Irish Emigrant Book Review, No.67 (Feb 2001)

GREATEST IRISH AMERICANS OF THE 20TH CENTURY
- ed. Patricia Harty - This collection of 150 profiles, of Irish Americans who have made an impact in their chosen field, was initiated by the editors of Irish America magazine, of which Patricia Harty is a co-founder. Unsurprisingly the Kennedys feature prominently, with the foreword being written by Edward Kennedy while his father Joseph, his brothers John and Robert and his sister Jean Kennedy-Smith also appear. However there are some lesser-known people whose work has greatly influenced the country, including designer Louis Henri Sullivan who, with his partner Dankmar Adler, built some of the first skyscrapers. The book is divided into a number of sections under such headings as arts, business, sport, and stage and screen, and here we find some Irish Americans who seem to be sublimely unaware of their ancestry, not to say uninterested in their Irishness. An example of this is baseball player Mark Magwire, who is quoted as saying that he’s never made an effort to trace his Irish ancestry, but may do so when he is retired. In the entry for General Michael Collins, the 17th American in space, there is no reference at all to his Irish ancestry, and I wouldn’t have immediately classified Tony O’Reilly as an Irish-American. I wonder, also, how much of the success of Walt Disney can be attributed to his Irish ancestry, especially since the family originated with the Huguenots in France. These quibbles aside, however, the book is packed with interesting snippets about a range of people, some of whose names are often familiar but whose stories are not. The Unsinkable Molly Brown, survivor of the Titanic, fundraiser and preservationist, reporter Nellie Bly who is credited with being the first investigative journalist, and philanthropist Thomas J. Flatley, described as the richest Irish-born immigrant of his generation, are among this latter group. Interspersed throughout the collection are personal reminiscences by a number of writers. Frank McCourt tells of his sadness following the death of his friend Pat Clancy, while Pete Hamill entitles his piece “Our Jack - JFK”. Joseph McBride’s “In Pursuit of My Ancestral Heritage” includes a wonderfully atmospheric photograph of his great-great-grandparents, Bridget Foy and Patrick Flynn, and photographs also enhance William Kennedy’s “Two Grandfathers”. There are little-known facts to be gleaned, as well as well-told tales, in this celebration of the influence of the Irish on their adopted country.

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THE ONION GIRL by Tina Reilly
- As in her first novel, “Flipside”, the author introduces us almost casually to her characters and we seem set for a light skip through the ups and downs in a series of relationships. Meg, a school secretary, meets up again with Jack, a friend from her teenage years who comes to teach in the school, and though there are complications in the form of the beautiful Vanessa, all looks set for a gradual reawakening of their former relationship. However both Meg and Jack are carrying a fair amount of baggage from their past which has spilt over into their present lives, leaving them with an inability to be honest with one another. Tina Reilly has cleverly intertwined the main narrative with a parallel theme which plots the gradual but separate falling apart of both their lives when each takes refuge in a favourite means of escapism. Meg and Jack do not, of course, exist in a vacuum and their colleagues, flatmates and families have a greater or lesser part to play. In particular the members of the drama group to which Meg belongs help to convince her that she is an outsider, that she cannot connect with other people. The play they are staging, and in which she is to play the lead, is called The Onion Girl and she finds herself unable to carry on in the central role because, in stripping away the layers to reveal the person underneath, it comes too near to her own situation. The narrative develops through an increasing spiral of deceit and depression and it is only when both she and Jack have hit rock bottom that they can accept the help they need to put their lives back together. It should be said, however, that this isn’t a totally downbeat story, and the author has supplied us with a number of characters who add a lighter touch. Meg’s Nan and her friend Daisy, who win a foreign holiday by submitting a rather dubious poem to a radio station, are matched by her flatmate Ciara and her ongoing battle with their landlord James, and his nephew from Hell, James Junior. The play rehearsals tend to descend into farce week after week, and Mikey the bus driver who takes Meg home each weekend also helps to provide a lighter touch. However there is always a sense of something not revealed, a sense of repressed pain in both Jack and Meg, that foretells the final near tragedy. “The Onion Girl” is a valid attempt to examine the effects of childhood trauma, which definitely improves chapter by chapter.

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LOVE LETTERS FROM THE FRONT ed. Jean Kelly
- This series of letters from a young Englishman to his fiancee in Athlone were bequeathed by that young woman to her family as a first-hand chronicle of a major historical event. Eric Appleby, while on military training in Athlone, met and fell in love with Phyllis Kelly, and it was this love which sustained him through the horrors of the Front in the First World War. He writes to her of the conditions under which he is living, of his fear of injury and death, of his longing to be at home with her. There is a dreadful poignancy in his looking to their future together; in January 1916 he writes: “But perhaps, dear heart, we will come over here together some day, when the years have rolled on”, and again, “When will this horrible business end? I want to live in our own little cottage and be miles away from the world and his wife - Phyl, it would be heaven”, though the reader is aware that neither wish will ever be fulfilled. Eric Appleby was only twenty-three at the time these letters were written and his youth is evident in his sudden shifts of mood. Four months after he left for the Front his reply to one of Phyllis’ letters illustrates the way in which he is diverted from his love for her by the circumstances in which he finds himself: “My soul felt just as though it had left my body and was very near to yours, and I loved you, adored you and, though I shame to say it, idolized you. This place is simply alive with mosquitoes....” The letters, interspersed with extracts from Eric’s diary, tell of the day-to-day inconveniences as well as the darker moments of warfare and the frustration of missed leaves. Though there is only one from Phyllis, and one that was never read by Eric, she shines as brightly from these pages as does her fianc=E9. And the thought that remained with me throughout was that this was but one story of bereavement and lost love from the war to end all wars, a story that was repeated endlessly on both sides of the conflict. In her letter to Eric of October 28, 1916, the day on which he died, Phyllis Kelly wrote “...surely God won’t take you from me now. It will be the end of everything that matters because, oh Englishman, you are all the world and life to me”. She kept the letters, and a portrait of Eric Appleby over her bed, for the rest of her long life, dying unmarried in 1991 at the age of 99.

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THE GINGERBREAD WOMAN by Jennifer Johnston
- In her latest novel Jennifer Johnston has sustained her ability to create memorable characters in the persons of Lar and Clara, both deeply wounded and exploring different ways of coping. Lar has lost his wife and baby daughter in a horrific attack and refuses to “snap out of it”, preferring to nurture the hate engendered by the incident. Clara has been damaged both emotionally and physically and is doing her best to put her troubles behind her, with the help of, or possibly in spite of, her mother. A chance meeting between the two on Killiney Hill is the start of an unusual relationship filled with misunderstanding and misread signals, but a way forward does emerge for both of them, each taking a separate path. Carla’s mother plays a pivotal role in the search for some kind of inner peace, though she is kept in the dark about the real reason for Carla’s troubles. She is the jam-maker, the nurturer who continues to provide the inessentials for her family after they are long gone from the home. Though the two characters have each received a body blow from life, they deal with the consequences in very different ways. Carla, who sings German opera in her mind because her voice is so bad, is self-deprecatingly humorous, while Lar is wrapped up in himself and will neither be cajoled nor reasoned out of his darkness. The narrative develops through Carla’s eyes, the Gingerbread Woman of the title who is confident she can escape the pitfalls of love. Her life in New York and double betrayal by James Cavan unfolds as a tragedy told with honesty and humour, while her relationship with her forceful mother will be familiar to many an Irishman and woman who has been unable totally to break away from the confines of home. Lar’s mother, on the other hand, he sees in a grey haze, grey hair, grey face, grey clothes but both mothers are equal in the initial rejection their offers of help receive. Ms Johnston has once again provided an original portrait of two people, their relationships with each other and, more importantly, with their parents.

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IRISH MUSIC HANDBOOK ed. Gillian Keogan
- The second edition of Music Network’s handbook is an invaluable source of information for those interested in all forms of music in this country. In its pages you will find the contact details of relevant organisations, schools of music, festivals and competitions, as well as the names of instrument makers and repairers. While the festivals are entered in alphabetical order, venues throughout the 32 counties are listed under county headings, making the information very accessible.

THE SCATTERING ed. Anne Jones
- The result of an original idea from Clareman Dermot McMahon, “The Scattering” involved six photographers travelling the world to record and interview people who had left Clare to set up home in other countries. Covering almost seventy Clare men and women in all parts of the world, “The Scattering” is notable for the quality of its photographs and for the unique story that each emigrant has to tell. Some, like Anne Casey from Miltown Malbay, belong to the new wave of emigrants who leave voluntarily and she has chosen to make her life in Australia. In contrast, those who emigrated in the early decades of the 20th century found life considerably harder. Pedro Scanlon from Ennis went to England at the age of sixteen and joined the army after a spell of labouring. Service in the Second World War and Korea took its toll on his health and it was only in his declining years, and with the help of his nephew, that he acquired his own home. Mai Fitzgerald from Caherscooba, Newmarket-on-Fergus also left home at the age of sixteen, to settle in Brooklyn, and didn’t return home for forty-eight years. Unsurprisingly many of those included in the book are missionaries, while a small number of well-known Clare people also feature including Martin Hayes and Edna O’Brien. This is a fascinating account of the experiences of emigrants over a long period of time, and it would be interesting to see a similar study of other counties.

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DEAR PAULE by Hugh Leonard
- Following the death of his wife Paule last year, playwright Hugh Leonard wrote a series of letters addressed to her as a means of working through his grief, and had them published in his column in the Sunday Independent. There are fourteen letters in all, recording memories of their life together, the times they laughed or fought, but also the day-to-day minutiae of his life now, where memories of her appear at every turn. The authentic Leonard voice is here, not suffering fools glady, seeing the humour in the most unlikely situations, but the awful gap left in his life by Paule’s death also haunts the pages. “Dear Paule” is a collection of letters which have helped others in their bereavement, and have left the author with the realisation that he cannot fulful his promise to remember his wife without first facing up to her absence.

JAMES HOGAN ed. Donnchadh O Corrain
- Historian and political scientist James Hogan was the subject of a commemorative conference held at University College Cork just over two years ago and this volume has arisen from that event. Hogan was born in Co. Galway in 1898 and educated in Clongowes and University College Dublin. Active participation in the War of Independence delayed his taking up his position as Professor of History at University College Cork in 1920, where he later became involved in the NUI Graduates Association. The aspects of his life which are dealt with here include an examination of his role in the Civil War by Alan Burke, his contribution to the study of Ireland in Tudor times by Margaret MacCurtain, while Cornelius O’Leary deals with Hogan’s works on politics in “Hogan: the Development of a Political Scientist”. A number of relevant documents are also included, edited by E. M. Hogan. Thus we have first hand accounts of his schooldays in Clongowes, the East Clare flying column, his journey to London with Arthur Griffith and a fragment of his Civil War Diary. Hogan was characterised by his love of his country, for which he had fought, and he suffered some disillusion in his later years at the way in which Ireland had used its hard-won independence. A historian who developed a keen interest in political theory and moral philosophy, James Hogan contributed greatly to Irish life through his writings, lectures and speeches, spending his last days completing the editing of Analeca Hibernica 23, the journal of the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

A WORLD OF FINE DIFFERENCE by Adrian Peace
- Subtitled “The Social Architecture of a Modern Irish Village”, anthropologist Adrian Peace’s book gives a detailed account of his years living in and observing the dynamics of an Irish coastal village whose inhabitants were firmly rooted in one of three domains, the farm, the village and the pier. Peace illustrates the way in which the separateness of these domains plays a significant part in the way in which the residents view themselves and their neighbours, while also showing how the community can become unified in pursuit of a common goal. The various scenarios will strike an immediate chord with anyone who has experienced living in a small community in Ireland; the fact that close relationships are confined to the particular domain, the difficulty for blow-ins engaging in sustained conversation with a group of indigenous farmers or fishermen, and the importance of family loyalty. What at first appears to be a book for the academic is in fact a fascinating insight into village life in Ireland as it adapts to economic modernisation.

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