Irish Emigrant Book Review, No.50 (Sept. 1999)

The Banyan Tree by Christopher Nolan
- The first impression to be derived from reading Christopher Nolan’s first novel is that he enjoyed writing it, indeed had fun in wrapping the characters up in a cocoon of well-chosen words. In other hands this could have been a run-of-the-mill blockbuster, the story of an Irish mother widowed early, her son the bishop who has a drink problem, her nurse daughter with a difficult marriage, and her youngest and favourite son a wanderer. The author has, however, drawn the characters so carefully and in such detail that after an initial difficulty in identifying with Minnie O’Brien, the mother in the story, the narrative becomes compelling. It has to be said that Nolan seems more at home with his female characters, the profile of ambitious neighbour Jude Fortune being particularly well-defined. The protracted battle between the two women over the “five fields” pits educated calculation against native intelligence and it is the latter which has the final victory.
“The Banyan Tree” is a celebration of the hopes, expectations and sacrifices in the life of an Irish mother. Minnie’s life, and those of her husband and children, are marked by the pendulum of their first major purchase, a grandfather clock. It stands in the kitchen and records the leaving of Brendan for the seminary, of Sheila to nursing school in London and of Minnie’s husband, Peter’s final journey. Most importantly for Minnie it marks the leaving of her son Frank on his 30-year journey away from the fields she is guarding for his future. It is this symbol of the passing years which allows Nolan to finish one paragraph with the echoing words, “...maybe even stop the pendulum under the eye of her clock”. The narrative swings back and forth between Minnie’s youth and old age in an, at times, bewildering fashion but the reader’s persistence is rewarded with a beautifully told tale.

Irish Women’s Letters by Laurence Flanagan
- With the advent of telecommunications and the decline in the art of letter-writing, this collection of letters from Irishwomen may well become an item of curiosity in years to come. Although the book contains examples from as far back as the 6th century, by far the most interesting are those from the 18th century onwards. There is no extract from the earliest epistle, from St Brigid to St Aid, since the letter went missing after the death of its last accredited owner in the mid-17th century. There are a number of petitions, written in the third person, dating from the 17th century but it is when we arrive into the next century and the letters of Mary Ann McCracken that the contents become particularly interesting, throwing light on the political situation of the time. These are followed by the sharply observant commentaries of Maria Edgeworth, interspersed with letters from emigrants to the United States and Australia. A particularly interesting series of letters come from the Bronte sisters, included in this collection on the grounds of their Irish-born father. The three girls had a custom of writing letters to each other on birthdays, which were not then opened for four years, and examples are given from all three sisters. Other literary figures represented are Somerville and Ross, with Edith Somerville’s description of a journey to Oughterard made dangerous by drunken carriage drivers being one of the humorous highlights. From the present century we have Constance Markievicz writing from prison, Charlotte Shaw, Lily Yeats, Helen Waddell and, bringing the reader almost up to the present time, a fascinating and amusing series of letters to her family from Maura O’Halloran. Maura, a young Irish-American who spent much of her life in Ireland, writes from the temple in Japan where she was training in Zen, and conveys entertainingly her community’s attempts to celebrate Christmas for her, and her difficulties in dealing with a marriage proposal from a fellow-monk. Sadly Maura letters are also published posthumously, since she was killed in an accident in Thailand in the early 1980s. With a foreword by Edna O’Brien, this collection provides a unique perspective on the lives of a range of Irish women.

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Contesting Ireland by Thomas McLoughlin
(Reviewed by J. McAvoy)
- The author is a Lecturer in English at the University of Zimbabwe and his topic concerns Irish writers in the 18th century. His theme is not a literary critique of these writers’ work, rather he uses their writing to demonstrate the diversity of their views on the relationship between Ireland and England. He shows that, especially among the Protestants, there was a continuing unease about the relationship. In Ireland they were English but in England they were Irish. When we see the attitude of Unionists today, it is apparent that nothing much has changed in that respect. The Protestant writers from Molyneux and Swift onwards were unhappy about the relationship but found it almost impossible to do anything about it. They did not like their treatment but they still depended on the English to support their ascendancy over the Catholic majority. The author demonstrates the various approaches of the writers in dealing with this dilemma. They did not speak with one voice and their attitude changed as circumstances dictated. The Catholic writers did not emerge until mid-century, not surprising in view of the Penal Laws which took almost 50 years to wane. The most important is Charles O’Conor who wrote his “Dissertations”. An eminent scholar, his background was that of a Catholic Gaelic aristocrat. The approach adopted by O’Conor was to try to diminish the differences and arguments between Ireland and England. He demonstrated that the English myth of the barbarian Irish who needed to be civilised by the English was false. A sophisticated Gaelic culture existed before the arrival of the English. However O’Conor had to be careful in his expression of this view.
One chapter of the book deals with the Irish in Bordeaux. At one stage, when France and England were going to war, the King of France ordered the expulsion of all Englishmen AND Irishmen. We see the petitions submitted by the Irish pointing out that they are not English and that they have no love for England. Many of them or their ancestors had fought for France against England. The point being made is that the Irish in Bordeaux did not consider themselves English but this is hardly surprising and one wonders what it adds to the book. In general, the book is intended for a somewhat specialised audience and comes complete with footnotes. Nevertheless it does clearly demonstrate the dilemma in which the Protestants of the time found themselves. The dilemma of their descendants in the North is still the same.

Stone Heart by Des Ekin
- Des Ekin’s novel struck an immediate chord with me since the main character, journalist Tara Ross, lives in the west of Ireland and publishes an electronic newspaper. However any similarity between us ends there as the author unfolds a tale of murder, psychosis, money-laundering, drug-dealing and violence both physical and sexual. Claremoon Harbour, a sleepy fishing village in the Burren area of Co. Clare, is the unlikely setting for much of this mayhem, though the narrative takes us from Estonia in the east to Canada in the west and many points in between. Some of the locations and, indeed, events are thinly-disguised news stories from the past few years - the activities and subsequent capture of the unstable Manus Kennedy are remarkably reminiscent of the Brendan O’Donnell saga of a few years ago. Similarly, the author makes little attempt to disguise the model for the exclusive clinic into which Tara is booked after a near-death experience, since he names it the Whiterock Clinic. This echo of known events and locations, however, lends credence to a story which might otherwise seem just a touch improbable. The connections between the characters from the different areas of life - the junkies, the mental patients, the drug dealers and art dealers - are sometimes strained, but this aside, “Stone Heart” is an eminently readable thriller, an opinion confirmed by the fact that I read the entire 450 pages within a 24-hour work period. Although we can be fairly certain which of the two candidates Tara will eventually choose, between local man Fergal Kennedy and the foreign journalist Andres Talimann, the reader could not even begin to guess the twisted series of events which the author devises to lead to this inevitable conclusion. His inventiveness and his expertise at building suspense are just two of the qualities which make a success of Des Ekin’s first foray into the world of fiction.

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The Flight of Lucy Spoon by Maggie Gibson
- Maggie Gibson’s novel is a multi-layered tale of gangsters and misfits whose stories begin in isolation but who are all drawn into the plot by an ingenious series of coincidences. When Lucy decides to leave her overbearing, chauvinistic husband of twenty years she inadvertently becomes entangled with Jodie, a gangster’s moll who has also made her escape, an old flame from her art college days, an elderly couple and their spaced-out married daughter, and a number of criminals of varying degrees of iniquity. In an extraordinary series of events which encompass the escape of a number of fairly docile circus animals, the kidnap of a property tycoon with a less than concerned wife, and a series of variously-caused explosions, Ms Gibson has produced a novel which reminded me forcibly of Tom Sharpe at his funniest. While eschewing the more blatant vulgarisms of Sharpe, in “The Flight of Lucy Spoon” she has produced a story every bit as enjoyable. The fast pace is sustained, Lucy and Jodie are triumphant, and the criminals are justly rewarded for their deeds. The cast of eccentric characters, the ineptitude of the kidnappers, the conflicting aims of the media and the police, and the extraordinary coincidences which bring them all together all contribute to the success of this novel.

Conduct Unbecoming by Chris Gaynor
- Interestingly, this novel is also in the Tom Sharpe genre, but while Maggie Gibson has sustained the humour and played down the crudity, Chris Gaynor’s story is heavily dependent on detailed descriptions of every conceivable bodily function but lacks the necessary humour to sustain the reader’s interest in the plot. Again we have a collection of eccentric characters, led by private investigator O’Malley on the trail of a wicked uncle trying to kill his niece in order to gain control of her money, but only the two bungling hitmen, John and Leroy Dooley, come close to providing the kind of enjoyment one might hope for. However Mr Gaynor writes well and a different theme might well do justice to his undoubted style.

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Defining Absence by John Hildebidle
- The absence referred to by the poet in a major part of this collection is that of his daughter, Caroline, who died shortly after her birth in 1985. He muses on the impossibility of forgetting her, and the gradual acceptance of her passing which leaves him wondering, on a walk through Galway in 1995,
“...what does it mean that today I stand dry-eyed?”
The images of his daughter emphasise her vulnerability:
“...such small arms, such
long legs, so tiny, so rare...”
but though these memories are painful, more painful by far to the poet is the “final loss” of total forgetfulness. Different kinds of absence feature in “Freud in the Woods” and “The Disasters of War”, the one an absence from and longing for home and the familiar, the other again an absence of life in a long-ago war. Hildebidle uses language both sparse and lyrical, and particularly effective is his description, in “High Desert”, of watching
“...the night sky turn to the hull of a hurrying boat with barnacles of stars,...”

Stances Perdues by Alain Bosquet
- Among a number of new poetry collections this month is this collection by Alain Bosquet, translated into English by Roger Little. “Stances Perdues”, as the title suggests, comprises 41 lost quatrains dealing with themes ranging from the love of nature to the thoughts of his approaching death, which he seems to hold in some trepidation:
“Rid me, I beg you, of this wish to live; Make me a stone that in some desert lies....”
On the other hand, Bosquet appears to believe he will be an asset in the afterlife:
“An entertainer of my kind is hard for God to deal with. He keeps me apart with tact, for me to bring him what he lacks: some poetry and song, a love of art.”
The poet, though born in Odessa, became a Belgian national and latterly lived in Paris, where he died last year.

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The Company of Children by James Simmons
- Northern poet James Simmons explores both people and places in this collection, focusing very much on family and friends. The title is chosen to reflect his pleasure in his own children; in “Eventful Days” he notes that the best event in a day is when he fetches his son from school, while in the title poem the poet expresses the view that “The company of children heals;”. His own ageing is a recurring theme and in Sestina at Mons he draws a rueful comparison between the scaffolding erected to repair the bells while
“...........................No scaffolding Restores the ageing poets or the clerks.”
Simmons’ portraits are particularly telling; his plea to his daughter to get a diploma or degree “to mark your development” is part of a wonderful description written with equal parts of love and exasperation. Affection and disappointment are mingled in the poet’s description of “A Retired Professional”, who
“...lapsed from old friend to the object of duty calls, errand-running, endured rather than enjoyed.”

Tenant by Maighread Medbh
- “Tenant” is a narrative poem focused on the Famine years in Ireland, 1845 to 1849, which chronicles the period through the O’Sullivan family, and in particular the daughter, Rena, who begins the sequence “pink and healthy and fourteen”. By the spring of 1848 she and her father, Peadar, are
“...like a bunch of moving sticks our rags can hardly hold...”
The poet records the hope and despair, the politics and violence, imprisonment and emigration, the desolation and death of a people who, as she records in the final “Departure”, sacrificed themselves to give us
“...a new way of eating a new way of keeping warm...”

When Strangers Marry by Albert McDonnell
- Subtitled “A Study of Marriage Breakdown in Ireland”, this analysis is based on case studies taken from the files of the Galway Regional Marriage Tribunal, of which Fr McDonnell was a member. The study looks at a number of different areas which have caused problems in marriage, including dysfunctional family background, sexual problems, the changed role of women, alcoholism and other addictions, and financial problems. The conclusion drawn seems to be that the main areas of difficulty lie in communication and the development of an emotional relationship between couples. Fr McDonnell also draws on the 1974 findings of Kathleen O’Higgins, published in “Marital Desertion in Dublin - An Exploratory Study”, and includes notes to each chapter.

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Scarlett Beane by Karen Wallace
- This latest in the Wolfhound Picture Book series for the very young, beautifully illustrated by Jon Berkeley, tells the story of a green-fingered little girl whose skill at growing all kinds of vegetables has a surprising outcome. Scarlette, the girl born with glowing green fingertips, fulfils her mother’s prediction that she will do something wonderful with her life.

The Drumshee Rebels by Cora Harrison
- The eighth in the Drumshee Timeline Series, this book concerns itself with the period of unrest during the War of Independence in the early 1920s when the Black and Tans preyed on the Irish civilian population. The tale opens with the arrival of Michael Collins at the McMahon house in Clare, and the usual ingredients of the old fort, the souterrain and the hiding place behind the stone are all brought into play. While I have read and enjoyed five books in this series, this one does not seem to be quite so successful in evoking the atmosphere of the period in which it is set.

Round the Bend by Jim Halligan and John Newman
- Another offering from the pair who gave us “Fowl Play”, this is a manic chronicle of bank robbers, eccentric learner-drivers, a small girl with a mechanical genius and a teenage boy who masquerades as his own aunt to keep the family afloat. The intellectually-challenged Ron Locke agrees to act as get-away driver in a bank robbery, only later realising that he doesn’t know how to drive. His attempt to learn brings him into contact with the Dussitt family who then become inextricably linked with a series of events including kidnapping and a high-speed car chase, told with humour and verve.

Beyond the Red Belly by Margot Bosonnet
- This is another sequel, revolving around the Red Belly gang who have their hideout in the tallest tree in a local wood. In this story, the gang are moving on from national to secondary school and each in his or her own way has to accept that life cannot continue without change. The most radical alteration to their lifestyles comes with the development of part of their woods and, despite manning a protest, they eventually come to accept a compromise. The underlying lesson is conveyed by the author in an interesting and amusing fashion which continues the high standard set by the previous books in the series.

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