Irish Emigrant Book Review, No.78 (Jan 2002)

BANKS OF GREEN WILLOW by Kevin Myers
- Kevin Myers, best known for his daily column in The Irish Times, has woven three strands and a multitude of intricate family relationships into an impressive first novel. The American heroine, Gina Cambell, pays a visit to Ireland and falls in love with the country, and with a man of Bosnian and Irish parentage. From this beginning a story evolves which encompasses the US academic world, the fighting in the Balkans and the warmth of a large West of Ireland family, all interlinked to a sometimes improbable degree. The establishment and loss of national identity, lost opportunity, the nature of romantic love and sexuality are all explored, with the twin themes of love and death dominating the narrative. The least familiar part of the story, focusing on the war in Bosnia, might prove confusing to those who are a bit hazy about the various nations involved, and the link with the other characters does not yield itself immediately to the reader. The key character is Stefan Djurdjev, who only learns that he is the father of Gina’s son long after he has married and had a son of his own. It is the link with Stefan which provides a series of deadly coincidences, some stretching the reader’s credibility, I think, though the author has successfully built up to a feeling of inevitability in the final outcome. Perhaps the strongest feature of the novel is the account of Gina’s battle with cancer, the cruel deception to which she is subject and her final journey towards death. Kevin Myers movingly describes the intensity of the experience, Gina’s determination to survive until assured of her son’s safety, and the gradual letting go of life, though never of love. She promises Stefan, who is with her at her death, “When I am gone I will love you from wherever I am”. The author’s deep knowledge of 20th century conflict, and particularly the First World War, is reflected in his novel, which suggests that we are all still suffering the consequences of the shot fired in Sarajevo in 1914.

THE MEN WHO BUILT BRITAIN by Ultan Cowley
- This history of the Irish navvy in Britain examines the contribution of Irish labour to the building of the road, rail and canal network and the conditions in which they worked. Many of the Irishmen who sought work in England or Scotland began as farm workers, and tatie hoking in Scotland was a particularly strong tradition among men from Donegal and Mayo. The seasonality of this work allowed them the freedom to move from job to job, and this freedom continued when they moved into construction work where a special breed of tramp navvies developed. The willingness of unemployed Irishmen to do any kind of work and to remain outside the registered workforce was exploited by some British employers. However what makes for more disturbing reading is the account of the exploitation of their own fellow countrymen by Irish gangers in the 1950s and 1960s. Claiming wages for a larger number of men than were actually hired, pocketing the surplus and then demanding the same workload from the smaller group was a common practice. This is the reverse side of the situation that also pertained, that an Irishman would “look after his own” in employing other Irishmen, particularly those from his own county. The author cites the achievements of those navvies who were able to take advantage of the various booms in the construction industry to set up their own very successful companies, such as McNicholas and the Murphy brothers, but also demonstrates what happened to those who put down no firm roots in their adopted country, who experienced a feeling of exile and who turned to alcohol for comfort. Indeed the part played by alcohol in the life of the navvy is a recurring theme, not helped by the dominance of the public house in finding work, collecting wages and socializing. The shorter life expectancy of Irishmen in Britain is attributed to the extraordinarily severe conditions in which many of them spent their working lives, constantly exposed to the elements and often without the necessary protective clothing. Those who do survive to comparative old age often live alone in poor circumstances or are looked after in hostels such as Arlington House in Camden Town, which has been a refuge for Irishmen in London for nearly one hundred years. Ultan Cowley concludes his account of Irish labourers in Britain with a plea to the government to allow those wishing to end their days in Ireland to do so, and it is interesting to note that Dr Jerry Crowley’s “Safe Home” initiative in Mulranny, County Mayo is going some way to meet this need. While some sections of this book are rather overloaded with technical details and statistics, it nonetheless throws a new light on a world which has been familiar and yet unfamiliar to so many Irish families.

THE TOURIST’S GAZE - ed. Glenn Hooper
- Glenn Hooper has gathered together a collection of observations by visitors to this country over the last two hundred years, from the pure tourist who came for the scenery to those more concerned with the political and sociological aspects of Ireland. The book is divided into three sections, each being preceded by a brief overview of the time frame. James Hall, who visited the country in 1813, was particularly impressed by the Edgeworths, in whose house he managed to upset the local Catholic clergy by questioning the validity of absolution. Many of those included are Quakers and William Reed, travelling in Kerry in 1815, draws a very unflattering portrait of a serving maid of whom he said, “Nature certainly had not been at any great pains or expense in finishing this production”. William Bennett, who visited Ireland in 1847, gives a harrowing account of the starving people of Kenmare, and this is one of a number of extracts dealing with the Famine years. The writings of Asenath Nicholson, who spent more than two years travelling around Ireland in the late 1840s, give a particularly graphic account of the sufferings in Mayo and she concludes her report with the words, “This day I saw enough, and my heart was sick, sick”. The injustices perpetrated on the Irish form the theme of a number of the essays, with William S. Balch marking his astonishment at a collection for foreign missions in Tralee while its own inhabitants are starving. At least two of the travellers remark on the large numbers of armed police employed to help in the collection of rents, and who spend much of their time in idleness, while the question of land tenure is touched on in a description of a Land League meeting held in Athlone in 1884. There are, however, some lighter moments and some things seem to have changed little over the intervening centuries. In 1847 Theresa Cornwallis West bemoans the road repairs being carried out and complains that “the narrow line left for passengers was anything but agreeable, or safe for a loaded carriage”. On another mode of transport, the English Poet Laureate Alfred Austin in 1900 looks with affection on the railway system in Co. Galway where trains are uniformly late or, in at least one instance, missing altogether. He tells the story of a stationmaster questioning an engine driver as to the whereabouts of his train - the man had managed to set off without it. For a more conventional travelogue we can read Henrietta Chatterton’s “Rambles in the South of Ireland during the year 1838” which claims that the scenery of Monkstown and Douglas in Cork is second only to that of Naples or Salerno. Many writers were more interested in the political and religious life of the people of Ireland and a number give their views on the North, with Belfast being described in both glowing terms during the 19th century and as a place of limited architectural appeal in the 20th century. B. E. Stephenson, writing in 1918, believes that “there is in Ulster a dour fanaticism which may lead to an ugly conflict” while William Makepeace Thackery takes a somewhat jaundiced view and comments on the “nine shades of politico-religious differences” to be found in Belfast. Modern views on developments in the North are given by Paul Theroux and Mark McCrum and the final word from the tourist’s perspective comes from Pete McCarthy, who muses on the eventual integration of the English hippies in West Cork. In his choice of contributors Glenn Hooper has outlined the evolution in tourism over two centuries, and has provided a cast of travellers with many different motives for coming to a country which, though geographically close to many of them, was at the same time a considerable mystery.

JUNK MALE by Brian Gallagher
- Brian Gallagher’s second novel is a curious mixture of humour and seriousness, of chameleon characters and a set of bizarre circumstances. Joel (aka Joseph) O’Leary is wary of taking on the responsibility of a family, but when his wife Ellen tells him she is pregnant he takes the decision to sell his precious saxophone and find the means of earning a regular income. This leads him to a robbery, an unusual request to his friend Monk and a series of events that at times defy belief. Meanwhile Ellen, who is in final rehearsals for a major piano recital with her colleague, the extraordinary Ita, has to make sure that her announcement to Joel becomes fact, for it was made on the premise that, with no precautions now necessary, she would indeed become pregnant. While the character of Joel remains fairly constant throughout, the same can not be said of Monk, the jazz-playing womaniser without, apparently, a romantic bone in his body, who falls in love with Joel’s wife. Equally surprisingly, Joel’s father is transformed from a tight-fisted inebriate into a loving and generous father, though it must be admitted that the transformation takes place after he hears he is to be a grandfather. With Ellen concealing her non-pregnant state from Joel and Joel concealing their total lack of resources from Ellen, their lives degenerate into farce, but it is farce disconcertingly mixed with Ellen’s devotion to her late father, a devotion which crops up intermittently throughout the narrative. It seems to strike a discordant note into what appears to be the light-hearted saga of an emotionally immature Dubliner for whom everything turns out well in the end.

SECRETS ON THE BREEZE by Hazel McIntyre
- In this second book about Mary Kate, Hazel McIntyre continues the examination of the secrecy which prevailed in 19th and 20th century Ireland in the matter of sexual crimes and illegitimacy. Mary Kate, now an adult and a qualified teacher, returns to her native Ballingarry to teach in the local school and to live with her grandmother, Sara. Here her present life becomes entwined with those of others including Eleanor, the teacher she is replacing and whose history is very similar to hers. She meets and discards Mike, a relative of Eleanor’s on holiday from Belfast, and gradually comes to know the tragic Colin Phillips. But all the time that her life is taking the course of any young girls, the evil in her past is lurking beneath the surface and threatening to erupt at any moment to destroy her happiness. The narrative moves between Ireland, Canada and New York and it is in that city that the event takes place which lightens the hearts of all those close to Mary Kate. The author has accurately conveyed the loneliness, uncertainty and fear experienced by orphans and children unsure of their parentage and, in the continuing saga of Mary Kate, has shown the redemptive power of love. Readers can look forward to a further instalment in the life of Mary Kate as Hazel McIntyre has promised to complete a trilogy.

2RN AND THE ORIGINS OF IRISH RADIO by Richard Pine
- As part of the celebrations to mark seventy-five years of Irish Radio, Richard Pine’s work, traces the establishment of the Irish radio service and the effect the new medium had on the lives of Irish people. This is the first volume in a series entitled “Broadcasting and Irish Society”. First setting the scene of a country endeavouring to gain stability in the aftermath of a Civil War, the author deals at length with the legislation required for setting up a national radio station. Applications for broadcasting licences were first called for in 1923, a White Paper was published later that year and a Wireless Committee was set up. Pine goes into some detail over the disagreement between Darrell Figgis and Andrew Belton, and draws a telling portrait of the Postmaster General of the time, J.J. Walsh. The presentation of the report of the Wireless Committee to the Dail and its eventual passing in December 1926 brings the narrative to the selection of the first Director of 2RN, Seamus Clandillon. An interesting inclusion is the programme for the first night of broadcasting, a selection of both Irish and classical music which included three songs in Irish by the station’s new director.

SEND ’EM SOUTH by Alan N. Kay
- The first in the “Young Heroes of History” series written for the public school system in the US, “Send ’em South” confronts the problem of racial prejudice through the eyes of a young slave girl who escapes to the north and an Irish boy who is experiencing his own kind of prejudice against the Irish in Boston. David makes every effort to help Lisa escape the slave catchers, who have the legal right to find runaway slaves and return them to their masters in the south. However their power proves too great for him and he has to watch Lisa being taken on board a ship for her return to Georgia, though he vows to find her some day and rescue her. The author, himself a history teacher, has set the story in its historical context to engage the interest of children and help them to explore their own attitudes to racial differences. He has, as far as possible, used contemporary language though I suspect that some of the phrases used are more firmly rooted in the 20th century. The book is aimed at children between the ages of 11 and 15 and includes an extensive bibliography.