 in Derry, O’Reilly is best-known as a columnist for the Observer, making pithy observations about parenthood and familial harmony. In 2021, he made his non-fiction debut with the memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, a sharply comical account of his mother passing away from breast cancer amid the Troubles. That scathing, double-edged humour is evident here too, levelled at everything from ‘emotionally constipated’ men to self-obsessed Americans ‘going native… when they’re back on the aul’ sod, crying at the displays in the Craft Village and buying everything in front of them’.

Part whodunnit, part farce, part tragedy, with its cacophony of voices Prestige Drama pulls in many directions but is anchored, somewhat paradoxically, by an ambivalence towards storytelling itself. As per its epigraph, taken from Brian Friel’s Translations, ‘confusion is not an ignoble condition’.

That clatter of opposing ideas can occasionally detract from this thoughtful novel. Some narrators are weaker than others. Diarmuid especially, and his subplot, which is reminiscent of R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, proves disappointing. But O’Reilly is a startlingly perceptive writer, capturing with acuity the rogue characters, rifts, gripes and festering resentments that make up this motley community.