An Irish Portrait

It seems appropriate that I start the new year with an old favorite. I've always had a soft spot for Irish writers, and Colm Tóibín, whose Brooklyn was one of my favorites of 2009, has written another powerful book. Set in Enniscorthy, a town in southeastern Ireland, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nora Webster tells the story of a middle-aged woman whose husband, a much beloved schoolteacher, has died of heart disease. Nora is struggling to deal with her loss, and to help her four children, especially her two young sons, come to terms with this new reality.

And honestly, not a whole lot happens. The book is the story of Nora's everday life. She sells a vacation cottage she can no longer afford, she goes back to work, she worries about her older son's stutter and his withdrawn attitude, she discovers a love for classical music and an interest in singing. There are no fireworks, no dramatic upheavals (although the events of Bloody Sunday are referenced), no shocking revelations. But that's what I love about Tóibín. His understated prose and matter-of-fact narrative carry a force that I can't explain. He revealed in an interview that he lost his own father at a young age, and that the stammering, angry son Donal is a version of himself. Maybe that's why his plain language seems to carry so much emotion.

Nora is no saint – at times she's not even very likable. Her evolution is gradual, but by the end of the novel she has squared her shoulders, faced her grief and moved forward into life. Tóibín has painted a subtle, honest portrait of a ordinary but complicated woman.

When In Doubt

When in doubt, try Irish. That's my general rule when I'm looking for something to read. I'm a sucker for Irish authors. I can hear the accent as I read the words. I love the names of the locales – Enniskerry, Youghal, Clonskeagh – and I like to roll the characters names around in my mouth – Aileen, Fiona, Fiachra.

In Anne Enright's The Forgotten Waltz the Irish voice belongs to married woman Gina Moynihan as she narrates her affair with Séan—himself married and a father. Gina isn't exactly an unreliable narrator, but she certainly doesn't attempt to be a sympathetic one. The affair begins in the midst of the Celtic Tiger economy of the early 2000's, when acquisitiveness of all kinds was the norm among Dublin's smart, affluent set, and Gina almost seems to regard her affair as a more exciting alternative to buying a vacation home.

But the novel shifts backward and forward in time, so between the passages where Gina describes the thrill and danger of the early days of the affair are passages where she reflects more soberly on its long term effects. Much like the Irish economy, the relationship loses some of its luster, and collateral damage becomes clear. Their marriages ended, Gina and Séan live in a house that they cannot sell, and Gina reluctantly faces the effects of their actions on Séan's daughter.

I admire Enright's courage in presenting a character who does not ask for the reader's sympathy. Gina is sharp and funny, sometimes self-delusional and sometimes bracingly honest, Irish to the bone but with elements of Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina transposed to the new millennium. 

Editor's note:  Time to spruce up the website.  Slight refresh to the format, but our devotion to books and reading remains steadfast.

An Irish Favorite

I think we all have authors that we use as safety nets. We know they won't disappoint us, so when we're going on a trip, or anticipating a long wait or a boring commute, we take them along as a reliable companion. For me William Trevor is one of those safety nets.

First of all, he's Irish, and I'm a sucker for Irish writers. He's prolific, so he's easy to find in my favorite used book store. He's probably best known for his short stories, but his novels are also prize-winning. Last year I read and loved his latest novel “Love and Summer” (see my blog), so I picked up a used copy of his 1998 novel Death in Summer to take along on a trip.

Trevor's characters are never captains of industry or glamorous socialites. They live in small towns or on the fringe of society in big cities. In "Death in Summer" a young widower struggles to care for his infant daughter after the accidental death of his wife. But he is not the only character dealing with disappointment and sadness. The vulnerabilities of the characters seem to draw them to each other, leading to unexpected events. Trevor prose is spare, but it's not a quick read, because he unfolds his story in fragments.

Trevor is not an author for readers who like inspiring characters and uplifting endings. But once again he gave me haunting images of ordinary people touched by loss and by love.

Is it the climate?

I never seem to own the books that I would like to have. For most of the 26 years of our book group I would purchase the monthly book. But occasionally, probably after a string of less than inspiring reads, my conscience would get the better of me (trees, shelf space, cost) and I would get the next month’s book from the library. Inevitably (it must be a variation of Murphy’s law), that book would be terrific. Such is the case with Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy which we read as a group in 1994. I remember it as a book of great force (it’s hard to forgetan image of a wheelbarrow, body parts, and lye). I was prompted to look for it on my bookshelf because I just finished reading McCabe’s Winterwood, published in 2006. When I picked up Winterwood, I mistakenly assumed that McCabe had not written anything in between but in fact he had published 5 other novels in between.

I guess my first comment about Winterwood would be: is there an Irish novel that does not have child sexual abuse as its touchstone?

In 1981, on assignment from his paper to write an article about “folklore and changing ways in Ireland,” Redmond Hatch returns to his home town of Slievenageeha and meets Auld Pappie Ned, a 70-year-old fiddler who lives outside of town in a tumbledown shack. To the younger townspeople, Ned is a harmless teller of tales and the keeper of their traditions and customs from the past. In succeeding weeks, Hatch returns to interview Ned and learns more about his own past than he bargained for.

According to the chapter headings, we are following Redmond chronologically for the next 20 years. But at the same time McCabe takes us back to Ned’s youth and to Redmond’s childhood. In McCabe’s hands it is a masterful technique and makes this book a real page turner with the suspense building to a tragic end. All I can say is: if you are a woman married to an Irishman, think twice before cheating on him.

Summer in Ireland

I guess I'm just a sucker for Irish writers. Once again I was seduced by the beautiful prose of a master storyteller. This time it was the prolific and much admired writer William Trevor. In Love and Summer the story begins on a June morning in the Irish town of Rathmoye, as mourners spill out of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer after the funeral of Mrs. Connulty, the matriarch of the town's most important family. She is mourned by the son she doted on and the daughter whose anger over the past still boils. Florian Kilderry, a young amateur photographer, happens on to the scene and snaps some pictures. Ellie Dillahan, the young wife of an older widowed farmer, observes him with interest before he pedals away on his bicycle.

From this beginning Trevor weaves the story of one summer in and around Rathmoye. He explores the inner lives of his characters with spare, honest prose, in contrast to the lyric descriptions of the lush summer landscape. Although initially he seems to be telling separate stories about each of his characters, their lives are seamlessly woven together as the story progresses. Trevor is Irish, so of course there's humor. Mrs. Connulty's daughter (known by all simply as “Miss Connulty”) exults in wearing the expensive jewelry her mother refused to let her touch when she was a child.

But as the summer ends the tone grows more poignant. Trevor gently examines the conflicting yearnings of love, passion, loyalty and the desire to escape. The final scenes are at once heartbreaking and comforting. At the end, I felt much as I did with another Irish book I read recently (see my blog of “Brooklyn”). I didn't want to leave Rathmoye, and wondered if I should read it again to see if it would end differently. The Irish get me every time.

A Simple Story

Why do I love this book so much? I'm not sure. Maybe it's my Irish ancestry that made these characters resonate so powerfully for me. Every word felt true and real and when I got to the end I could easily have gone back to page one and read it all over again.

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín tells the simple story of a girl named Eilis Lacey who reluctantly comes to Brooklyn from a small town in Ireland in the early 1950's. She has no particular desire to leave home and her widowed mother, but jobs are scarce and a chance meeting between her older sister Rose and an Irish priest from Brooklyn leads to the offer of a job. Her mother and Rose encourage her to take it, despite the fact that her mother remarks casually to a friend, “Oh, it'll kill me when she goes”. And Eilis, although she feels that Rose should go instead, can find no way to tell them. This feels SO Irish to me – no one can speak directly about feelings.

The story follows Eilis to Brooklyn, where she experiences homesickness that Tóibín describes so beautifully it will break your heart. But she adapts to her job and her life in a boardinghouse full of Irish women, and eventually even finds romance. And when events call her back to Ireland she is torn between her new life and her old one.

Sounds like it could be the plot of a romance novel, right? Trust me, in Tóibín's hands it is something very different. His style is understated and straightforward – no flashy language, no dramatic revelations. There's humor and pathos, sometimes both in the same paragraph, and, like Eilis herself, it's a mixture of tenderness and toughness. I loved this book so much that I'm almost reluctant to recommend it, because I'm afraid its resonance is just personal for me, and won't strike other readers the same way. But Tóibín is a respected writer, so I hope that this book will be enjoyable to all readers, not just this one.

Competing Histories

It might make for a more informed reading experience if you brush up on your 20th century Irish history before reading the novel The Sacred Scripture by Sebastian Barry. But even if you know nothing about blue shirts or the battle for a Free State, I think you will feel rewarded for the investment of your time with this story. (Isn’t that a commentary on our 21st century lives that we think of time in terms of investment and reward?)

Due to its decrepit physical condition from years of neglect, Roscommon Mental Hospital is scheduled for demolition to be replaced by a modern Asylum that, it is hoped, will function as its name indicates. But there will not be room in the new facility for all of the current residents. Dr. Grene, the senior psychiatrist, must determine who among the patients (perhaps more honestly inmates) require continuing care and who can now be”free.” He understands quite well that in earlier times people were admitted to facilities such as Roscommon for various reasons some of which had nothing to do with their mental states (pregnancy out of wedlock, sibling rivalry, etc). He is particularly perplexed by the case of Roseanne McNulty who is believed to be about 100 years old (Dr Grene is 65) and who has been at the facility for an undetermined period of time but at least longer than the 30 years that Dr Grene has been there. There is very little documentation of her history and Dr Grene is wary of confronting her directly about her past. He must satisfy himself whether Roseanne’s original confinement was justified for mental reasons in which case she will move to the new facility – or otherwise in which case she can be released (after so long? at her age? with no relatives? where?) He keeps a journal of the progress of his investigation. Unaware of the impending change, Roseanne has decided that she would like to make a written record of her life but only for herself so she keeps her pages hidden under the floorboards of her room.

So we follow these two alternating narrators and their secret scriptures. They seem to be describing two different lives for the same person. But of course they converge; just how is the substance of the book.

Besides writing novels, Sebastian Barry is a poet and a playwright. Certainly his skill as a poet is reflected in some beautiful, lyrical and thought-provoking passages on the natures of history, memory, and age. Were I more knowledgeable about dramatic structure and timing I would probably see that reflected in this work also. His portrayal of the Catholic clergy and its stranglehold over the Irish population is particularly effective and enraging.


After you have read the book you may wish to read an article in The Guardian by Barry describing how he came to write this book or a review with more detailed analysis.

Confession

When you buy a used book you hold an object with a history you will never know. How many people have held and read this book before you, and what was going on in their lives as they read it? I asked myself those questions when I opened a used copy of The All of It by Jeannette Haien. Here's the inscription I found on the inside cover: “Hannilie – This is a quince of a book – one of a kind like Isak Dinesen's. I hope the hurting has stopped & that you can savour this timeout. Pick”. Wow! First of all, what kind of names are Hannilie and Pick? How can a book be like a quince? And was Hannilie hurting because Pick had just dumped her (euphemistically known as a “timeout”), or was she taking time off from work to recover from foot surgery and her loyal friend Pick was providing her with reading material? And did she in fact “savour” this book?

Well... she might have. This slim volume (145 pages) is really a long short story. And 'story' is definitely the right word for it, since the bulk of the book is the story that widow Enda Dennehy tells Father Declan as they sit by the body of her late husband Kevin in the remote village of Roonatellin on the western coast of Ireland, where the couple has lived for over 50 years. Except that Kevin is not her husband. He has revealed this secret to the priest on his deathbed, but it is left to Enda to tell “the all of it” as they sit through a long afternoon waiting for mourners to arrive. Bracketing Enda's story is another one that at first seems unrelated. Father Declan is attempting to catch a fish. It's a cold rainy day, the midges are biting, and the priest is using every lure in his arsenal to try to land a salmon. His reverie as he fishes leads us into Enda and Kevin's story, and near the book's end we are returned to the priest on the riverbank. He struggles to balance his sympathy for Enda with his need to condemn her sin.

Haien's style is subtle and elegant. She asks hard questions about what it means to lead a moral life, and about what compromises life can impose. There is also much humor in the book, and beautiful descriptions of rugged coast of County Mayo. I don't know what “hurting' Hannilie was hoping to escape, but I think this book has the subtle power to distract her from pains, whether physical or emotional.

Amongst the Irish

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”' As we all know, that's the first line of Anna Karenina. But I wonder...did Tolstoy know any Irish families? The Irish seem produce a very specific type of dysfunctional family. It's not hard to find a common threads of misery in families described by Frank McCourt, Roddy Doyle, Edna O'Brien and even Irish-American Eugene O'Neill. Here are the broad strokes: the father is an angry embittered bully; the wives and daughters are cowering doormats; the sons either escape to England or are crushed by the weight of their father's cruelty.

So why did I decide to read an Irish author? That's the other side of the coin – the Irish are wonderful writers. Their contribution to world literature is disproportionate to their small island's population. Joyce, Beckett, Wilde, Shaw – the list is long and distinguished. But I had never heard of John McGahern until a friend recommended him. Like many of his predecessors McGahern had his problems with his native country. His book The Dark was banned there because of its frank depiction of sex and of abuse by the clergy, and as a result he lost his teaching position.

McGahern's best known book, which was nominated for the Booker prize in 1990 (Possession by A.S. Byatt won), is Amongst Women. The tyrant father is widower Michael Moran, who fought heroically for the IRA during the Irish War for Independence, and seems to have been nursing a grudge ever since (“Anything easy and pleasant aroused deep suspicion”).. He has retreated to his small farm of Great Meadow in rural Ireland near Sligo, where he raises his five children, disgusted with the “crowd of small-minded gangsters “ who now run the country. As the story opens the eldest son Luke has already left for England to escape his father's brutality, and the remaining four survive by learning to read his moods and keep their heads down - “all they had ever been able to do in the face of violence was to bend to it.”

Moran marries again, to the much younger Rose, and she provides a buffer between the children and their father's anger, even as she endures his malevolence without complaint. I mean, the woman is a saint. We follow the lives of the remaining four children as they leave home and make their own lives in London and Dublin. The youngest son challenges his father's power and thus escapes his domination. But the three daughters retain a fierce tribal loyalty to their father. They make frequent return visits to Great Meadow, sometimes trailing boyfriends, spouses and children who all fall short in Moran's estimation. What draws them back? The beauty of the rural landscape certainly appeals to them. But more than that, their isolated childhood under the sway of a bullying father seems to have created among them a sort of secret society even more powerful than their Catholicism. The father is eventually overwhelmed and diminished by the sheer persistence of his daughters' devotion.

Catholic readers will no doubt recognize that the title refers not just to the females in the household but to the words of Hail Mary, recited nightly as part of the mandatory Rosary that Moran leads. His women are complex – strong and weak, stubborn and bending – always drawn to a man they love and fear. McGahern has created a fierce angry patriarch – an Irish King Lear whose kingdom is his obstinant spirit. Even as I gritted my teeth with annoyance at this pig-headed jerk, I admired McGahern's ability to create a living, breathing universe with his spare prose.