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Irish Emigrant Book Review, No.55 (February 2000)
Something for
the Weekend by Pauline McLynn
- Though it has not been universally well-received, I found this first
novel from comedian Pauline McLynn hugely enjoyable, if a little uneven.
Leo Street, the unusually named female investigator, sets off for a weekend’s
cookery course in Kildare as a cover for her current assignment, leaving
behind her an unresolved problem with her partner, Barry. In the large
house in Kildare she meets an assortment of characters from whom the author
derives a series of comic situations. Not least among these are the various
crises which occur in pursuit of culinary perfection, the hysterical cry
of “It’s curdling, it’s curdling” from one student in the sauce-making
class, Ms Street’s own first attempt at making brown bread, and the wonderful
Ciaras, the young rebel who emerges as a talented cook and the Senior
Ciara who laces everything she cooks with a tinge of alcohol. There is
a serious side to the story also, but this is less successful in that
there is a certain predictability in the unfolding narrative. In the character
of Fergus Rush we have a tale of lost love long ago, of an unacknowledged
child and of eventual tragedy, and there is a sadness too in the discoveries
Leo Street makes in her ongoing investigations. The characters involved
here are not as convincingly drawn, giving the impression that those providing
the comic relief are based more in reality. / Despite its shortcomings,
however, “Something for the Weekend” is a thoroughly enjoyable read and
Ms McLynn has cleverly left her heroine’s relationship problems unresolved,
leaving the way clear for further books in the series.
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Never to Late
by Cathy Kelly
- Cathy Kelly’s latest novel is an entertaining though undemanding tale
of love, lust and relationships among a group of family and friends living
in the Dublin area. Evie, the somewhat wimpish heroine and a widow with
one daughter, is engaged to dependable Simon, her sister Cara is unable
to commit to any one person and her widowed father, Andrew, takes them
both by surprise when he announces his engagement to an attractive American
woman, Vida Andersen. Though Evie carries out her secretarial job efficiently,
she inhabits a world of the imagination strongly influenced by Mills and
Boon, from whose pages Ms Kelly’s principal male character, Max Stewart,
might well have stepped. The son of Vida Andersen, Max appears to have
no faults at all, and sweeps Evie off her feet, though not without a number
of misunderstandings and soul searching on her part. While she is sorting
out her life, aided and abetted by her daughter Rosie, sister Cara is
trying to come to terms with a trauma in her past and best friend Olivia
is sorting out her marriage to Stephen while at the same time launching
a very successful career as a TV cook. / The narrative takes us from Dublin
to rural Ireland and to a villa in Spain but, as in her earlier novels,
the author devotes an inordinate number of paragraphs to a description
of what each character is wearing, so that we are never really given a
sense of place. The characters themselves are either amusing or irritating,
and I wouldn’t have been too surprised to discover that Max didn’t actually
exist, but had been conjured up by Evie’s fertile imagination. However
as a light read “Never Too Late” succeeds fairly well, given Ms Kelly’s
undoubted writing skills.
The Traditional
Irish Wedding by Bridget Haggerty
- The material of both the above books is expanded in Bridget Haggerty’s
well-researched examination of the Irish wedding. Ms Haggerty’s book is
written for those of Irish descent in the US who wish to express their
Irish roots through their wedding day celebrations. Beginning with a short
history of wedding customs, the author goes on to give suggestions on
each aspect of the wedding from the bride’s dress to transportation, from
music for both church and reception to a selection of prayers that might
be used. While some of the suggestions would appear a little bizarre in
an Irish setting, there is plenty of choice and a very detailed resource
list will help couples plan exactly the kind of wedding they want. “The
Traditional Irish Wedding” was written following the author’s search for
such detail when planning her own daughter’s wedding, and her experiences
give a more personal touch to what might have been merely a theoretical
exercise.
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The Coffin Master
and other Stories by John F. Deane
- The overall theme of this collection is death, from the final release
from pain of the old man in “Rituals of Death” to the terrible inevitability
of the title story, “The Coffin Master”. There are some lighter moments,
as in “Lawrence”, in which a mother and son differ radically on the literary
merits of some of the country’s great writers, and “A Migrant Bird”, which
sees a clash between the modern and the traditional in music. The majority,
however, deal with some form of death, from suicide and near-suicide to
road accident, from natural to violent death. The recent phenomenon of
attacks on elderly people living isolated lives is treated in two stories,
most chillingly in “The Coffin Maker”, when the eponymous Patcho Whelehan
devises an unpleasant death for the two perpetrators. A man facially disfigured
in the prime of his life, he wreaks his revenge on the killers of Julia
Wrynne who was the only person on his island home to befriend him. But
the tortured workings of his mind demand his own death to restore balance
to the island, and it is here that his skills as a coffin maker and amateur
engineer come into their own. The horror is deepened by our knowledge
that the completion of the deed requires the help of young Paschal Sweeney,
who has already seen more than his fair share of violence. / There is
a lighter tone sustained in “Poste Restante”, although this, too, deals
with suicide. An elderly woman, who died by her own hand, is writing to
her husband in a tone that combines exasperation with tenderness in an
attempt to guide him to an understanding of their lives. Similarly in
“Capital H”, the character of Popsy Foran, an old man living alone but
content with his world, is drawn with affection and humour - his walk
up the aisle during the priest’s sermon where his boots “made a sluicing,
creaking sound on the new parquet flooring”, his description of the changes
at Mass, where “they’ve quenched the high candles and made instant peas
out of the hymns”. But whether the mood is light or dark, John Deane’s
lyrical prose rewards the reader of this fine collection of short stories.
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Death of a Soldier
by Rita Restorick
- This is the remarkable testimony of a mother’s grief and of her search
for a way of dealing with that grief. Rita Restorick’s son, Stephen, was
the last British soldier to be killed in the North, when he was shot by
a sniper at Bessbrook on February 12, 1997. His mother had never visited
Ireland, had no knowledge of the country and found it hard to comprehend
why her son had been picked out for death out of the hundreds on duty
in the North. It was the compassion of another mother, Lorraine McIlroy,
who was also injured in the incident, and the hundreds of letters of condolence
that she received from Irish people both North and South, that set Mrs
Restorick on the path to a personal campaign for peace. With remarkable
strength and persistence, if with some naivete, she began writing letters
to political leaders urging them to find a peaceful solution to the Northern
problem, determined that no other parents and families should have to
go through what she, her husband John and their son Mark had gone through.
In “Death of a Soldier” she has described this crusade in detail, interspersed
with memories of Stephen; indeed his memory was the spur which kept her
going when she felt despair. During the course of the next two years she
met most of the main players in the peace process, spoke at a number of
peace gatherings, visited Derry and Dublin and spent two weeks at the
Corrymeela Centre in Antrim. She has managed to give a simplified account
of the historical background to the conflict which will help the understanding
of the many people in Britain who, like Mrs Restorick herself before her
son died, know little or nothing about the subject. / Rita Restorick,
in sharing her suffering with all of us, acknowledges the suffering of
all who have been bereaved over the last 30 years. She met and became
friendly with the parents of Michael McGoldrick, with Tim and Wendy Curry,
whose son Tim died in the Warrington bomb, and many more. Though she and
her husband hoped that Stephen’s death would be the last in the North,
in a chapter entitled “For Whom the Bell Tolls” she lists all those who
were killed in the next two years, including Robert Hamill in Portadown,
Billy Wright in the Maze Prison, and Philip Allen and Damien Trainor in
Poyntzpass. In her own words Rita Restorick “wanted to be the voice of
all mothers who wanted an end to the waste of so many young lives”; insofar
as she has conveyed her pain, her loss, her despair, and her courage in
confronting these emotions with a positive purpose, she has been successful.
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Oracles of God
by Patrick Murray
- Subtitled “The Roman Catholic Church and Irish Politics, 1922-1937”,
this well-received book sets out to give an understanding of the part
played by the Church, and its influence on events, in the period from
the Civil War to the establishment of the 1937 Constitution. Patrick Murray,
who holds a Doctorate in Modern History from Trinity College, has made
extensive use of church and parish archives and other sources to examine
the differing views, both pro- and anti-Treaty of a number of clergymen
of all ranks from both north and south of the border. The Church, through
the higher members of the hierarchy, saw its position as being both moral
and spiritual leaders to its flock. To an extent clerical acceptance of
the Treaty was driven by a desire to see an end to the violence which
they felt would lead to moral anarchy. This view, however, was by no means
accepted by all the clergy, particularly those in some of the more rural
communities such as the parish priest of Spiddal in Co. Galway, Fr James
O’Kelly who, at the 1928 Fianna Fail Ard Fheis, called for “a more militant
policy in conducting...opposition to the Free State”. One of the most
interesting results of the extensive and detailed research carried out
by Patrick Murray is the list of clergy by diocese, with their pro- or
anti-Treaty status included. And a taste of what the civil war meant in
reality is given in a letter written by the Rev. William Kelly, a priest
based in Ballyconneely, to Dr Michael Browne in Maynooth, which tells
of Fr Kelly coming to the aid of both sides, and to that of civilians,
during a Civil War ambush.
The Story of
the Court Laundry by Robert Tweedy
- The author, who spent some 30 years working for this landmark Dublin
laundry, has lovingly recorded the history of the company from the date
of its purchase by H.C. Watson in 1907 to its closure in 1971. Although
the minutiae of the cleaning process is explained in great detail, the
more interesting sections deal with the people involved, and with the
enlightened labour relations that led to this being the only Dublin laundry
exempted by their union from the 1945 strike by laundry workers for a
second week’s annual holiday. Although a number of interesting characters
are hinted at by the author, I feel that more emphasis on the workers
rather than on the work they carried out would open Mr Tweedy’s book to
a wider audience.
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Annie Moore,
the Golden Dollar Girl by Eithne Loughrey
- In her second book focused on the first emigrant to arrive on Ellis
Island, Ms Loughrey extends the 17-year-old servant girl’s horizons to
the wide open spaces of Nebraska where Annie goes to visit a friend after
losing her job in New York. In this very different setting she meets new
challenges and makes new friends, finding a fresh role in life for herself
in the process. This is a simple well-written tale that should have wide
appeal among young people.
In Out of the
Rain by Dolores Stewart
- Ms Stewart’s first collection of poetry contains works in both English
and Irish, many focused on religious themes, though I should say here
that I am unqualified to comment on the Irish poems. “Lough Derg Sequence”
conveys both the suffering and ennui of the three-day pilgrimage, which
includes the sleep-starved hallucination of “a bottle of delirious Old
Bushmills” rising from the lake like Excalibur’s sword. Another pilgrimage
poem, “On the Reek” beautifully captures the increasing difficulty of
the climb with “the sheer grudgery of its hunched back / tightlipped in
the face of the child’s play at the base” / The absence of a place for
women in the Church, another of the poet’s preoccupations, is captured
in the despairing conclusion, “No words for the womb-men” of “Genesis”
and the angry outburst in “Christmas Epiphany”: “In the name of God, who
are they, / the men who keep the Book, / those who filter poison through
its pages?”/ The poems in this first collection are centred to a significant
extent in the western part of the country, and in particular the islands,
whose wild beauty is reflected in the language.
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Gone Away by
James P. Ignizio
- The author, a US academic of Irish descent, has fashioned a modern version
of Dante’s “Inferno” designed specifically for those whom he considers
a techno-scourge on our society. Through the eyes of a telemarketing supervisor,
Les Smart, we are given a conducted tour of the 25th Circle of Hell, a
place specially preserved for those who have sinned in the high-tech sector
or who have performed some particularly irritating task on earth, such
as the newscasters, who are doomed to report endlessly on the state of
a field of corn. As the book progresses we discover the author’s own betes
noirs, the inventor of the ATM machine, those people who man complaint
lines, mobile phone salesmen and the owners and controllers of airlines,
whose particular hell is to be always going somewhere but never actually
arriving. This is a unusual idea and the story does have a unifying thread
in the two underworld characters, Marvin the Tour Guide and Security Guard
Harold, but this “virtual tour through high tech hell” is more a series
of vignettes than a cohesive narrative.
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