Irish Emigrant Book Review, No. 30 (January 1998)

The Salesman by Joseph O’Connor
- Joseph O’Connor’s latest novel, “The Salesman”, is a strange mixture of gripping narrative and unsatisfactory minor themes. The main character, Billy Sweeney, sets out to revenge an assault on his younger daughter which has left her in a coma. In describing Billy’s modus operandi the author gives us perhaps the best of the novel, the way in which Billy stalks his prey, one Donal Quinn, through the streets and haunts of Bray, and eventually aligns himself with characters who bring about Quinn’s capture. Running alongside this is the story of Billy’s failed marriage and the accompanying guilt which is part of the motive for the main action of the tale. The gradual reversal in the roles of captor and captured is well developed, with Quinn joining Billy in the family home, and his metamorphosis from minor thug to a kind of mildly threatening home help adds a touch of bizarre humour to the story. The brutality of climax and Billy’s response to it confirm the fact that both Quinn and Billy had entered into worlds which they only half understood and from which there was no escape.
The minor thread, of Billy’s love affair and marriage to Grace, works less well in that the characters of Lizzie, Grace’s daughter, and Seanie, Billy’s priest friend, are less than credible, as is Seanie’s confession to his friend that he is Lizzie’s father. On the whole, however, this is a well told and interesting story set during one of Dublin’s hottest summers.

Woman of Aran by Bridget Dirrane
- Bridget Dirrane was born an incredible 103 years ago and “Woman of Aran” is the result of her recently dictated memories of more than a century spent in Ireland and America and the many notable people with whom she was associated. Bridget’s school experiences included a trip to Galway to sing with the school choir. Having purchased a bag of grapes in a small shop she subsequently discovered that one of them was rotten, and she immediately returned to the shop for a replacement, an early indication of her indomitable character. While working in Tipperary she became a member of Cumann na mBan and, for a short time, was held in Mountjoy, where she was befriended by Countess Markievicz. She was also among the crowd outside the jail on the morning Kevin Barry was executed.
Emigrating to America in 1927, Bridget’s training as a nurse kept her in constant employment, including working in a munitions factory during World War II, and she counts herself fortunate to have been in Boston during the Kennedy campaign, for which she was a dedicated worker. The Kennedy family are particular favourites of hers and she has received visits from Jean Kennedy Smith and Edward Kennedy at her home on Aran. She was widowed after eight years of marriage to an Aran man in the States, Ned Dirrane, and when she returned home she stayed in his family home, now owned by his younger brother Pat. As she puts it, “...we both decided to get married to protect our good name, maintain respect in our community and show good example”. However the marriage in Galway was kept a secret and few on the island knew about for the first six months, according to the author.
Bridget Dirrane’s narrative contains a strong thread of religious faith which has helped her through many sad and difficult times in her life, and it was this faith that led her to erect a stone statue to Our Lady on the island three years ago, a statue which she painted herself. This, she says, is her legacy to the people of Aran. Asked what else she will leave, she replied: “It won’t be riches. What I will leave is the sunshine to the flowers, honey to the bees, the moon above in the heavens for all those in love and my beloved Aran Islands to the seas”.

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My Education by John Quinn
- The overriding truth which emerges from 39 interviews which make up John Quinn’s “My Education” is that most learning is gained away from the world of formal education. The interviewees, ranging from Noam Chomsky to Maureen Potter, cite parents and mentors as major influences, with a general conviction that education is an ongoing process if life is to be lived to the full. For a number of the interviewees, then, education is complete: the late Professor Frank Mitchell’s description of the diversity of his interests, spanning a long life, is a perfect example of the ongoing nature of education, while Patricia Sheehan, who investigated the link between a fire at Sellafield in the 1950s with the high incidence of children with Downs Syndrome born in Co. Louth some years later, revealed how learning from life’s experiences can direct one’s career. A lighter side to education is provided by, among others, Peter Ustinov and Maureen Potter. The former includes the oft-quoted remark of a schoolmaster at Westminster School, who said of the young Ustinov, “He has great originality, which must be curbed at all costs”. Maureen Potter’s education was gained through travelling to appear in shows all over Europe; even while she was at primary school she used to run off early to appear on stage at the Queen’s or Royal Theatres. The list of subjects includes politicians, civil servants and representatives from the world of the arts, including Garret Fitzgerald, Ken Whitaker, Bernadette Greevy, Seamus Heaney and T. P. McKenna and almost all stress the influence of their mothers, with many suggesting that their fathers played a more formal role in their lives.
This is a fascinating book, compiled from a series of radio interviews broadcast between 1991 and 1996, and is produced in association with RTE. It is a reassurance, to those who need it, that success in these islands is not totally dependent on a conventional academic career.

Fr Browne’s Titanic Album by Dr E.E. O’Donnell
- The Jesuit priest, Dr E.E. O’Donnell, who found the old trunk containing Fr Browne’s photographs in 1985, has compiled a beautifully produced chronicle of the short life and tragic demise of this immense Belfast-built liner, through the photographs taken by Fr Browne, together with other relevant material. Though some of the photographs in “Fr Browne’s Titanic Album” have been exhibited, this is this first time all those concerning the great liner have been collected together, along with the priest’s personal memoirs of the vessel’s maiden voyage, and the whole has the effect of bringing us close to the passengers and crew who embarked with such confidence. As a gift from his uncle, Bishop Robert Browne of Cloyne, Fr Browne was given a two-day cruise on the liner from Southampton to Cherbourg and then to Cobh, or Queenstown as it was then known. The quality of the photographs brings the splendour of the Titanic vividly to life and there is a certain poignancy in looking into the faces of passengers and crew who had no idea what fate held in store for them.
The attention to detail in describing the facilities on board gives a clear picture of the vessel. The article was originally written for The Belvederian, the school magazine founded by Fr Browne some six years earlier, and includes an account of the service held in Cobh Cathedral for all those who perished. Fr Browne also collected press cuttings concerning the investigations into the sinking and some of these are reproduced, as well as letters from fellow-passengers who had also disembarked at Cobh. As he was to remark later, his leaving the Titanic was “the only time holy obedience saved a man’s life”. Apparently an American couple travelling on to New York had taken an interest in the young photographer and offered to pay his passage for the remainder of the voyage. Having sent a telegram to his Provincial in Dublin, Fr Browne received a terse reply: “Get off that ship - Provincial”.

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The History of Dublin in Concrete and Stone by Jimmy Hegarty
- Dubliner Jimmy Hegarty has compiled a booklet of some of the notable buildings and statues in and around his native city, under the title, “The History of Dublin in Concrete and Stone”. Each topic is set in its historical perspective and is accompanied by one of the author’s fine drawings. This is no scholarly treatise, however, and Mr Hegarty’s idiosyncratic way with language adds to the enjoyment of the contents. In the section on the statues of Dublin he tells us: “The Equestrian monuments have trotted off as has Nelson’s Pillar helped by a few kegs of TNT”. He cites the Joyce associations of the Ormond Hotel and the Anna Livia statue in O’Connell Street, and reproduces a wonderful four lines of what he refers to as a “grace before gorging” recited at the Liberties Playcentre, or Bayno as it was more familiarly called:
“We are children, good children, we come here to play, To sing and be happy and cheerful and gay, And dear Lady Guinness, her heart is so good, She helps us poor children to do as we should.”

Sunfire by Michael O’Dea
- In his collection, “Sunfire”, former recipient of a Patrick Kavanagh Award Michael O’Dea has called on memories of his home town of Roscommon to provide the theme for many of his poems. The wonderful evocation of the “blather-tatooed” men who gathered on a Sunday in the country in “The After-Mass Men” is vividly portrayed in the way that:
“Coats would be wrapped against them As though they were sudden showers of hail.”
The language and imagery of “The Country Child” gives an idealised vision of a country where the child:
“knows the humming in the telegraph poles as the hedgerow’s voice when tar bubbles are ripe for bursting;”
In contrast, the stark language of “On the Street” portrays the indecision and inaction we all experience in the face of violence.

Preserves by Katherine Duffy
- A first collection of poems from Dundalk poet Katherine Duffy also takes childhood memory as its theme, centring on her native town withits coastline, tobacco factory and proximity to the border. Herimagery is particularly striking in “Preserves”, where she talks ofher grandmother who:
“... trapped summer in cold jars, laid it thick on wintry bread;”
In the title poem Ms Duffy reflects on the feeling of desolation when the sea “retracts its silver bracelet from your ankles” and leaves you “small, and, on an enormous shore, unadorned.”
And this loneliness is echoed in the different lifestyles of the countrywoman and her son in “Bilingual”, where the woman has “turf on her hands” while her son gets ready for the disco “with strongly-worded after shave”.

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