IRELAND: A NOVEL
By Frank Delaney
576 pp.
HarperCollins. $26.95.

Reviewed by Todd Buell

When I went to Ireland for the first time, I noticed an orange glow that crept above the horizon even during the peak of the night. “Wow, look at the sky,” I exclaimed to my lady friend and her family as I admired this example of the charm, mystery, and beauty that captivates nearly all first-time visitors to the Emerald Isle. My wonder was somewhat crushed when my friend revealed that the glow was, in fact, light pollution. A charm indicative of no indigenous magic but rather simply of the vast economic development that has lifted the country from being one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of its wealthiest countries in a period of twenty years.

Frank Delaney’s new book, Ireland: A Novel, takes us back to a time when Ireland was an impoverished, rural, and agrarian land-before-light pollution. It puts us in the year 1951, and an itinerant storyteller drops in on the O’Mara home. He looks like a man who spends much of his time outdoors and some of it even sleeping under trees and in caves. His coat is worn, his face is wrinkled, his hands are bony, he is bearded, smokes a pipe, and resembles an older fisherman who works the seas of Downeast Maine.

The storyteller’s arrival is a great treat for nine-year-old Ronan O'Mara. The boy’s father John, a solicitor (British English for lawyer), has been subtly preparing Ronan for such a person. We learn that he often told his son of Ireland’s storytelling tradition and concludes his remarks with the premonition that one could just arrive at any moment.

When this one does, he enchants Ronan and an ever-increasing number of villagers with three successive nights of stories about times long gone by in Ireland’s history. He tells of the construction of Newgrange, a solarium outside of Dublin that is over 5,000 years old; an account of a foolish King of Ulster who tried to deceive his wife and failed; and last, a famous story of how Saint Patrick kicked all of the pagans out of Ireland.

However the book is more than simply a recitation of Irish stories and myths. There is personal intrigue and mystery within the book as well. While Ronan, his father, his aunt, and much of the community are drawn to the storyteller, his mother is cold and nearly hostile to him and eventually kicks him out of the house. We don’t learn why until near the end of the novel.

Ronan does not let his mother’s rigidity dissuade him from trying to find the storyteller. When he sees the storyteller walking despondently out of the village, Ronan leaves his schoolroom and sprints after him, begging him not to leave. The storyteller obliges him with one more story but then marches on to his next village. The young Ronan vows to find the storyteller again.

It is this quest that is the essence of the book and what makes the novel a real pleasure to read. In searching for the storyteller, first as a young boy with his father, and then following his father’s death, on his own, Ronan, and, of course, Delaney, takes us on an inspiring tour of his native country. Through a process of simply asking questions, he usually finds a place where the storyteller recently stayed. He calls in at the house and, in an illustrative example of Irish hospitality, Ronan is usually offered tea and sometimes dinner and is given a copy of a story that the man himself transcribed and left behind, or recorded on a cassette player for the Irish Folklore commission. By the end of the book, through his travels, Ronan visits nearly, if not all, thirty-two counties in both the Republic of Ireland and the U.K. controlled Northern Ireland.

Having been to Ireland twice (by the time this is published), I nearly salivated when I read descriptions of places that I have seen myself (e.g., Newgrange, the River Boyne, the River Shannon, or the Book of Kells). Although I shouldn’t give too much of the book away, I will summarize my favorite parts of two stories that relate to places that I’ve visited.

The first involves the Book of Kells. For those who don't know, the Book is a 1,200-year-old scripted copy of the four gospels. However, leaving it at that would be like calling the Sears Tower a big building. The parchment-bound book has masterfully handcrafted bindings and incredibly detailed pictures in remarkable colors telling the stories of the four Gospels. It is permanently on display at the Trinity College Library in Dublin and obviously is de rigueur on any trip to Dublin.

The storyteller explains that the Book of Kells came to fruition when the abbot at a monastery passed away and the monastery’s landlady couldn’t decide between two equally qualified monks as to who should succeed the deceased leader. She decided to have the two charmingly humble candidates “make a page of a holy book” with decorations, illuminations, and colors. Then the other monks would vote on which design was best and the winning artist would become the next abbot. The end of the story is endearing to even the most loyal democrat, and I’ll let readers uncover it for themselves.

Also in more recent history, the storyteller helps explain one of the reasons that the current conflict in Northern Ireland exists. There was a battle over the succession of the British monarchy on Irish soil. It took place in 1690 between the sitting King of England, the Protestant William of Orange, and his rival, the exiled and Catholic King James. Basically James came to Ireland via France with a few thousand troops, hoping to round up more in Ireland. He was warmly welcomed in Ireland but couldn’t find many well-trained troops.

William, on the other hand, heard that his old foe had resurfaced in Ireland, and he brought over an impressive array of English cavalry troops and sent them down the island from Belfast. James brought his troops north, and they met at a small river that symbolically—though not technically—divides the north and south of Ireland and is called the River Boyne.

When I was in Ireland for the first time, I saw the River Boyne and was amazed that a river so narrow could have been the site of such a major battle. The storyteller, or more accurately, Delaney, also notices this oddity and reminds the reader, “Not far east of the hill of Newgrange, the widest it gets is about thirty yards.” Try to imagine a battle on a small cove along the Maine coast or maybe along a narrow part of the Kennebec River and you have a good idea of what both King Billy and King James were looking at.

Obviously, William’s side won the battle, but I’ll let readers discover the storyteller’s interpretation as to why (hint: it had little to do with troop numbers). As the storyteller aptly points out, to this day the “Orange orders” march through Northern Ireland commemorating the battle every July (July 12th is the official Battle of the Boyne day in N. Ireland). In recent years, these marches have become sources of great acrimony, and sometimes violence, between Catholics and Protestants.

The book is not flawless. Ronan’s reaction when he senses that his family is hiding an important secret from him seems vastly out of character and completely lacks credibility. However his reaction does allow him to live out his dream of wandering through Ireland in the early 1960s, searching for his boyhood hero, telling stories, and learning his own stories about his native country. One also questions whether the forgiving and warm way that his family lets him come home is necessarily believable, but Delaney adds a minor but irreplaceable character, a Jesuit priest who befriends (and maybe more) Ronan’s aunt. The priest’s mild and irreverent manner help the family allow the prodigal son to come home unconditionally.

This book should have a particular resonance with Maine readers because of the realities that it illuminates about small-town life. As mentioned earlier, Ronan reacts strongly when he learns that his family has a secret that he does not know but that most others do. Before Ronan returns home, he has a heated meeting with his former university history professor. The professor chastises him for leaving his family uninformed of his whereabouts for such a long time and adds, “Explode all you like—this is Ireland; no family worth the name is without a secret. And you should know that in this country a secret is something that everyone else knows.”

As I read this line, I thought of a friend of mine here in Maine whose father’s abusive transgressions when she was young were not revealed to her until she was a young adult. When she found out, she was bothered both by the action and by the fact that she was just learning something that many of her friends or friends’ parents had probably known for years. One can also recall moments in some of Richard Russo’s novels, particularly Empire Falls, where provincial towns hide undesirable secrets even from their own residents.

Like Empire Falls, this novel would make a compelling film. Through Ronan’s wanderings and stories, the reader can see and sense an almost preindustrial Ireland. It was an unquestionably poor country, inundated with a harsh Catholicism whose ability to delineate sin and pronounce shame precipitated the aforementioned secretive culture. (A good example of this is revealed near the end of the novel.) However it was also a country of great hospitality, pride, and warmth.

In my own experiences in Ireland, I have seen much of the latter and hardly any of the former. Ireland today is prosperous, diverse, and thriving. According to a recent New York Times article, it now breeds young people who “worship Versace the way their grandmothers worshipped the Virgin Mary.” After centuries of emigration, Ireland now has a significant immigrant population. However, it must also contend with the undesirable effects of prosperity: waste management, traffic, and balancing development with preserving historic landmarks.

Frank Delaney brilliantly and beautifully reminds us that despite all of the recent progress and prosperity warmth, families, and stories are still fundamental elements of Ireland and, if such a thing exists, are the essence of being Irish. I am not Irish in any genealogical sense, but, after I read this book, I felt as close to the country’s soul as any non-Irishman could. 

 

The current Journal in print is
Winter

5 1/2" x 5" 2008 Wolf Moon Calendar just $10.00 each
More Info

More Info

© Wolf Moon Press 2002-2007 all rights reserved.

Submission Guidelines