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Rich in sentiment and humour, this evocation of an Irish village in the 1970s examines grief, faith and first love
Approach with care the book that offers up a tale of Ireland in the old days. Since Patrick Kavanagh published The Great Hunger in 1942, any book about the poetry of rural life and youth’s endless summer must of necessity be acknowledged as sentimental. The best rural writers demolished these cliches long ago, and built in their place a literature that chronicled with unflinching, sorrowful honesty the world we all came from before we moved into the cities.
One thinks of John McGahern, or RS Thomas’s dismissal of those who idealised Wales: “Too far for you to see / The fluke and the foot-rot and the fat maggot”. Without great skill, the country chronicler’s work will fall into the category of tourist fodder – Scottish shortbread, English ale, Welsh rarebit and tales of green Ireland. Such books only kill the places they claim to love. Continue reading...