The Green Road by Ann Enright

 

Ann Enright’s The Green Road, eventually, is a family saga, but its characters cover a large part of the globe before joining forces in the grist of events back home. But this microcosm that is the Madigan birthright becomes by association something much broader, not only a mirror of contemporary Irish society, but also linked to some of the grander issues that characterize our time.

The poem, “This be the verse” by Philip Larkin, comes to mind, not only because of its portrayal of the role the mums and dads play in family life, but also for two other reasons. First, its title alludes to readings in church, to verses that are perhaps Biblical as well as secular. In contemporary Ireland, the role of the Roman Catholic Church, once unquestioned and unquestionably served, once paramount, has diminished. It may not have diminished as a source of guilt and underlying neurosis as much as the general society will admit.  But things have certainly changed. Secondly, Larkin‘s poem bids farewell with the instruction, “And don’t have any kids yourself”. Fortunately for the plot of The Green Road, Ann Enright has her matriarch, Rosaleen Madigan, turn a deaf ear to such advice, or perhaps she simply never heard this command. She had four and they shared the family life that was created for them, went their own separate and individual ways, and then returned, long after their father died to share a Christmas together.

We first meet Rosaleen undergoing a hospital procedure, a biopsy on something that has appeared. Her years are advancing, and she feels the need for change. Perhaps she should sell the house… She muses on the past, present and future and hopes to see her children, now dispersed a class across the globe. At one stage, Dan was destined for the priesthood, a life in the missions, ministering human kindness to those in need. He did finish with his girlfriend, but never took the route that would have led to Holy Orders, thus unwittingly leaving the global charitable acts to a sibling, who acted in an official capacity.

What happens to these children is crucial from the for the book’s plot. From their diverse lives and distant places they return to the family home for a Christmas get together. There are now children, Rosaleen’s grandchildren, children of her own children, doubly corrupted, perhaps, in Larkin’s terms. There are partners as well. There is alcohol. There are stalled careers. There are the hopes and aspirations of modern people involved in a modern world which seems to have left Rosaleen behind, now alone in her County Clare house that is filled with memories. Amongst her children, there are drinking problems, failed relationships, and quite a lot of sex. They are a pretty normal lot, if normality applies to anyone in particular.

“And half at one another’s throats” is a final line in one in the particular stanza of Philip Larkin’s “this be the verse”. But when the Madigans meet for their communal festive celebration, it is the other half that shines through, the half that Larkin did not describe. At least on the surface…

Notwithstanding the tension caused by differing economic status, the need to advertise public happiness via possessions, decayed Catholicism and known but not advertised sexual preferences that a generation before would have produced public damnation, the siblings cooperate via festivities and compete via interests as Rosaleen, their enduring mother, pursues the sale of the family house. It is worth quite a bit, especially in the Ireland of today where people might carry around four hundred euros in their wallet as small change. And so, the siblings compete, differ, recognize the paramountcy of their mother’s needs, but cannot escape the pressures of their own lives or the need to find solutions to problems they have dreamt up. And so together, they prepare their Christmas dinner, with most of the work falling on the sibling that always takes the load.

The Green Road of the title refers to a journey that Rosaleen undertakes unannounced, thereby causing panic amongst those left behind. She does not go far, but rediscovers an unmade track with old houses, yes, in ruins, nearby. All this, this mess of family life, must have happened before, to other families in the past, and will be repeated in the future with different actors, in different places, with different scripts. It is what we are and, despite what Philip Larkin might opine, we are all part of the process, for if we weren’t, there would be no one to write the verse. And we must all be thankful that Anne Enright has the vision and skill to create this moving and surprising tale.

Light of Evening by Edna O’Brien

 

The Light of Evening by Edna O’Brien is a deceptively complex book. It deals with relationships between two women, Dilly and Eleanora, who live very different lives some years apart. They are both women, but they come from different generations. They are both Irish, but they seem to belong to different countries, as well as different eras. They both leave their homeland to seek fortune, but on wholly different terms and to different places. They both seem to stumble into relationships with men, some of which involve marriage, and cope in partially successful ways with the challenges posed by maintaining the terms of engagement. The complications in the relationship between the two women, Dilly and Eleanora, arise because they are mother and daughter.

At the start, we meet Dilly, the mother, who is in hospital in Dublin. Her years have advanced. She is seriously ill and about to undergo a procedure. Her youth flashes before her sedated eyes. She travels from Ireland to the United States and we follow a developing life in New York as it moves from promised opportunity to promised opportunity, only to find that reality usually imposes its surprisingly mundane results. Wiser, but only marginally richer, Dilly soon finds herself repatriated for family reasons.

We meet Eleanora via scenes from her marriage. She too has left Ireland, but she has personal reasons and she has pursued education. She seems to be in control, at least potentially in control of her life options. She is apparently free to choose and we see her relocate for professional rather than menial reasons. But she seems to spend as much of her time and energy analyzing her relationships with men as pursuing her professional goals. The turns in her life are unpredictable, often unfathomable. They have a gloss of normality imposed by obvious consumption, personality created by likes and dislikes and achievement realized through opportunity. It is a life that presents a vivid contrast to the life of Dilly, whose own journey was imposed by a need to make a living first and a personal space second.

But the real complication arises because these two women, doing what women do a generation apart are mother and daughter. Letters exchanged form a major part of the book’s substance, specifically letters between mother and daughter. These letters often do not appear to say very much, but then that becomes a crucial point in the narrative. Deceptively simple, they can also deceive by not saying what the writer wants to say, by not communicating what the reader wants to hear.

Overall the plot of Edna O’Brien’s novel dwells almost exclusively on the nature of the relationship between mother and daughter, the difference and similarities that make their lives. It travels the world that surrounds their different generations, drawing sharp contrasts but also recognizing remarkable similarities. It’s a book that walks well-worn paths, but arrives at new experiences for the reader. Rather than the substance of life, it is the spaces between, whether large or small, that captivate. And, by the end, we realize that for all our complications, we individuals are generally ruled by self and can often be driven by quite mundane, but devastatingly relentless material concerns.

Last Stories by William Trevor

 

Painters know that the viewer’s gaze can be tricked. Perhaps led is the better word, for this deception’s aim is merely to communicate more effectively. In visual art this can often mean placing a single line or mark, rather than spending hours with a hair-thin brush trying to capture detail. The trick, if it is one, is to convey all the detail by suggestion, so that the viewer’s mind creates it and therefore sees it.

The equivalent for writers is surely the ability to convey meaning both effectively and succinctly. But the idea goes beyond this. If we want to describe the life of a character, for example, we cannot and must not seek to include every detail. Salient points, finely formed, provide a complete picture. A single word, correctly chosen can create personality in a way that description alone can never achieve.

The technique is particularly noticeable in that much used but rarely mastered genre, the short story. And William Trevor offers a superb example of how it should be done in his Last Stories. These pieces are about people, their lives, loves, losses, hopes and fears. What happens to them is only as important as the how. And by the end of each story, we feel we have met the characters, shared their lives for a few pages. But we also feel we know them individually, and in depth.

William Trevor’s technique is startling. If this were visual, it would present a large canvas, most of which would be blank. Here and there would be marks, dabs, lines, almost randomly scattered across the surface. But when we stand back, these would coalesce and sum to reveal utterly convincing detail, which would then fill the rest of the picture. It is so easy when creating a short story to concentrate on the minuscule, to conclude that the form is better suited to the containable. Here William Trevor lays this idea to rest, elegantly, succinctly and in suggested, but vivid detail.

The Green Road by Ann Enright

 

Ann Enright’s The Green Road, eventually, is a family saga, but its characters cover a large part of the globe before joining forces in the grist of events back home. But this microcosm that is the Madigan birthright becomes by association something much broader, not only a mirror of contemporary Irish society, but also linked to some of the grander issues that characterize our time.

The poem, “This be the verse” by Philip Larkin, comes to mind, not only because of its portrayal of the role the mums and dads play in family life, but also for two other reasons. First, its title alludes to readings in church, to verses that are perhaps Biblical as well as secular. In contemporary Ireland, the role of the Roman Catholic Church, once unquestioned and unquestionably served, once paramount, has diminished. It may not have diminished as a source of guilt and underlying neurosis as much as the general society will admit.  But things have certainly changed. Secondly, Larkin‘s poem bids farewell with the instruction, “And don’t have any kids yourself”. Fortunately for the plot of The Green Road, Ann Enright has her matriarch, Rosaleen Madigan, turn a deaf ear to such advice, or perhaps she simply never heard this command. She had four and they shared the family life that was created for them, went their own separate and individual ways, and then returned, long after their father died to share a Christmas together.

We first meet Rosaleen undergoing a hospital procedure, a biopsy on something that has appeared. Her years are advancing, and she feels the need for change. Perhaps she should sell the house… She muses on the past, present and future and hopes to see her children, now dispersed a class across the globe. At one stage, Dan was destined for the priesthood, a life in the missions, ministering human kindness to those in need. He did finish with his girlfriend, but never took the route that would have led to Holy Orders, thus unwittingly leaving the global charitable acts to a sibling, who acted in an official capacity.

What happens to these children is crucial from the for the book’s plot. From their diverse lives and distant places they return to the family home for a Christmas get together. There are now children, Rosaleen’s grandchildren, children of her own children, doubly corrupted, perhaps, in Larkin’s terms. There are partners as well. There is alcohol. There are stalled careers. There are the hopes and aspirations of modern people involved in a modern world which seems to have left Rosaleen behind, now alone in her County Clare house that is filled with memories. Amongst her children, there are drinking problems, failed relationships, and quite a lot of sex. They are a pretty normal lot, if normality applies to anyone in particular.

“And half at one another’s throats” is a final line in one in the particular stanza of Philip Larkin’s “this be the verse”. But when the Madigans meet for their communal festive celebration, it is the other half that shines through, the half that Larkin did not describe. At least on the surface…

Notwithstanding the tension caused by differing economic status, the need to advertise public happiness via possessions, decayed Catholicism and known but not advertised sexual preferences that a generation before would have produced public damnation, the siblings cooperate via festivities and compete via interests as Rosaleen, their enduring mother, pursues the sale of the family house. It is worth quite a bit, especially in the Ireland of today where people might carry around four hundred euros in their wallet as small change. And so, the siblings compete, differ, recognize the paramountcy of their mother’s needs, but cannot escape the pressures of their own lives or the need to find solutions to problems they have dreamt up. And so together, they prepare their Christmas dinner, with most of the work falling on the sibling that always takes the load.

The Green Road of the title refers to a journey that Rosaleen undertakes unannounced, thereby causing panic amongst those left behind. She does not go far, but rediscovers an unmade track with old houses, yes, in ruins, nearby. All this, this mess of family life, must have happened before, to other families in the past, and will be repeated in the future with different actors, in different places, with different scripts. It is what we are and, despite what Philip Larkin might opine, we are all part of the process, for if we weren’t, there would be no one to write the verse. And we must all be thankful that Anne Enright has the vision and skill to create this moving and surprising tale.

Light of Evening by Edna O’Brien

The Light of Evening by Edna O’Brien is a deceptively complex book. It deals with relationships between two women, Dilly and Eleanora, who live very different lives some years apart. They are both women, but they come from different generations. They are both Irish, but they seem to belong to different countries, as well as different eras. They both leave their homeland to seek fortune, but on wholly different terms and to different places. They both seem to stumble into relationships with men, some of which involve marriage, and cope in partially successful ways with the challenges posed by maintaining the terms of engagement. The complications in the relationship between the two women, Dilly and Eleanora, arise because they are mother and daughter.

At the start, we meet Dilly, the mother, who is in hospital in Dublin. Her years have advanced. She is seriously ill and about to undergo a procedure. Her youth flashes before her sedated eyes. She travels from Ireland to the United States and we follow a developing life in New York as it moves from promised opportunity to promised opportunity, only to find that reality usually imposes its surprisingly mundane results. Wiser, but only marginally richer, Dilly soon finds herself repatriated for family reasons.

We meet Eleanora via scenes from her marriage. She too has left Ireland, but she has personal reasons and she has pursued education. She seems to be in control, at least potentially in control of her life options. She is apparently free to choose and we see her relocate for professional rather than menial reasons. But she seems to spend as much of her time and energy analyzing her relationships with men as pursuing her professional goals. The turns in her life are unpredictable, often unfathomable. They have a gloss of normality imposed by obvious consumption, personality created by likes and dislikes and achievement realized through opportunity. It is a life that presents a vivid contrast to the life of Dilly, whose own journey was imposed by a need to make a living first and a personal space second.

But the real complication arises because these two women, doing what women do a generation apart are mother and daughter. Letters exchanged form a major part of the book’s substance, specifically letters between mother and daughter. These letters often do not appear to say very much, but then that becomes a crucial point in the narrative. Deceptively simple, they can also deceive by not saying what the writer wants to say, by not communicating what the reader wants to hear.

Overall the plot of Edna O’Brien’s novel dwells almost exclusively on the nature of the relationship between mother and daughter, the difference and similarities that make their lives. It travels the world that surrounds their different generations, drawing sharp contrasts but also recognizing remarkable similarities. It’s a book that walks well-worn paths, but arrives at new experiences for the reader. Rather than the substance of life, it is the spaces between, whether large or small, that captivate. And, by the end, we realize that for all our complications, we individuals are generally ruled by self and can often be driven by quite mundane, but devastatingly relentless material concerns.

Two Lives by William Trevor

In Two Lives William Trevor offers two stories – Reading Turgenev and My House In Umbria. They are not mere stories, however, and read like substantial novellas. Both have women as central characters. Reading Turgenev features Mary Louise Dallon, an Irish Protestant whose parents support her decision to marry, though on the surface at least the match may be less than perfect. In My House In Umbria someone who claims to be called Emily Delahunty relates her chequered personal history against a backdrop of wholly unpredicted events that change the lives of all she invites to her house. In both stories, William Trevor examines a gap that might exist between reality lived, reality recalled and reality imagined. Writers create apparently fictitious worlds which, when embraced by characters who themselves are also fictitious, approach desired realities much closer than reality, itself.

Mary Louise Dallon is a young woman in an almost frighteningly normal Irish Protestant household. There are visits to the cinema and suitors of various ages and types, and work which will always be local and probably predictable. Predictable, that is, until someone does something rather unexpected. Mary Louise Dallon does do the unexpected. Reading Turgenev thus examines the consequences, predictable and otherwise, of this departure from the expected norm. And, of course, the Turgenev that gets read is itself fiction. But, for Mary Louise its imagined world becomes perhaps more important than the strange reality that surrounds her. People who share her life ignore the reality or, when it does not suit their bias, they recreate it almost as their own fiction. The effect on Mary Louise is devastating, or perhaps the consequences were inevitable, products of her own mis-interpretations or mis-understanding of reality. As a result, Reading Turgenev becomes an almost viscerally moving experience, where real violence is done to the central character without a finger ever being raised in threat. It-s all done with words. And eventually, those words are themselves a fiction.

My House In Umbria features a writer who is known as Emily Delahunty. The name might be unlikely. Perhaps much of what she relates about herself is of the same ilk. She has been here and there – Idaho, Africa, Umbria, English towns. She has suffered parental confusion and probably abuse, has been exploited in the USA and has been in business in Africa. But then, she is also a creator of romantic, perhaps sentimental fiction.  An apparently random event brings about equally chance encounters when people who seem to need one another congregate in Emily’s house in Umbria. Throughout she confuses real events with those of her own fiction. There is no denying reality, but this can also be created. She is clearly presenting to others her own version of reality that is far from the frame of a confident older woman in which she casts herself. Which version of reality will provoke belief?

Throughout William Trevor’s book the real joy is the author’s resplendent prose.  It surprises. It decorates, it twists, turns and celebrates. These fictional characters become completely real. Utterly credible, despite their propensity to live in imagined worlds. The overall concept is stunning. The detail is devilish, the consequences of these fictions apparently real.

Fools Of Fortune by William Trevor

Generally, genre thrillers are books without thrills. Someone gets killed. Turn the page and it happens again to someone else. There’s a chase, a near miss; da capo al fine; repeat. There are never consequences. Characters seem to exist – they never come to life – in an eternal present devoid of either thought or reflection. Plot is a series of events, while characters are mere fashionably dressed acts. William Trevor’s beautiful novel, Fools Of Fortune is, in many ways, a whodunit – or better who done what – thriller. But it transcends genre because it is the consequences of the actions and their motives that feature large, that provide plot and ultimately a credible, if tragic humanity.

Fools Of Fortune is a novel that presents tragedy not merely as a vehicle for portraying raw emotion, but rather as a means of illustrating the depth of ensuing consequence, both historical and personal. In conflict it is easy to list events, quote numbers, suggest outcome, but it is rare to have a feel of how momentous events can have life-long consequences for those involved, consequences that even protagonists cannot envisage, consequences that can affect the lives of those not even involved.

William Trevor’s book is set in Ireland. Its story spans decades, but the crucial elements of the plot are placed in the second decade of the twentieth century. They do involve the First World War, but really as a sideshow to the issue of Home Rule for Ireland. The Quinton family are Protestants living in an old house called Kinleagh in County Cork. Willie Quinton is a child, initially home schooled by a priest called Kilgarriff, who has a highly personal view of the world. We see many of the events through Willie’s child eyes, including a surreptitious meeting between Willie’s father and a famous man who visits on a motorbike. The family owns a flour mill. They are quite well off, a fact that is clearly appreciated by some and resented by others. Crucially, it is this availability of finance that leads to a downfall, events that lead to deaths, destruction and calls for revenge. Willie’s life is transformed for ever.

Over the water, the Woodcombes of Woodcombe Park, Dorset, have a daughter called Marianne. The Woodcombes and the Quintons are related. Marianne is Willie’s cousin. On a visit to Kinleagh she falls in love with Willie. She is a small, delicate girl. She has experience of a Swiss finishing school, a stay that brings exposure to practices that are not wholly educational. Marianne returns to Kinleagh to find Willie. She has important news, but finds that devastation has hit the Quinton household, a culmination of events beyond the control of any individual. No-one wants to talk about what might have happened, and no-one admits to the whereabouts of Willie. Marianne stays to wait for his return. It proves to be a long wait.

There is vengeance in the air, and unforeseen consequences for a child who apparently played no part in any of the events. She was blameless, a mere recipient of the consequences of others’ actions, of others’ grief. William Trevor tells the tale of Fools Of Fortune as serial memoirs of those involved, primarily Willie and Marianne. Some of the school experiences that form a significant part of the story are comic, and offer some relief to the pressure of unfolding tragedy. But central to the book’s non-linear discovery of motive and consequence is the fact that events can dictate the content of lives, and sometimes individuals appear as no more than powerless pawns in games dictated by others. We are all participants, but not always on our own terms.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

In The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry tells a story set in Ireland. As is often the case, this story set in Ireland is very much a story of Ireland, as much describing a nation and a setting as a personal history. But it seems that at least one aspect of the country’s painful relationship with its competing churches has changed in Sacred Scriptures. Gone is the assumption of grace applied unthinkingly by Catholics to their side of the divide. And reason for its removal is the church’s attitude towards women, marriage and motherhood.

In Secret Scriptures these axes of divide intersect to create a story that is effectively a modern virgin birth. It thus creates and presents a Madonna who, in her own way, must be kept above and apart from other women, other people. Late in the book Dr Grene, whose journal forms a large part of the narrative, asks this question: “Is not most history written in a sort of wayward sincerity?” Recollection thus remains sincere, but its waywardness perhaps lies in its selectivity, its particularity. History, after all, is an interpretation of events, not merely a listing, and interpretation always has a point of view. When, however, one’s knowledge of the past is at best patchy and at worst inaccurate, it becomes a new world to be discovered, revealed perhaps by chance, perhaps by design. Dr Grene also writes, “The one thing that is fatal in the reading of an impromptu history is wrongful desire for accuracy.” In the end, it is Dr Grene’s pursuit of such an impromptu history that reveals a stunning truth, a truth that can only be uncovered precisely because of the accuracy, the diligence that others invested in one person’s history. The impromptu history that Dr Grene reads is that of Secret Scripture’s central character, Roseanne McNulty, née Clear.

She is a hundred years old and has, for most of her adult life, been confined within the walls of a mental hospital. Her place of repose is to close and be demolished. Dr Grene is to oversee its demise. Roseanne has decided to write her life story. If Te Secret Scripture has a weakness, then it has a double weakness. Overall, the plot might come too close to the sentimental for some readers. For others, it will be the book’s saving grace. Secondly, Roseanne Clear, frail at a hundred years of age, might be an unlikely figure to write such a succinct, coherent and vivid account of events that happened almost eighty years before. Again we must suspend some belief here, but that is easily done because her recollections are both engaging and credible. They would have been more so if, as impromptu history, they were less concerned with improbable detail. It’s not the events that might be questionable, merely the accuracy of their recollection. But after all, that detail might just be illusory. There was a history in the family, we are told, a history of illness and instability and, perhaps, a history of another, less mentionable, affliction of women.

But in the end none of these are rare. It’s their public acknowledgement or admission that’s unusual. Life and its institutions treat Roseanne Clear badly, but no differently from others identified as afflicted with her condition. She is effectively branded insane by a socially-constructed righteousness that now seems to have lost all of its previously unquestioned authority. She seems to have few regrets, however, except, of course, for a life that may not have been lived. The life in question did, in fact, live, and it became something that reinterpreted Roseanne’s entire existence. Sacred Scripture is a beautiful book. It has its flaws, but the immediacy of its subject and the poignancy of its dénouement make it both enthralling and surprising.

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The South by Colm Toibin

The South by Colm Toibin is an intense, though fitful chronicle of a woman’s life, a life as yet incomplete. It presents a patchwork of detail amidst vast tracts of unknown, like a painting that has a suggestion of complete outline interspersed with patches of intricate detail. Thus, eventually, we know some amazing things about Katherine Proctor and we have shared much of her life. She remains, paradoxically, largely anonymous, however, as she probably does to herself.

The title carries an agenda for Katherine Proctor’s life, since aspects of the word provide setting and context for phases in her life. We meet her having just left her husband and her ten-year-old son. She was unhappily married to Tom. Richard was her spitting image. We never really get to know why she left, why she so definitively broke with a past that appeared both secure and fulfilled. A part of her motives may have sprung from her status as a Protestant in Enniscorthy, a small town near the sea in the south of Ireland, in the south-east. She thus inherited a status that bore its own history, a history of which she was aware, but minus its detail. But it could only have been part of an explanation, because it was her husband and her life, her private concerns, that she fled.

In the 1950s, she went south to Spain, settling in Barcelona. There she met Miguel, a man with his own history. He had fought with the anarchists in the Civil War. He still had friends, colleagues from the fight. Katherine falls for him. They move to a stone house in the Pyrenees. He paints. She paints. She bears him a child. Katherine meets Michael Graves, an Irishman, doubly coincidentally also from her home town. He is working in Barcelona. He seems to be an ailing, gently cynical character, who is clearly besotted with her. When things with Miguel turn unexpectedly sour, he offers solace and comfort.

This time, however, Katherine had nothing to do with the split, a separation that also took away her young daughter. She painted more, hibernated. And then there grew an urge to trace the son she had left behind many years before. He was still in their family house, the one she had deserted, where he lived with his wife and daughter. There are tensions. They are solved. Michael Graves is also back in Ireland. Katherine rediscovers the south, her homeland, through painting it. Though penniless, she gets by, sometimes appearing to live off her own resources of passion and commitment. Though perhaps not conscious of it herself, she is always striving for a fulfilment she believes she never attains. In fact, she has it all along. Though a victim of circumstance, she is ready to grasp any opportunity and live it. 

“Only a protestant would go into sea so cold,” Michael says to her. She gets wet. He doesn’t. And in the end, though we still hardly know her, we like Katherine proctor, and we respect her. The South alternates its narrative between first and third person in a subtle way tat allows the reader to sculpt its main character. She becomes wholly tangible, but rarely are we told anything about her. She lives. We meet her, and we react. Colm Toibin’s achievement in this, his first novel, is considerable.

View this book on amazon The South

The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin

The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin is a deeply emotional, deeply moving book. It’s the story of Eamon Redmond, a complex man, grown on tender roots, influential friends, a keen intellect and a tangible distance between himself and those whom he loves. The book is set in three parts, each of which dips in and out of time. 

We are with Eamon as a child in the small Wexford seaside villages he forever regards as home. Coastal erosion changes them over time and provides, in itself, a metaphor of aging, both of the individual and the community. Eamon’s schoolteacher father is a significant figure, both locally as a renowned teacher, and nationally as a result of what he accomplished in his youth in the furtherance of Irish independence and political development. Eamon’s mother died when he was young, an act for which, perhaps, he could never forgive her. 

We also see Eamon as an adolescent, hormones abuzz, becoming aware of adulthood, a physical, intellectual and, for him, a political transformation. But it is also a time when his father’s illness complicates his life. Throughout, we are never sure whether Eamon’s perception of such difficulty remains primarily selfish, driven by self-interest. If we are honest, none of us knows how that equation works out. 

We are with Eamon when he meets Carmel, his future and only wife. They share a political commitment and a life together. And they have two children. Naimh becomes pregnant at a crucial time. Donal is successful in his own way, but perhaps inherited his father’s distance in relationships. And then there’s another time and another Eamon, the professional, the legal Eamon. At first he practices law, but later, at a relatively early age, he accepts a politically-driven appointment to the judiciary. He has powerful sponsors, but also toys a little with the idea that he is being kicked upstairs. The moment, however, is his, no matter how dubious the source of the patronage. 

And then there are the cases that he has to judge, cases that impact in their own way upon the substance of his own life, his own family, whatever that might be, however the entity might be defined. It remains a substance that is perceived mainly by others, it seems, as he enacts his training and judges other people’s experience according to rules he has dutifully learned so that he might apply them dispassionately. 

So Colm Toibin mixes these time frames and circumstances in each of the book’s three sections. We are also presented with some intellectual arguments arising from the substance of the judge’s daily routine, issues with which he must grapple in his assessment of competing interests. Eventually he must address the dichotomy of terrorism versus political action, a definition that, years ago, might have left his own father on this side or that, if ever he had been identified. Eamon’s friends, in hindsight, might not have been the most worthy or honest sponsors, and so, again only with hindsight, we might question his judgment. But the pursuance of interests, like life, itself, is a process, and a process that The Heather Blazing describes in its richness and illusory permanence. 

As the Wexford coast erodes, Eamon ages, changes, succeeds, fails, loves and loves again, all in his own way. He engages us, and yet we, like the trusting, thoughtful Carmel, his wife, we never really know him, and we never really understand why we feel that way. If only he knew himself. A quite beautiful book. Life goes on. 

A review of The Gathering by Anne Enright

Anne Enright’s The Gathering deserves every ounce of praise it has received, and perhaps a bit more. It’s a family history of the Hegartys, told by Veronica after the death of her brother, Liam. So, and therefore, it is a wake, a stream of consciousness response to bereavement. There are more than shades of Molly Bloom here, as Veronica recounts intimate details of her own and her relatives’ ultimately inconsequential lives. And despite its obvious – and necessary – preoccupation with death and mourning, it is eventually an optimistic work, as optimistic as it can be when we are all revealed as rather inconsequential, temporal additions to the grand scheme of things, a grand scheme which, itself, is neither grand nor, indeed, a scheme. In such a void, we need blame to compensate grief. And after that is duly apportioned, at least we can just get on with it. 

What The gathering is not, by the way, is the kind of book that would appeal to anyone wanting instant gratification, a murder on every page, celebrity, wealth, empty melodrama, character that can be worn, or even axe-grinding. It is not snobbish to say that The Gathering runs kilometres above such pulp. That it deals with the lives of ordinary people in a less than successful family is stated at the outset by the author. 

Of the Hegarty family experience, Veronica writes, “the great thing about being dragged up is that there is no-one to blame. We are entirely free range. We are human beings in the raw. Some survive it better than others, that’s all.” Now this is fascinating, because a little later she asserts that when individual Hegartys feel aggrieved with their lot, there is always someone to blame, “because with the Hegartys a declaration of unhappiness is always a declaration of blame.” So within the family, blame is impossible to apportion, but always applied. Given my own assertion that we often need blame to compensate grief, this leads us to an understanding of Veronica’s diatribe, her frustration at being unable to find someone to blame, but needing to do so in order to cope with the loss. The book, then, is her personal catharsis. 

The beauty of The Gathering is its ability to remind us, fairly constantly, of the dysfunctional nature of the Hegarty family, whilst at the same time recording that most of those involved, in one way or other, find some kind of fulfilment in their lives. Liam, the brother who committed suicide by jumping off Brighton pier, was undoubtedly one of the casualties. And eventually the whole family shares his tragedy and, at the very end, ride through and past it. One aspect of the Hegartys is particularly enigmatic, however, and that is their relation to religion. There’s a priest, now an ex-priest, if that is possible, in the family and, at least nominally, they are Catholics. But the religiosity in Veronica’s narrative is less than convincing and hints at the grudging, though perhaps she cannot admit this, even to herself. If she were still practising, she would be more deferential. If she had rejected her faith, she would be more cynical. And if she were a sceptic, her attacks would be more vehement. 

The next time I read The Gathering, I will be careful to note references to religion, since it remains an enigmatic aspect of Veronica’s character. As Veronica’s narration progresses, it feels like she is getting things off her chest, a prosaic enough reaction to bereavement. By the end, we are confident that she has achieved her goal and that she will approach at least the next few days of her life with renewed vigour. Until, perhaps, she is plunged again into the miry uniqueness of who she is, its unacceptability, and its inevitability. For that is who we are. Choice is not ours. 

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