Tag Archives: #ReadingIreland

The Barracks by John McGahern

First published in 1963, The Barracks was John McGahern’s debut novel, written when he was in his late twenties. Now considered one of Ireland’s greatest authors, McGahern wrote about a world he knew very well, with The Barracks drawing on various experiences from his own childhood – particularly the early death of his mother, Susan, from cancer in 1944 and the years he spent living in the Cootehall Garda Barracks where his father, Frank, a Police sergeant, lived and worked. It’s a sad, beautifully observed novel that delves deep into character, which on paper ought to have been literary catnip for me; but in this instance, something stopped me from loving it as much as McGahern’s masterpiece, Amongst Women. Then again, maybe my expectations were unfairly high.

The Barracks revolves around Elizabeth, a housewife in her early forties who lives with her husband, Reegan, a sergeant in the Garda, and his three young children from a previous marriage. Once a nurse with a busy, independent life in London during the turmoil and uncertainty of the Blitz, Elizabeth has now settled for a quieter existence, one dictated by various domestic routines at the Garda barracks in rural Ireland where Reegan is based. Her family hadn’t wanted her to marry Reegan, a man they considered somewhat diffident and prone to flashes of temper, but Elizabeth was ready for a life of her own choosing, away from London and the painful memories it evoked.

She married Reegan. She was determined to grasp at a life of her own desiring, no longer content to drag through with her repetitive days, neither happy nor unhappy, merely passing them in the wearying spirit of service; and the more the calls of duty tried to tie her down to this life the more intolerably burdensome it became. (pp. 15–16)

The marriage is one of companionship, security and mutual dependency rather than love or desire. Nevertheless, Elizabeth seems resigned to this arrangement, finding solace in her contributions to the smooth running of the household and her familiar domestic routines.

…had she married Reegan because she had been simply sick of living at the time and forced to create some illusion of happiness about him so that she might be able to go on? She’d no child of her own now. She’d achieved no intimacy with Reegan. He was growing more and more restless. He, too, was sick, sick of authority and the police, sick of obeying orders, threatening to break up this life of theirs in the barracks, but did it matter so much now? Did it matter where they went, whether one thing happened more than another? It seemed to matter less and less. An hour ago she’d been on the brink of collapse and if she finally collapsed did anything matter? (pp. 49–50)

Early in the novel, it becomes clear that Elizabeth is likely living with undiagnosed breast cancer. She has found lumps in her breast but has done nothing to seek assistance from the doctor despite her earlier training as a nurse. Instead, she tries to focus on the myriad of small daily tasks that must be carried out to keep the household ticking along. Any spare time would only be filled by worries about her condition, and the thought of spiralling downwards is too frightening to bear.

This’d be the only time of the day she might get some grip and vision on the desperate activity of her life. She was Elizabeth Reegan: a woman in her forties: sitting in a chair with a book from the council library in her hand that she hadn’t opened: watching certain things like the sewing-machine and the vase of daffodils and a circle still white with frost under the shade of the sycamore tree between the house and the river: alive in this barrack kitchen, with Casey down in the dayroom: with a little time to herself before she’d have to get another meal ready: with a life on her hands that was losing the last vestiges of its purpose and meaning: with hard cysts within her breast she feared were cancer… (p. 49)

With her strength failing with every passing day, Elizabeth knows the time has come to face up to her condition by seeing the unit’s doctor – a task she has been delaying for fear of the probable diagnosis. (We are in 1950s Ireland here, a time when cancer was rarely discussed publicly – and possibly not even privately, depending on the patient’s character. There’s also a suggestion here that Elizabeth might not even be told that she has cancer, that maybe this fact will be withheld from her or shared only with Reegan, such was the conservative nature of Irish society back then.)

She knew she must see a doctor, but she’d known that months before, and she had done nothing. (…)

What the doctor would do was simple. He’d send her for a biopsy. She might be told the truth or she might not when they got the result back, depending on them and on herself. If she had cancer she’d be sent for treatment. She had been a nurse. She had no illusions about what would happen. (p. 34)

Essentially, the novel follows the Reegan family as they pussyfoot around this crisis. Elizabeth knows she is dying, a realisation that inevitably prompts reflection and the raking over of past regrets, of lives that might have been lived but were never realised.

What was her life? Was she ready to cry halt and leave? Had it achieved anything or been given any meaning? She was no more ready to die now than she had been twenty years ago. (p. 85)

Central to the novel is the question of whether Elizabeth has lived a meaningful and fulfilling life. In some respects, she has been dying inside long before the breast cancer started to destroy her physical strength and resilience. Her life at the barracks is mundane and narrow, a world away from the excitement she once experienced in London with her former lover, Michael Halliday, the dashing doctor she met through her work at the hospital. Despite being somewhat fickle, Michael broadened Elizabeth’s cultural horizons by giving her books and taking her to plays at the theatre. How might her life have turned out had their relationship been more stable? Would it have been more pleasurable, more fulfilling than the one she has experienced with Reegan? Sadly though, for various reasons that McGahern duly reveals, this affair with Michael was torrid and painfully short-lived.

He [Halliday] had changed everything in her life and solved nothing: the first rush of the excitement of discovery, and then the failure of love, contempt changing to self-contempt and final destruction, its futile ashes left in her own hands. (p. 209)

Meanwhile, Reegan is embroiled in his own longstanding battle at work, which McGahern depicts with a strong sense of authenticity. A former leader in the Irish War of Independence, Reegan is frustrated by the futile regulations he must conform to as a Garda sergeant, and an ongoing feud with Superintendent Quirke leaves him feeling bitter and resentful. In truth, Reegan would like nothing more than to tell Quirke where he can stick his routine patrols and duty logs as he dreams of saving enough money to buy a local farm. A side hustle of selling turf from the nearby bog consumes much of his spare time, but one wonders whether it’s a convenient excuse to break free from the constraints of the barracks.

Where this quietly devastating novel really excels though is in its portrayal of Elizabeth’s inner world as she struggles with her illness. While the book is written in the third person, McGahern holds us close to Elizabeth’s viewpoint – a noteworthy achievement for a male writer in his late twenties, especially with a debut novel of this nature. This is a world in which emotions are kept under wraps, where no one seems able to openly acknowledge that Elizabeth is terminally ill. McGahern also pays great attention to the daily rhythms and rituals of life in this close community: the importance of church and family, the devotion to prayer; the small gestures of friends and neighbours when Elizabeth’s illness becomes known; everything here is so well observed.

They came before Elizabeth had her packing finished, all the policemen’s wives, Mrs. Casey and Mrs Brennan and Mrs Mullins. They were excited, the intolerable vacuum of their own lives filled with speculation about the drama they already saw circling about this new wound. (p. 106)

Alongside the characterisation, there is some lovely descriptive writing here, capturing the small moments of beauty in Elizabeth’s world.

The whiteness was burning rapidly off the fields outside, brilliant and glittering on the short grass as it vanished; and the daffodils that yesterday she had arranged in the white vase on the sill were a wonder of yellowness in the sunshine, the heads massed together above the cold green stems disappearing into the mouth of the vase. (pp. 48–49)

Even though I didn’t find The Barracks quite as engaging or enjoyable as Amongst Women, it’s still a very accomplished novel. McGahern’s insights into coming to terms with death are especially perceptive, as are his portrayals of small-town life in rural Ireland at this time, replete with the burden these characters seem destined to bear. Recommended, especially for fans of William Trevor, Claire Keegan and Colm Tóibín. (I read this book for Cathy’s Reading Ireland event, which runs throughout March.)

Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen

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Initially published in 1968, Eva Trout was Elizabeth Bowen’s final novel, written when the author was in her sixties. I pulled it from my shelves because someone on Twitter (I can’t recall who) suggested it for Nora’s #SpinsterSeptember, but having read it, I’m not sure it quite fits. Bowen’s protagonist – the endlessly fascinating Eva Trout – is twenty-four when we first meet her and thirty-three by the story’s end, which seems a little too young to be considered a spinster. Either way, this is a brilliant, complex, beautifully written character study, and I’m delighted to have read it!

Tall, gawky and oddly naïve, Eva has somehow managed to survive a traumatic childhood, and this turmoil in her formative years partly accounts for her challenging behaviour in early adulthood. Her mother, the charming but maniacal Cissie, bolted shortly after Eva’s birth, only to be killed in a plane crash soon afterwards. Consequently, young Eva was raised by a succession of governesses appointed by her father, Willy, who recently took his own life. During adolescence, Eva spent some time at an experimental boarding school funded by her father, and Bowen reveals much of this background through flashbacks and reflections on past events in the novel’s early chapters.

A spell at an English boarding school followed, and it was here that Eva met the dazzling teacher, Iseult Smith (now Arble), who continues to be an important influence on her life. An impulsive girl by heart, the teenage Eva was an original thinker, often coming up with striking thoughts in isolation from one another. At school, Iseult encouraged Eva to follow through on her fragmented ideas and develop them into hypotheses or conclusions rather than randomly jumping from one impulse to another. For all Eva’s difficulties and capacity for wreaking havoc, there was (and still is) a vulnerability under that exterior, something Iseult tried to uncover while coaching the girl.

The giantess, by now, was alone also: some way along the edge of the water she had come to a stop – shoulders braced, hands interlocked behind her, feet in the costly, slovenly lambskin bootees planted apart. Back fell her cap of jaggedly cut hair from her raised profile, showing the still adolescent heaviness of the jawline. […] Is she thinking? Mrs Dancey thought not. Monolithic, Eva’s attitude was. It was not, somehow, the attitude of a thinking person. (p. 12)

Throughout his daughter’s youth, Willy was in a same-sex relationship with Constantine, an odious, self-interested man who is currently overseeing Eva’s considerable inheritance. Eva will inherit a substantial fortune when she hits twenty-five, which is only a few months away when the novel opens. In the meantime, Constantine is happy to put some distance between himself and Eva while she stays with her former teacher, Iseult, and her husband, Eric Arble, at their home, Larkins. How much Eva actually knows about the circumstances leading up to her father’s death remains somewhat unclear; however, Constantine agrees to this living arrangement, paying the Arbles a much-needed allowance for the girl’s keep.

In reality, though, the situation is far from ideal. Eva’s presence at Larkins is adding to the strain on the Arbles’ marriage, already under some pressure from Eric’s failed attempts at a fruit farm and Iseult’s abandonment of a promising teaching career. Eva too is no longer dazzled by Iseult. If anything, she feels abandoned by her former mentor, led on and betrayed, having previously opened up to her at school. Consequently, Eva spends much of her time at the local vicarage with the welcoming Dancey family, whose twelve-year-old son, Henry, becomes her closest friend.

When Eva informs Constantine that she wishes to leave Larkins, Constantine summons Iseult to London for a meeting…

Eva’s capacity for making trouble, attracting trouble, strewing trouble around her, is quite endless. […] The Trouts have, one might say, a genius for unreality: even Willy was prone to morose distortions. Hysteria was, of course, the domain of Cissie. Your, er, generous defence of Cissie won’t, I hope, entirely blind you to how much of what was least desirable in Cissie is in her daughter. Eva is tacitly hysterical. (p. 44)

With a little help from Henry, Eva escapes to Broadstairs, where she rents a rather undesirable house, Cathay, from a local estate agent, Mr Denge. Bowen’s talent for social comedy is on full display in this novel, and Eva’s odd mix of naivety, intolerance and impulsive behaviour provides plenty of suitable material. In this scene, Eva, who cuts a striking figure with her penchant for ocelot furs and other such outfits, is desperate to be rid of Mr Denge after he escorts her to Cathay. Mr Denge, however, insists on showing his tenant all the facilities – and well he might because she hasn’t a clue how anything works!

[Eva:] ‘—Thank you. I expect that you must be going?’

[Mr Denge:] ‘Toilet in order?’ He reached past Eva and gave a tug to a chain. The resultant roar, cataclysmic, stampeded Eva, who pushed nay fought her way violently past him shouting: ‘This is enough! Go – go away at once! You take liberties!’

Mr. Denge was no less outraged. He went crimson. What could or did she imagine, this she-Cossack? Cautionary stories raced through his brain. Fraught though his calling was with erotic risks, nothing had so far singled him out. A frame-up? Blackmail? This could be the end. This could be all round town. He should not have bought sheets with her without Mrs. Denge. (pp. 80–81)

As the first section of this two-part novel draws to a close, Eric Arble and Constantine trace Eva separately to Cathay, but their arrival one after another on the same evening leads Constantine to conclude that Eva is having a relationship with Eric. Moreover, Eva deliberately misleads Iseult about this, dropping a bombshell in a terrible act of betrayal.

In part two, set eight years later, Eva, now thirty-three, has acquired a young boy, Jeremy, during an extended stay in America. No precise details are given about this ‘adoption’; however, we are led to assume that money may have changed hands. Interestingly, Jeremy, who is deaf and mute, is much better cared for by his adoptive mother than Eva was herself. Parenting (or the lack of it) is one of the novel’s central themes, and it’s touching to see how Eva invests time in playing with this boy, helping him to appreciate the world through images and visual activities.

As the rest of the novel plays out, there are further complications for Eva as her attraction to Henry deepens. Moreover, she is drawn once more into the affairs of Iseult and Eric – now separated but not divorced – not to mention those of Constantine, now in thrall to a priest, Father Tony.

The novel’s power rests in the strength of Bowen’s characterisation and the quality of her writing, both of which are superb.

Eva is a fascinating character, undoubtedly damaged by her traumatic youth, but there’s also the suggestion of inherited mental health issues in the mix. Certainly, she has a habit of wreaking havoc almost everywhere she goes, sometimes deliberately. Misunderstandings and miscommunications are threaded through the narrative, many of them seeded or aggravated by Eva’s cavalier actions. Nevertheless, like any damaged individual, she has her vulnerabilities and redeeming features, too. While others may consider Jeremy the latest in a long line of Eva’s whims and peccadillos, the relationship between the boy and his adoptive mother is more loving than one might expect, especially given her earlier disruptive behaviour. Moreover, it’s interesting to consider how Eva might have turned out had she not been abandoned by Iseult at school. (We are largely reliant on Eva’s side of the story here, so the actual situation may have been somewhat different.) The supporting players are also excellent, from the rather pompous Constantine to the enigmatic Iseult.

As always with Bowen, the writing is top-notch. Her style takes a bit of getting used to at first, but it more than repays the reader’s concentration, especially with a protagonist as erratic as Eva. I especially love Bowen’s eye for detail, which she often uses to reveal insights into character.

Iseult took a sip at the cigarette, then rested it on the lip of the ashtray in order to draw off her right-hand glove. The gloves, fairly fine black suede, were not lost on Constantine: undoubtedly they were new. There had, then, been a moment to shop on the way here? A less wise woman would also have chanced a hat bar; Mrs Arble had kept her head and stuck to her sleek-feathered turban, which – dating back though it might be a year or two – still was in good shape (not many outings, probably?) and showcased the forehead loyally: nothing like an old friend. (p. 35)

The novel ends with a startling denouement, which, with the benefit of hindsight, seems tragically inevitable. It’s a powerful conclusion to this thoroughly absorbing book – another strong contender for my end-of-year highlights.

Eva Trout is published by Vintage Books; personal copy.

A Bit on the Side by William Trevor

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William Trevor is one of my all-time favourite authors. He writes beautifully about small-town Irish life, often focusing on the quiet moments other writers might overlook. His short stories are spellbinding – humane, compassionate, and suffused with melancholy. In particular, he has an innate ability to see into the hearts and minds of his characters with insight and precision, laying bare their deepest feelings for the reader to see.

First published in 2004, A Bit on the Side comprises twelve beautifully observed stories – quietly devastating glimpses of life with the power to endure. Usually, when reviewing short collections, I make the point that some stories will resonate more strongly than others; but on this occasion, every single story included here is a gem. Here we have stories of families, husbands and wives, current lovers and former partners, achingly sad portrayals that will linger in the mind.

The collection opens with ‘Sitting with the Dead’, in which Emily, a newly widowed woman, reveals all the details of her abusive marriage to two strangers from the Legion of Mary, a religious charity who call unannounced to sit and offer comfort.

It was always that: raising his voice, the expressions he used; not once, not ever, had there been violence. Yet often she had wished that there had been, believing that violence would have been easier to bear then the power of his articulated anger. It was power she had always felt coming from him, festering and then released, his denial of his failure. (p. 9)

As Emily sits by the body, all the hurt and fear she experienced with her husband comes tumbling out, contrasting with the callers’ best efforts to keep the conversation civil.

A strong sense of loneliness and isolation permeates these stories, punctuated by moments of hope, understanding or compassion. In ‘An Evening Out’, one of my favourites in this collection, a man and woman, both middle-aged, meet for a blind date arranged by a match-making agency. The woman – well-dressed and refined – is seeking companionship, someone to accompany her on theatre trips and days out to the coast. The man, on the other hand, is more self-centred and underhand. A food photographer by trade, he’s looking for a woman with a car, someone to transport him and his photographic equipment around London at weekends while he attends to his side project – photographing the city’s lesser-known areas for a coffee-table style book. Not that he lets on about any of this, of course. No…he’s far more furtive than that.

In the end, both parties realise there is no future in a potential relationship – they clearly move in very different worlds, and besides, it turns out that the woman doesn’t own a car.

His world was very different from hers, she added, knowing that she must not go on about hers, that it would be tedious to mention all sorts of things. Why should anyone be interested in her rejection more than twenty years ago of someone she had loved? Why should anyone be interested in knowing that she had done so, it seemed now, for no good reason beyond this shadow of doubt there’d been? A stranger would not see the face that she still saw, or hear the voice she heard; or understand why, afterwards, she had wanted no one else; or hear what, afterwards, had seemed to be a truth – that doubt played tricks in love’s confusion. (pp. 71-72)

Nevertheless, each party gets something out of the evening when it takes an unexpected turn. As ever with Trevor’s fiction, there is so much more that I could reveal about this story, but it would spoil the experience for potential readers, I think. Suffice it to say, some fascinating aspects of human nature are on display here, all beautifully observed.

‘Graillis’s Legacy’ is another standout, a beautiful, poignant story harking back to a nostalgic past some twenty years before. When Graillis, a widower who manages the local library, is notified of a substantial, unexpected inheritance, he is reluctant to accept the money. The deceased, an older woman he had met through the library, was clearly very special to him – not a lover as such, but a like-minded companion to bond with over books. Their lunches together were all perfectly innocent, of course; few personal details were exchanged, just a shared passion for writers such as E. M. Forster and Ford Madox Ford.

But in the drawing-room he had sat in so often in the autumn of 1979 and during the winter and spring that followed it, a friendship had developed over cigarettes, touches of lipstick on the cork tips that had accumulated in the ashtray with the goldfinch on it. That settled in his thoughts, still as a photograph, arrested with the clarity that today felt cruel. (p. 93)

Nevertheless, when his car was spotted several times near the woman’s house, people put tow and tow together and the townsfolk began to talk…

As Graillis wrestles with his feelings, he is bewildered by ‘the resurrection of a guilt that long ago had softened away to nothing’. Accepting the legacy now would feel like an admission of guilt – a confirmation of something illicit that had never actually happened. He’d like a little memento to remember the woman by, but the money would be too much (whatever would people say?). It’s a very poignant story, sensitively portrayed.

Other stories deal with hopes and dreams, people trying to carve out places for themselves in a turbulent, shifting world. In ‘Justina’s Priest’, Father Clohessy laments the decline of the church’s stature in society, the dwindling congregations and various misdemeanours that have sullied various reputations. He feels lost in this changing environment, uncertain what to say to his parishioners any more.

One day, when Father Clohessy hears something in confession – Justina, a young girl with learning difficulties, is planning to go to Dublin to visit an ‘unsuitable’ friend – he sees an opportunity to intervene.

She’d been the bane of the nuns when she’d attended the convent, sly and calculating, all knowing talk and unspoken defiance. She’d plastered herself with lipstick when she was older; in the end she born a T-shirt with an indecency on it. (p. 51)

Defying the sacred nature of the confessional, he goes to see Justina’s family, keen to exert his influence and maintain the status quo. It’s another excellent scenario which Trevor subtly explores.

In ‘Scared Statues’, a married woman whose family are very short of cash tries to find a creative solution to ease their financial worries. There’s another baby on the way, and the prospect of an additional mouth to feed is too much to bear. Meanwhile, a childless couple living nearby might welcome a new baby, so much so that they’d be willing to pay for it. As in several other stories here, Trevor creates a fascinating set-up, using it to explore the drivers of human behaviour and how the local community might view these actions (i.e. disapprovingly!).

‘Big Bucks’ has a hint of Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn about it; but in this instance, it’s a young man, John Michael, who goes in search of the American Dream, not a woman. Meanwhile, his fiancée, Fina, remains in Ireland, hoping to follow on once her man is settled. As the months pass, Fina finds herself drifting apart from her fiancé; in truth, it’s the allure of America she has fallen in love with, not John Michael himself.

Elsewhere in the collection, a girl attending private lessons in her tutor’s home realises the man’s wife is conducting an affair in the room above, while he is occupied downstairs. I loved this achingly sad story in which a man’s pain is slowly exposed. We also gain an insight into the girl’s feelings towards her tutor – a strange blend of awkwardness, guilt and compassion – as his situation becomes clear.

‘On the Streets’ is the darkest tale here, a particularly creepy story of a divorced man who stalks random women, including his ex-wife, Cheryl. The man – a disgruntled waiter, demoted to serving breakfasts following a customer complaint – bears a massive grudge against the complainant, which he finds impossible to shake. There’s so much going on in this one – stalking, kleptomania and a vicious attack. In fact, the latter isn’t entirely clear, partly because the man is a fantasist, which makes it tricky to separate what is real from what is imagined as he offloads his woes onto Cheryl. Another excellent story that deserves a second reading.

The collection closes on a high point with the titular piece, a masterclass in the less-is-more school of storytelling. In this story, we find ourselves observing the dying days of a longstanding love affair. A married man and his divorced lover meet three times a day: for breakfast in a favourite café before going their separate ways to work; then lunch in the park, or at a gallery when it rains; and finally, a quick drink in the same pub every evening before parting ways to catch their separate trains. She knows he will never leave his wife and family; nevertheless, these brief snatches of time together are enough for her.

As the story opens, the woman can sense that something is troubling her lover; they know one another well enough to pick up on these subtle changes in mood.

Something was different this morning; on the walk from Chiltern Street she had sensed, for an instant only, that their love affair was not as it had been yesterday. (p. 228)

Moreover, this ominous atmosphere only deepens as the days unfolds…

Not wanting to, and trying not to, he had passed on a mood that had begun in him, the gnawing of a disquiet he didn’t want to explain because he wasn’t able to, because he didn’t understand it. (p. 235)

As with ‘Gaillis’s Legacy’, this superb story rests on the perceptions of others, how society might view the lovers’ meetings, assuming their relationship to be a sordid, grubby affair – the ‘bit on the side’ encapsulated in the book’s title. Trevor shows us two people trapped in a landscape of loneliness, unable to be together because the man is bound by marital constraint. Moreover, the lovers cannot even enjoy these brief meetings for fear of how their relationship might be perceived.

What makes these stories resonate so strongly is Trevor’s compassion for his characters, how he treats them with grace and humanity irrespective of their failings. I adored these beautiful, deeply affecting stories of life’s small disappointments, limitations and regrets. They have a timeless, universal quality, marking Trevor out as one of best short-story writers of his generation.

A Bit on the Side is published by Penguin Books; personal copy.

Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden

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This excellent, beautifully observed novel about identity, friendship and private vs public selves is my first experience of Deirdre Madden’s work; but on the strength of its quiet, unshowy prose and deep insights into character, I will certainly be seeking out more.

Madden’s unnamed narrator – a successful playwright born in Northern Ireland but now living in London – is staying at the Dublin home of her close friend, Molly Fox, while Molly is in New York. The two women have been good friends for around twenty years, ever since Molly – a brilliant actress with a remarkable, distinctive voice – starred in the narrator’s first play, which propelled them both to fame.

As the narrator struggles to crystallise the vision for her new play, she reflects on her life and the relationships she has developed with Molly and others over the years – most notably, her old college friend, Andrew, now a successful art historian and TV presenter comfortable in his own skin; her eldest brother, Tom, a gentle Catholic priest who shares his sister’s interest in the arts; and Molly’s troubled brother, Fergus, who has long suffered intense periods of depression and alcoholism. Many of these memories are triggered by the myriad of possessions in Molly’s modest terraced house, tastefully furnished with interesting pieces acquired over the years. Tasteful that is apart from the absurd fibreglass cow installed in the back garden – a piece so out of kilter with the rest of Molly’s furnishings that the narrator begins to wonder if she knows her friend at all.

I realise that a certain school of thought says that who we are is something we construct for ourselves. We build our self out of what we think we remember, what we believe to be true about our life; and the possessions we gather around us are supposedly a part of this, that we are, to some extent, what we own. (pp. 37–38)

While the narrator has long resisted this idea of the self, partly due to her Catholic upbringing, the realisations that surface during the day challenge her previous beliefs, particularly around Molly – a woman who appears mousy and introverted in polite company but utterly compelling on stage. From her first visit to the theatre as a teenager, Molly understood that the key to being a great actor was to become the character – to inhabit them fully, rather than imitating them. A technique that requires the actor to distance themselves from their own personality and sense of self.

Central to the novel are questions about our private versus public selves. How well do we really know someone, even when we consider them to be a close friend? Who is Molly Fox when she is alone and unobserved, and how does this differ from the person others see when she is elsewhere, e.g. rehearsing in the theatre, meeting fans or socialising with friends? Through the novel’s elegant framework – which unfolds over one day, Molly’s birthday – Madden explores the often-contradictory personalities we adopt in public and private settings.

Madden is excellent on the limits of friendship, the rules of the game, the areas we keep protected and the things we reveal. As the narrator muses over her relationship with Molly, she comes to realise that friendship is not necessarily a clear insight into another person’s psyche but a more clouded vision through which only certain aspects of their world can be gleaned.

The closer you get to Molly, the more she seems to recede. Sometimes she seems to me like a figure in a painting, the true likeness of a woman, but as you approach the canvas the image breaks up, becomes fragmented into the colours, the brushstrokes and the daubs of paint from which the thing itself is constructed. Only by withdrawing can the illusion be effected again. Molly wants to remain remote. (p. 126)

Molly has an unnerving habit of dropping earth-shattering nuggets of information into general conversation as casual, throwaway remarks. Moreover, these bombshells – often covering her earlier life – are delivered when any follow-up discussion or questioning is nigh-on impossible to conduct, leaving the listener reeling as a result. In a fascinating scene, Molly reveals a pivotal event from her 7^th birthday, illuminating her fractured upbringing, the intense disdain she holds for her mother, and her fierce protectiveness towards Fergus.

While the narrator’s college friend, Andrew, has also distanced himself from his family, there is no hint of artifice about his personality now he has found his true self. Rather, it is the scruffy, disgruntled student the narrator recalls from her Trinity College days who seems unreal, not the successful TV presenter Andrew is today. If anything, his transformation feels entirely natural and unforced.

There was nothing fake about him, nothing false. It was instead as if he was at last becoming himself, becoming the kind of person he needed to be, the person he really was. It was the tense, prickly man I’d known at college who had been the fake. (p. 68)

The old Andrew was angry with his parents for favouring his brother, Billy, a loyalist paramilitary who was abducted and murdered in Belfast during a politically-motivated feud. In short, their mother never forgave Andrew for being the one left alive when Billy was killed, despite Andrew’s lack of involvement in The Troubles. Only years later, on becoming a father himself, could Andrew appreciate the depth of his parents’ grief over the loss of a much-loved son.

Interestingly, the narrator is also something of a misfit in her own family, although unlike the others, her familial relationships are warm and loving. She is closest to her brother, Tom, the Catholic priest, whom Molly also turns to for guidance – a private friendship which doesn’t include the narrator.

Perhaps most insightful of all is an unexpected encounter between the narrator and Molly’s brother, Fergus, who turns up unexpectedly at the house. As they sit in the garden and talk, the narrator discovers a whole new side to Fergus – a gentle, compassionate, witty and intelligent man, far from the helpless failure she had taken him for before.

Molly. I thought she had won through in life, whilst Fergus was defeated, broken. Now it seemed to me that things were perhaps quite the opposite, and her brother’s woes notwithstanding, Molly was the one who really hadn’t come to terms with the past, who was still bitter about it in a way that was corrosive and did more harm to her than to anyone else. (p.156)

Alongside identity, friendship, family and our private vs public selves, the novel also touches on a number of other topics, including the religious and political divisions within Northern Ireland, familial ties vs personal independence and walking away vs living a lie. Memorialisation is another significant theme. How, for instance, do we remember those who have died or moved on? What is the purpose of memorials, and who are they for – the living or the dead? It’s a topic of great relevance to Andrew, who now sees his brother’s signet ring as a treasured object of remembrance, not the gaudy, embarrassing object it once was.

In summary, this is a marvellous novel – the kind of book where nothing seems to happen, and yet everything is there, just waiting to be uncovered as the layers are peeled away. I’ll finish with a final quote about the tenuous nature of friendship. Here. the narrator reflects on a chance encounter with another old college friend, Marian, whom she hasn’t seen for several years.

Meeting her had been a dispiriting experience, as it so often can be when one meets old friends. The initial delight, the sense of connection, and then the distancing, the unravelling of that connection as information is exchanged and it becomes clear why one hasn’t stayed in touch. Defensiveness sets in, and it all ends in melancholy when one is alone again. (p. 106)

(Molly Fox’s Birthday is published by Faber and Faber; personal copy. This is my first review for Cathy’s Reading Ireland project, which runs throughout March.)

The Rose Garden by Maeve Brennan – the Herbert’s Retreat stories

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The Irish writer and journalist Maeve Brennan has been enjoying something of a mini-renaissance in recent years with the republication of her brilliant collection of Dublin stories, The Springs of Affection, by Peninsula Press in February and a Backlisted Podcast discussion on the book last November. Many of Brennan’s short stories first appeared in The New Yorker magazine, where she worked as a columnist and reviewer, only to be collected posthumously following her death in 1993. The Rose Garden is the second of these volumes, another excellent collection of pieces originally published in the 1950s and ‘60s.

The Rose Garden comprises twenty stories, divided into four sections, the first (and longest) of which I’ll cover in this review. These seven pieces are all set in Herbert’s Retreat, a private, exclusive community of desirable houses situated on the east bank of the Hudson River, thirty miles from the heart of New York. It’s the kind of place where only ‘the right people’ are permitted to live, ‘solemn, exclusive, and shaped by restrictions that are as steely as they are vague’.

During her time in New York, Brennan lived in the East Hamptons for several years, an experience that almost certainly inspired these stories of bitchy, social-climbing wives, ineffectual, unfaithful husbands and gossipy, put-upon maids.

But in every house the residents have contrived and plotted and schemed and paid to bring the river as intimately as possible into their lives. (p. 3)

While the Herbert’s Retreat pieces are generally thought of as secondary to Brennan’s Irish fiction (her editor, William Maxwell dismissed them as ‘heavy-handed’ and lacking the ‘breath of life’), I thoroughly enjoyed them. These are sharply perceptive stories, beautifully written and observed – think John O’Hara or Richard Yates, maybe with a dash of Mavis Gallant for good measure.

Four of the seven tales revolve around the Harkey household, featuring the impressionable housewife, Leona Harkey, her boring second husband, George, and their cutting Irish maid, Bridie. Also pivotal to these pieces is Leona’s style guru, Charles Runyon, a culturally sophisticated theatre critic who stays with the Harkeys every weekend, travelling there and back from his faded New York hotel.

Brennan wastes little time showing us the lay of the land in the Harkey household, painting Leona as a determined but shallow woman in thrall to Charles, whom she values more highly than George. In fact, the main reason Leona married George in the first place was to gain control of his riverside cottage, which had been blocking her view of the river. Naturally, the offending property was swiftly demolished following the couple’s marriage, much to Leona’s delight.

When Leona first meets Charles, her appearance is somewhat dowdy and old-fashioned. But with his help, she is transformed; out go her country tweeds and simple chignon, swiftly replaced by chic fireside skirts and a stylish hair-do. Compared to Charles, George is dull and embarrassing, making it easy for Leona to ignore him whenever possible.

Naturally, the sharp-eyed Bridie observes all this with self-satisfied pleasure. Moreover, the weekly bus rides to Sunday Mass give her the opportunity to share gossip with the other ‘help’ from Herbert’s Retreat – each maid trading anecdotes about their own employers, all of whom seem just as badly behaved.

[Bridie:] “That crowd takes care of their own drinks. Out of shame, if nothing else, so we won’t see how much they put down. As if I didn’t have to carry the empty bottles out. It’s a scandal. He [Charles] makes the drinks. He stands up in front of the bar in there like a priest saying Mass, God forgive me, and mixes a martini for himself, and one for her [Leona], and maybe an odd one for the husband [George]…” (p. 8)

What Brennan does so well here is to lay bare these residents’ motivations for everyone to observe: the social climbers’ desire for approval; the value they put on appearance over ideals and principles; the importance they place on social standing at the expense of grace and sincerity. In short, we see these characters as they really are – the dissemblers behind the curtains, complete with all their imperfections and fears.

She [Leona] was afraid of offending or disappointing him [Charles], having many times been obliterated by his scathing and horribly accurate tongue. She was also afraid of losing his favor, because his presence in the house every weekend gave her an unquestioned position among the women who lived at the Retreat, and their admiration, or envy, was the foundation on which Leona built up her importance. (p. 73)

The caustic power dynamics also extend to other members of these status-driven families, typically the householders’ mothers and ex-wives. In The Anachronism, we meet Liza and Tom Frye, who share their home with Liza’s mother, Mrs Conroy. Mother and daughter clearly loathe one another, with Liza bullying Mrs Conroy at every opportunity, denying her the small courtesies and pleasures her position should afford.

Liza and Mrs. Conroy detested each other, but it suited them to live together—Liza because she enjoyed showing her power, and Mrs. Conroy because she was waiting for her day of vengeance. They were alike in their admiration for Tom’s money, but Mrs. Conroy felt she should have more say in the spending of it. (p. 18)

Also on display here is Brennan’s keen ear for dialogue, particularly the barbed conversations between neighbours as they vie for social status – superficially polite on the surface but dripping with malice underneath.

Liza made a strong impression. Right off, her modern furniture outraged all the other women, who had been concentrating on Early American. Liza called the furniture at the Retreat “country.” “Country furniture is sweet,” she said, “but it’s so sheeplike.” In the same way, she refused to share the other women’s enthusiasm for gardening (p. 17)

Several of the stories, The Anachronism included, end with a kind of twist or unexpected outcome as the social climbers are unmasked or outmanoeuvred by those around them. For instance, when Liza plots to get the better of Clara, the Retreat’s resident Queen Bee, her plan backfires, strengthening Mrs Conroy’s position in the process. There is some wonderfully wicked humour threaded through these stories, largely powered by Brennan’s scathing portrayals of the vagaries of human nature.

As in The Springs of Affection, Brennan writes beautifully about interiors, conjuring up her settings in simple, quietly evocative prose. In The Joker, thirty-something Isobel Bailey, who likes to think of herself as a generous, charitable woman, invites a small group of life’s outsiders (or ‘waifs’ as she likes to call them) to lunch on Christmas Day. The Baileys’ dining room is gorgeously evoked, rich with the pleasures of a luxurious Christmas for all her guests to acknowledge.

The warm pink dining room smelled of spice, of roasting turkey, and of roses. The tablecloth was of stiff, icy white damask, and the centrepiece—of holly and ivy and full-blown blood red roses—bloomed and flamed and cast a hundred small shadows trembling among the crystal and the silver. In the fireplace a great log, not so exuberant as the one in the living room, glowed a powerful dark red. (p. 60)

Nevertheless, Isobel’s hopes of the perfect day are dashed when a beggar comes to the back door looking for a dollar. Instead of offering money, Isobel insists that the man is given a full Christmas dinner in the servants’ kitchen, a gesture she comes to regret as the afternoon plays out…

In several instances, the stories pivot on a significant household object: a precious stone hotel water bottle lent to a prestigious guest; a concealed fireplace that exposures the fault lines in a marriage; two matching pink-and-white striped shirts designed to symbolise friendship but trigger a chain of calamities instead. It’s a feature that chimes with many of Brennan’s Irish stories from Springs with their focus on domestic interiors, painting the house as a battleground ahead of a breeding ground for love.

These are biting stories of flawed individuals and their quests for social advancement – beautifully crafted and observed. I’m planning to read the rest of these stories quite slowly, hopefully with another post to follow later this year.

The Rose Garden is published by Counterpoint; personal copy.

Nights at the Alexandra by William Trevor

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The esteemed Irish writer William Trevor is frequently cited as a master of the short story, and rightly so. His stories are spellbinding – humane, compassionate and beautifully written. He has a way of getting into the hearts and minds of his characters with insight and precision, laying bare their deepest preoccupations for the reader to see. These skills are very much in evidence in Nights at the Alexandra, a slim collection comprising the titular novella and two short stories, The Ballroom of Romance and The Hill Bachelors. I simply adored these achingly melancholy pieces, exquisitely expressed in Trevor’s deceptively simple, understated prose. As in Clare Keegan’s novellas Foster and Small Things Like These, there’s a luminosity or purity to Trevor’s stories, an emotional truthfulness that’s hard to capture in a review.

The collection opens with the titular novella in which fifty-eight-year-old Harry looks back on the days of his youth during WW2 – commonly known as the ‘Emergency’ in Ireland. At fifteen, Harry forms an unlikely but deeply touching friendship with Frau Messinger, a young Englishwoman who has come to Ireland with her much older German husband. The Messingers, who are comfortably off, have moved to Cloverhill to escape the war, Ireland being neutral and a place of relative safety.

Harry’s traditional Protestant parents are suspicious of the Messingers, viewing them as Jewish or amoral in some way (neither of which is actually true). Meanwhile, Harry runs errands for Frau Messinger, marvelling at the time he spends in her intoxicating company, listening to tales of her youth and other such pleasures. Herr Messinger seems equally fond of Harry, sharing his plans to build a beautiful cinema in the town – it will be called the Alexandra, a wedding gift for his wife.

As one might expect with Trevor, the burgeoning friendship between Frau Messinger and Harry is beautifully portrayed. Harry is enchanted by this sophisticated woman with her fine clothes and cigarettes, but their relationship is an innocent one – a motherly peck on the cheek at Christmas, a touch of the hand here and there, but nothing more sensual.

Frau Messenger had claimed me from the moment she stepped from her husband’s car that day in Laffan Street: and she had held me to her with the story of her life. Details that were lost in the enchantment of her voice return with time. (p. 57)

On finishing school, Harry joins the staff of the Alexandra, selling tickets in the box office, standing in for the projectionist in times of need and generally mucking in, much to his family’s disgust. At first, the picture house is a great success, attracting visitors from the surrounding area, especially once the Emergency is over.

As the story unfolds retrospectively, we learn what happens to the Messingers, the Alexandra and Harry himself in the intervening years. In some respects, this is a sad, melancholy story; but as Harry looks back at his life, he feels no regret. His memories of Frau Messinger and the cinema are enough, shot through with happiness despite the spectre of loss.

People loved the Alexandra. They loved the things I loved myself – the scarlet seats, the lights that made the curtains change colour, the usherettes in uniform. People stood smoking in the foyer when they’d bought their tickets, not in a hurry because smoking and talking gave them pleasure also. They loved the luxury of the Alexandra, they loved the place it was. Urney bars tasted better in its rosy gloom; embraces were romantic there. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers shared their sophisticated dreams, Deanna Durbin sang. Heroes fell from horses, the sagas of great families yielded the riches of their secrets. Night after night in the Alexandra I stood at the back, aware of the pleasure I dealt in, feeling it all around me. (p. 55)

The Ballroom of Romance and The Hill Bachelors touch on broadly similar themes – quietly devastating stories of everyday country folk caught between the pull of their own desires and the familial duties that bind them to home.

Ballroom focuses on Bridie, a thirty-six-year-old spinster who cares for her elderly father on the family’s remote farm. With only one functioning leg, the father relies heavily on Bridie for help with the livestock, effectively tying the girl to home. Trevor paints him as a gentle, understanding man – someone who feels bad about the restrictions his conditions impose, especially on Bridie.

Every Saturday evening, Bridie cycles seven miles to the nearest dance hall, where she hopes to catch the eye of Dano Ryan, the middle-aged bachelor who plays the drums with the amateur band. As the story plays out, we learn more about Bridie and the other singles hoping for a touch of romance. Back in the days of her youth, Bridie only had eyes for Patrick Grady, a local boy who captured her heart. But some other girl ended up with Patrick, spiriting him away, leaving Bridie broken-hearted. With tonight’s dance in full swing, Bridie yearns for the other lives she could have lived – marriage to Patrick, for instance, raising a family together in England, maybe a job of her own.

The great tragedy of this story lies in the closing pages as Bridie realises what lies ahead of her. Even Dano Ryan, a man she doesn’t love, seems destined to marry another, crushing Bridie’s dreams of companionship and some help with the farm. The only remaining option is Bowser Egan, an unreliable chancer who likes to drink, frittering away his money on a regular basis. It’s a quiet, heartbreaking story, perfectly captured in Trevor’s luminous prose.

The Hill Bachelors taps into similar themes with young Paulie returning home to help his mother with the family farm following his father’s death. The opening is quintessential Trevor, portraying Paulie’s mother with grace and humanity.

She was a small woman, spare and wiry, her morning clothes, becoming her. At sixty-eight, she had ailments: arthritis in her knuckles, and her ankles, though only slightly a nuisance to her; a cataract, she was not yet aware of. She had given birth without much difficulty to five children, and was a grandmother to nine. Born herself far from the hills that were her home now, she had come to this house, forty-nine years ago, had shared its kitchen and the rearing of geese and hens with her husband’s mother, until the kitchen and rearing became entirely her own. She hadn’t thought she would be left. She hadn’t wanted it. She didn’t now. (p. 87)

As the only bachelor in the family, Paulie is best placed to give up his current job and move back home after the funeral. All the other siblings are all married with busy lives and young children of their own, so Paulie knows he must do his duty on the farm. His one regret is that Patsy Finucane will not join him there. Sadly, Patsy prefers the buzz of town life to the prospect of life on an isolated country farm, so she ditches Paulie for a post office clerk before his notice period is out.

These are beautiful, deeply moving stories, exquisitely told. A gem of a collection from one of my all-time favourite writers.

Nights at the Alexandra is published by Penguin Books; personal copy. My second review for Cathy’s Reading Ireland Month, more details here.

Dance Move by Wendy Erskine

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Dance Move, the second collection by the Belfast-based writer Wendy Erskine, comprises eleven short stories – little snapshots of life with all its minor dramas and incidents. While several other reviewers love this book, praising the stories for their humanity, authenticity and colour, sadly I found it somewhat uneven as a whole. On the positive side, there are five or six very solid stories here – memorable, highly relatable pieces that made a strong impression on me. These are the stories that I’ll focus on in my review, with a few brief notes on the less satisfying ones towards the end.

Erskine’s strongest pieces tend to feature ordinary, working-class people, stoically dealing with the small dramas and preoccupations of everyday life. In some instances, there is a strong sense of looking back to the past, of paths not taken or opportunities left unexplored. In others, a more dramatic event takes place – an incident of some sort that interrupts the status quo, frequently ushering in a change in the central character’s perspective or direction. The stories are mostly set in Belfast, and the gritty social landscape of the city comes through clearly without this feeling laboured or contrived. Erskine also uses humour very well, and several of the best pieces display a sharp sense of dry wit, especially in the dialogue.

In Mathematics, one of my favourites in the collection, a domestic cleaner named Roberta finds an abandoned girl in an empty rental property during her shift. When the girl’s mother fails to show, Roberta takes the child home with her rather than alerting the authorities – otherwise the child might be taken into care. As Roberta tries to help the girl with her homework, she is reminded of her own learning difficulties at school and the bewilderment this generated at the time.

Then they lifted her out to sit in the little room with the plant and box of tissues to speak to the woman in the cardigan who made her say numbers backwards, find words in a swirl of colour. Mistakes again, so they sent her to that other school with its buses, where she had to sit with a plastic bag on her lap because she was sick every journey. (p. 13)

The story ends with a shocking discovery, an emotional jolt that pulls Roberta (and the reader) up short, making it a memorable start to the collection – the kind of story where you wonder what the future holds for these individuals, especially the child.

In the poignant His Mother, Sonya scours the city, systematically removing any ‘missing persons’ posters of her son, Curtis, who has now been found dead. These images are tragic reminder of a life unlived, a sense of potential snuffed out.

In her bag, Sonya has a paint scraper, a cloth and a big bottle of soapy water. She has tried to work methodically, moving in succession along each of the radial routes coming out of the town. It’s been a laborious process. She looks for green electric boxes and lampposts, the black street bins, but it could just as easily be gable walls, or even corrugated iron, the shutters of shops that have been empty for six months or so. She looks for anywhere where she can still see her son. (p. 63)

What works so effectively here is the maelstrom of emotions Sonya experiences when she discovers a new ‘missing persons’ poster in place of her son’s. At first, Sonya is indignant that Curtis has been forgotten so quickly; however, this annoyance is soon replaced by a wave of sorrow – a heartfelt kinship for another traumatised mother, desperately hoping for a glimmer of light.

Memento Mori is another poignant story exploring the impact of bereavement, albeit from a different angle. While Tracey lies ill with cancer, a young girl is stabbed outside the house she shares with her partner, Gillian. As time passes, Gillian feels worn down by the constant stream of mourners leaving flowers and cuddly toys by the hedge, encroaching on her privacy as she tries to care for Tracey. Unsurprisingly, these feelings of resentment are heightened when Tracey passes away, prompting Gillian to lash out in a moment of anger. As in the other stories discussed above, Erskine gets right to the emotional heart of the scenario she is exploring here, which makes for a satisfying read.

In Bildungsroman, my favourite story in the collection, seventeen-year-old Lee makes a startling discovery while staying with his neighbour’s sister, Eileen, during a short work placement in Belfast. It’s a secret that connects Eileen and Lee for life – to say any more about the details of this shared understanding might spoil it for potential readers, so I’ll leave it there in terms of the plot. Nevertheless, this is an excellent story featuring highly relatable characters who find themselves in a surprising (but entirely believable!) situation. There’s also a great sting in the tail with this one, an ironic touch that’s very effectively done.

I also liked Cell, an intriguing story of a Belfast girl who falls under the spell of a pair of scammers while living in London. The story is told in flashback, ultimately revealing the double meaning of the title ‘Cell’ when the reader reaches the end.

Others pieces, such as Mrs Dallesandro and Gloria and Max, felt a little slight or underdeveloped for my tastes – I would have liked a little more fleshing out of the characters or a stronger hook in these sketches. Similarly, Golem – a story featuring a couple travelling to a family celebration – seemed diffuse and lacking in focus despite its longer length.

So, in summary, a rather mixed reading experience for me, but I’m definitely in the minority on this one. (Maybe I’m just not Erskine’s reader; sometimes it’s hard to tell…) For another, more positive perspective on this collection, you can find Cathy’s review here. Cathy is also co-hosting this month’s Reading Ireland event – more details at her website, 746 Books.

Dance Move is published by Macmillan; personal copy

Foster by Claire Keegan

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When I look back over the last three months, Claire Keegan’s beautiful novella Small Things Like These stands out as one of my favourite recent reads. Set in a small town in County Wexford in the run-up to Christmas 1985, the book tells the story of Bill Furlong, a thoroughly decent, hardworking man who stays true to his personal values when he sees worrying signs of abuse at the local convent. It’s a deeply affecting story about standing up to the Catholic Church and doing right by those around you, even if it puts your family’s security at risk.

Clocking in at under 100 pages, Foster is an earlier novella in a similar style, drawing on themes of family, kindness and compassion from a child’s point of view. It’s a gorgeous book, just as exquisitely written as Small Things Like These, confirming Keegan as one of my favourite Irish writers alongside the wonderful Maeve Brennan.

As Foster opens, a young girl from Clonegal, County Carlow is being driven to County Wexford by her father, Dan. There she will stay with relatives, an aunt and uncle she doesn’t know, with no mention of a return date or the nature of the arrangement. The girl’s mother, Mary, is expecting a baby, and with a large family to support, the couple have chosen to take the girl to Wexford to ease the burden at home.

Almost immediately the girl detects some differences in her new environment with John and Edna Kinsella. Like the girl’s parents, the Kinsellas are country folk, living and working on a farm – and yet the atmosphere feels more relaxed here than at home, less rushed with more space to think and breathe.

With my mother it is all work: us, the butter-making, the dinners, the washing up and getting up and getting ready for Mass and school, weaning calves, and hiring men to plough and harrow the fields, stretching the money and setting the alarm. But this is a different type of house. Here there is room, and time to think. There may even be money to spare. (p. 12)

The story is narrated by the young girl herself (whose name we never learn), a viewpoint that gives the novella a beautiful sense of intimacy, perfectly capturing the uncertainty of not knowing how the future will pan out.

And so the days pass. I keep waiting for something to happen, for the ease I feel to end – to wake in a wet bed, to make some blunder, some big gaffe, to break something – but each day follows on much like the one before. (p. 37)

With no children of their own at home, the Kinsellas treat the girl with love and compassion, demonstrating their values through simple acts of kindness. As John works the land, preparing the crops for harvest, the girl helps Edna around the house, lighter work than she has been used to at home. Here she learns how to prepare fruit from the garden for jam and tarts, the simple rhythms of domestic life. There’s time for some fun too, the occasional trip to town to buy clothes and sweets – when John gives the girl a pound note to spend, her eyes light up. We also learn a little more about the Kinsellas themselves, how past sorrows have almost certainly shaped their affection for the girl, whom they treat as one of their own.

As the summer draws to a close, the sense of uncertainty about the future heightens, sharpening a little the atmosphere in the house. I won’t reveal anything more about how the story plays out, other than to say that Keegan really lands the ending – it’s an unforgettable scene.

Keegan writes beautifully about the gentle rhythms of country life. There is a purity and simplicity to her prose, a luminosity that builds through the book.

All through the walk, the wind blows hard and soft and hard again through the tall, flowering hedges, the high trees. In the fields, the combines are out cutting the wheat, the barley and oats, saving the corn, leaving behind long rows of straw. We meet men on tractors, going in different directions, pulling balers to the fields, and trailers full of grain to the co-op. Birds swoop down, brazen, eating the fallen seed off the middle of the road. (p. 49)

Her style is uncluttered and spare – every phrase has just the right weight and meaning, not a word out of place. She also leaves plenty of space in the story, allowing the reader to make their own connections between little hints and observations to fill in the gaps.

Occasional references to external events seem to locate the story in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, and yet there is a timeless quality to it, reflecting the Ireland of old. Keegan also nails the atmosphere of a small, close-knit community to perfection, the sort of place where everyone knows everyone else’s business and gossip is rife. In this scene, a nosy acquaintance of Edna’s has just come back from a funeral with much to report.

She takes off her cardigan and sits down and starts talking about the wake: who was there, the type of sandwiches that were made, the queen cakes, the corpse who was lying up crooked in the coffin and hadn’t even been shaved properly, how they had plastic rosary beads for him, the poor fucker. (pp. 57–58)

In summary then, Foster is a sublime novella, a masterclass in the ‘less-is-more’ school of writing – a poignant story, beautifully told. Another very strong contender for my annual reading highlights.

Foster is published by Faber & Faber; personal copy.

The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen

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First published in 1935, The House in Paris is probably one of Elizabeth Bowen’s most accomplished novels. It’s certainly the most atmospheric of the four I’ve read to date, an elegantly constructed story of deceptions, infidelity and identity, infused with a sense of secrecy that feels apparent from the start.

The novel is divided into three sections, the first and third of which (both titled ‘The Present’) take place on the same day – a fateful day in the lives of Bowen’s four main characters, as the narrative ultimately reveals. As the book opens, eleven-year-old Henrietta has just arrived in Paris, where she will spend the day with the Fishers before continuing her journey to Menton, where her grandmother is spending the winter. In short, the Fishers’ is a stopover point for Henrietta between trains – a visit arranged by the girl’s grandmother, Mrs Arbuthnot, and her friend, Miss Naomi Fisher.

Also waiting at the Fishers’ house in Paris in Leopold, a nine-year-old boy who is due to meet his mother, Karen, for the first time since his birth – a reunion that coincides with Henrietta’s visit purely by chance, much to Naomi’s concern. The circumstances surrounding Leopold’s parentage are clearly something of a mystery, with Bowen dropping clues here and there for the reader to piece together. For instance, when Henrietta arrives at the Fishers’ house, she is introduced to Naomi’s mother, Mme Fisher, a manipulative elderly lady in the dying days of her life. While Naomi is keen for Leopold to be treated sensitively, Mme Fisher is much less discreet, readily disclosing her daughter’s link to the boy’s father as she talks to Henrietta.

‘Oh,’ Henrietta said, ‘did you know his father too?’
‘Quite well,’ said Mme Fisher. ‘He broke Naomi’s heart.’
She mentioned this impatiently, as though it had been some annoying domestic mishap. Henrietta, glancing across the bed, saw Miss Fisher’s eyelids glued down with pain. Then, with the air of having known all along this would come, the helpless daughter rolled up her knitting quickly, as though to terminate something, perhaps the pretence of safety, jabbing her needles through it with violent calm. (p. 43)

Leopold, too, learns something of the mystery surrounding his birth during his time at the Paris house. While Henrietta is upstairs with Miss Fisher and her bedridden mother, Leopold finds some letters in Naomi’s handbag – one from his guardians, the Grant Moodys, outlining various sensitivities to Naomi, and another from Mrs Arbuthnot on the details of Henrietta’s trip. However, a third letter – a note from Leopold’s mother to Naomi – is missing, remaining unavailable to the reader and Leopold himself. Nevertheless, there are worrying references to his parents’ temperaments – ‘instability on the father’s side’ and a ‘lack of control on the mother’s’ – in the first letter that Leopold discovers.

Slowly but surely, Bowen ratchets up the sense of tension as the two children circle one another in the Paris house. It’s a dark, claustrophobic place, heightened by the oppressive air in Mme Fisher’s sick room and the poisonous events of the past.

Round the curtained bedhead, Pompeian red walls drank objects into their shadow: picture-frames, armies of bottles, boxes, an ornate clock showed without glinting, as though not quite painted out by some dark transparent wash. Henrietta had never been in a room so full and still. (p. 36)

Bowen excels at portraying these children, skilfully capturing their growing awareness of the adult world while a fuller picture of its mysteries remains tantalisingly out of reach.

In the novel’s second section (‘The Past’), Bowen takes us back ten years to a time when Naomi was engaged to Max Ebhart, a Jewish banker of French-English heritage. Central to this section is Naomi’s friend, Karen Michaelis – herself engaged to Ray Forrestier, a respectable man from the ‘right’ background and social class – and it is by focusing on Karen’s story that we learn the origins of Leopold’s birth.

One of the things Bowen does so well here is to show us how the past shapes the present, how former indiscretions and secrets can bleed into the here and now in the most painful of ways. Consequently, there is an air of damage or trauma surrounding Leopold, a lack of motherly love and sense of identity that have left their marks on his character.

Bowen’s prose is beautiful, if a little tricky to get to grips with from time to time. Nevertheless, there is some lovely descriptive writing here, from the glimpses of Paris in the morning light to the sun-drenched cul-de-sacs of Boulogne during a secret assignation.

Today, the salt sunshine bought every shape nearer, as though distance has been parched out. Doorways, cobbles, arches and stone steps looked sentient and porous in the glare. Buildings basked like cats in the kind heat, having been gripped by cold mists, having ached in unkind nights, been buffeted in the winter. Hot wind tugged now and then at the flags down on the Casino, stretching the flags, then letting them drop again. Flashing, a window was thrown open uphill. What you saw, you felt. (p. 139)

The House in Paris is an elegantly constructed novel in which the past is firmly intertwined with the present – a structure that Tessa Hadley mirrors in her 2015 novel, The Past, with a clear nod to Bowen’s approach.

The House in Paris is published by Vintage Books; personal copy.

Other People’s Worlds by William Trevor

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As a writer, William Trevor has an innate ability to convey the tragedies of our lives, how individuals can be worn down by their fates and circumstances. It’s a quality that’s very much in evidence here, in the author’s 1980 novel, Other People’s Worlds, a tale of deception, collateral damage and a questioning of faith. But, if anything, the story is even darker than Trevor’s other early to mid-period work, more malevolent perhaps than The Children of Dynmouth, with which it shares a central theme – how a sinister figure can sweep into people’s lives, leaving wreckage in their wake.

The man in question is Francis Tyte, a thirty-something bit-part actor whose main claim to fame is a series of tobacco commercials on the TV. As the novel opens, Francis is preparing to marry Julia Ferndale, a forty-seven-year-old woman who lives with her widowed mother, Mrs Anstey, in Swan House, their Gloucestershire home. Mrs Anstey has some nagging doubts about Francis, which she tries to voice to her grown-up grandchildren, Henrietta and Katherine, but to little avail. While Julia’s daughters agree that their mother should make a will, they have no great concerns about Francis himself. After all, Julia seems happy with him, contently planning their honeymoon in Florence, for which she alone will pay.

Francis, however, is not as charming or innocent as he might appear at first sight, as Trevor quickly reveals to the reader (but not to Julia herself). Over the years, Francis has latched onto a series of people (often women), inveigling his way into their worlds, taking advantage of their generosity – and in some instances, their vulnerabilities. It’s a well-worn routine, complete with a tragic childhood to illicit the victims’ sympathies, perfected over time, from one family to another.

After the tragedy of his parents’ death when he was eleven he’d spent the remainder of his childhood in Suffolk, with a faded old aunt who had died herself a few years ago. None of that was true. As a child he had developed the fantasy of the train crash; his parents were still alive, the aunt and her cottage figments of his imagination. But in the drawing-room of Swan House he recalled the railway tragedy with suitable regret, and was rewarded with sympathy and another cup of tea. (p. 28)

Once Francis has gained what he wants from his benefactors – or has been rumbled – he disappears, leaving them feeling foolish and violated in his wake. In most instances, money is his main object, alongside a place to stay; but as the narrative unfolds, the is a sense of something deeper at play – a desire or need to disrupt, perhaps. In many respects, Julia is the perfect target for Francis – kind, compassionate, and too trusting by half. Prone to collecting ‘lame ducks’, as Mrs Anstey tends to think of it.

As preparations for the wedding get underway, Francis’s past begins to close in on him. We meet Doris, a single mother with a drink problem, barely holding down her job in the shoe department of a local store. While twelve-year-old Joy (Francis and Doris’s daughter) skips school, Doris cuts a particularly tragic figure, hiding bottles of vodka behind the bread bin to feed her escalating addiction. She too is the victim of Francis’s lies, knowing nothing about his engagement to Julia and the forthcoming wedding. As far as Doris is concerned, Francis is still married to his first wife, a dressmaker in Folkestone who has been at death’s door for several years.

Surely, it’s only a matter of time. Once the dressmaker has finally passed away, things will be different. Francis will be free to live with Doris and Joy on a permanent basis – just like a proper family, or so Doris believes. But her colleagues at the store are not quite as convinced…

He’d got even thinner, his face especially, not that it didn’t suit him. Lean bacon’s best, as Irene in Handbags always said. All the girls on the floor knew what he looked like of course because of being on the television, especially since he’d become the Man with the Pipe and there were more close-ups of his features. ‘Dishy,’ young Maeve who brought the tea to the floor supervisor’s office had said only three weeks ago. But some of the other girls, aware of how long Doris had been waiting for him, sometimes pursed their lips. (p. 64)

Others too get caught up in the web of lies, from Susanna Music, a young actress who comes into contact with Francis while working on a TV drama, to Francis’s elderly parents, Mr and Mrs Tyte – alive and relatively well in a care home in Hampton Wick. (Interestingly, the drama Francis and Susanna are working on concerns Constance Kent, whose story has some resonances with Other People’s Worlds.)

Once the truth about Francis comes out (which feels inevitable to the reader from the start), Julia, a practising Catholic, begins to seriously question her faith, doubting the existence of God, given the trauma she is experiencing. It’s an interesting development, adding another layer to Trevor’s richly imagined story.

Francis Tyte is yet another of William Trevor’s sinister creations, a truly dangerous man who cares little for his victims, weaving fantasies for himself as he destroys those around him. As the story develops, we learn more about his early years, the interactions between Francis and a broader at the Tyte family home. Not that any of this is an excuse for Francis’s unscrupulous behaviour, but it does shed some light on how the rot began to set in.

Alongside the darkness and undeniable tragedy, there are humorous moments too. Mrs Spanners, Julia’s sixty-year-old charwoman, provides some welcome light relief with her interest in local gossip and forthright pronouncements. (Mrs Anstey, as it happens, is not a fan of Mrs Spanners and her ways of doing things, viewing her as an interference when Julia is away.) Once again, Trevor demonstrates his sharp eye for detail, the little touches that bring a character to life.

[Mrs Spanners:] ‘Fancy the garbage out again! Never think of no one but theirselves.’

She wore an overall with prancing shepherdesses on it, and was heavily scented with Love-in-a-Mist. Her face had already been made up, fingernails shaped and painted. Her tangerine hair was fresh from its curlers.

‘Another thing,’ she said. ‘Pig products is up. Immediate from midnight.’

With that she departed. (pp. 123–124)

Doris is a remarkably complex character (more deranged and twisted than Francis himself), foisting herself on Julia, Mrs Anstey and others as the truth is revealed.

All in all, this is a fateful tale – a story of shattered lives damaged by a fantasist/con man with little appreciation of his capacity to destroy. Nevertheless, there are glimmers of hope at the end amid the damage and destruction.

Definitely recommended for lovers of dark, character-driven fiction with flawed, unlikeable individuals. Fans of Muriel Spark’s The Ballad of Peckham Rye may well be interested in this one, especially given the resonances with Dougal Douglas and his disruptive impact on the community.

Other People’s Worlds is published by Penguin Books; personal copy.