Tag Archives: Irish Literature

Out of Control? A Review of Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

30 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in 30 Day Book Challenge, Adult Contemporary, book reviews, Honors and Acclaim, International Dublin IMPAC Literary Award, International Fiction, Irish Lit, National Book Award Winner, Postmodernism

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30 Book Challenge: Book I Liked Least

I truly wanted to like this book.  From its award winning status to the spiritually tormented and enigmatic characters, it delivers many of the aspects I seek in a novel.  When I read on wikpedia.com that J.J. Abrams bought the rights for a film adaptation, I was even more disappointed.  I LOVE J.J. Abrams, how could I not like this book.  Still, even the best and most respected authors write novels a person might not cannot with sometimes. The writing style wasn’t for me and try as I might I couldn’t really relate to the characters.

Review:

The story begins with a captivating scene- the entire city of Manhattan stops their morning commute to work, breakfast, school-to gaze toward the sky.  A man- no one can be certain who he is, what exactly he is doing, or why-stands atop a skyscraper on the brink of death.  Is he attempting suicide or toying with fate for an adrenaline rush?  McCann has succeeded in pulling the reader in; I want to know more.

The nameless man fades into the background and characters with faces, lives, and sad stories begin to surface, one after the other.  What begins as a mystery turns into a somewhat enthralling history of two Irish brothers: Corrigan and Ciaran.  The eldest, Corrigan, has a devout commitment to some spirituality entity, and he makes his way to New York City circa the 1960’s where he does his best to live a ‘pure’ life.  McCann depicts the Bronx ghetto Corrigan inhabits and the world of the prostitutes he helps survive the streets in perfect detail.  The dichotomy of reasons for Corrigan living among prostitutes, drug addicts, and the poverty stricken is true to life, moving and compelling.  In part his motivation is charity, but his brother knows that lack of self- control also plays a key role.  Just as Corrigan begins to realize his life as a holy man may not be what he is meant for, and the reader becomes invested in his fall from grace as he he falls head over heels in love, he is killed in a car crash.

It takes an effort to become attached to the characters and story lines (for this reader anyway).  Since the stories move so quickly and evolve without reason, the over-all concept of the work isn’t conveyed as fluidly as in other award winning novels.  When Corrigan and his women finally began to grow on this reader, I was sad to see them depart.  This retreat is not compensated with the arrival new ideas that provide meaning or growth to rival what had passed. With their exit came the arrival of a less likable crowd, the couple who crashed into Corrigan’s van, killing him.  The scene is eventful, yet somehow manages to remain mediocre.  The pair of cokeheads, Blaine and his wife, are high while driver, Blaine, runs his 1920’s vintage Buick into Corrigan’s van.  Next, they decide to run away from the scene of the crime.  It isn’t until the wife, who narrates her side of the story in the text, returns to make amends, meeting a grieving Ciaran that the reader begins to warm to her.  This, of course, is when she makes her exit.

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Review: The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

11 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in book reviews, Classic lit, International Fiction, Irish Lit, Time 100 Best English-Language Novels

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The Death of the Heart describes the experiences and realizations of the young and naïve Portia Quayne in 1930’s London.  The novel begins with Anna, the wife of Portia’s half-brother, Thomas, in a discussion with a friend about having read Portia’s diary. It immediately becomes clear that the world in which the characters live is filled with prejudice and inequality. Anna does not like Portia’s observations about her life.  More importantly, she is angered by Portia’s father leaving custody of the orphan to Anna and Thomas.  Bowen delves into the personal relationships and pasts of her characters in order to examine their positions in society. In doing, so observations are made about qualities unique to certain classes and personalities. The reader is forced to consider: are there some emotions or circumstances in life all people are doomed to encounter, or can lucky people escape the inevitable?

From the start, the author establishes characters’ positions in society and implies that these positions are immovable.  Thomas and Anna have money and respect in the community. Portia is the reason Thomas’ father left his mother in disgrace, and this can or will never be forgiven.  Although, Anna has lovers, laughs cruelly at gifts Major Brutt sends her,  and reads Portia’s diary, no one questions her behavior, because she has inherited her father’s money.  Portia shows no fault in character, yet she is shown no kindness due to mistakes her parents made.

Portia falls in love with Anna’s friend Eddie after he begins pursuing her.  He leads her to believe he cares for her by taking her for walks, sending her letters, reading her diary, and even visiting her in Seale. The girl always has the best of intentions in mind.  She wishes to marry Eddie, a man Anna approves of, and to please her brother.  When she’s told by Mr. Miller that Anna has been reading her diary, she realizes that her father’s wishes for her to be part of Thomas’ family can never come true.

The text is organized loosely into three sections that correspond to Portia’s experiences living with her brother and his wife.  In the first portion of the girl’s stay with the couple, despite the fact that the large and well decorated house has a sense of coldness, and she knows she is an unwelcome guest, she hopes one day her only remaining family will grow to care for her.  Next, Thomas and Anna take a trip abroad, and Portia is sent to the seaside town of Seale to stay with Anna’s old governess Mrs. Heccomb.  While Portia stays with Mrs. Heccomb and her adult step-children, Dickie and Daphne, she comes to see the extreme differences between the Quayne and Heccomb households.  Although Thomas and Anna are considered well-off, their household is empty, quiet, and much goes unsaid.  On the other hand, the Heccombs have less money and have harsh and indecent mannerisms.  Still, they are honest and appear much happier than Thomas and Anna.  In the third portion of Bowen’s account, entitled, The Devil, Portia realizes Anna has been reading her diary, and that she will never truly be a part of the family.

Bowen organizes her narration so that reflection involving universal human experiences and plights are dispersed throughout the text. Exchanges between and among characters are added to by the author showing learning processes of Portia or mentioning that Anna once felt the same way. When Portia finally sees that Thomas and Anna will never accept her, and she decides she never wants to go back to live with them, her heart truly breaks. Major Brutt explains to her that this happens to everyone in some way. “When people seem to give you a bad deal, you’ve got to ask yourself what sort of deal they may have once got themselves.”  Sometimes it is easier to think that others have experienced similar pain.

Much of what occurs among the characters in the story is not completely clarified for the reader.  There are elements  of the plot purposely left open to interpretation.  What exactly is Anna doing with the men she meets?  What has she done in the past?  How does her husband feel about it? Most importantly, what happens to Portia at the end of the story?  Based on the personalities and past actions of her family members, the outlook isn’t good.  Still, the reader is free to decide.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

Review: Dubliners by James Joyce

21 Thursday Jul 2011

Posted by in book reviews, Classic lit, Irish Lit, Modernism

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During his construction of Ulysses, James Joyce was asked to submit a short story to a Dublin newspaper. Joyce wrote, ‘I am writing a series of epiclets-ten-for a paper. I have written one. I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city.’ Dubliners is a compilation of fifteen short stories about the lives of the Irish and the struggles they face due to a history of cultural ‘paralysis.’  Each story can be read as its own separate entity, but when read together; they create a larger whole or gnomon.

Dubliners is arranged with much thought and eloquence as a collection. The first story, “The Sisters,” sets up the rest of the book perfectly. In this story, a Catholic priest, Father Flynn has just died. The young boy and narrator had been the priest’s companion. The boy reflects upon the death of the old man and the things the man had taught him in their time together.  Flynn had an obsession with the words paralysis, gnomon (story within a story), and simony which play out in the rest of the text. Joyce chooses the juxtaposition of a friendship between a boy at the onset of life and a man at the brink of death in order to exhibit the importance that the wisdom of age may bestow upon a person. The young boy is receiving his first real lesson; appreciate the things you have while you have them-especially life.

Each story follows another in chronological order, exemplifying the life stages of a person from life to death. Despite the fact that the stories describe different people, the protagonists progressively age as the reader moves further along in Dubliners. In addition, when Dubliners begins, nature is beginning a new year. If the readers looks closely, the seasons move on from spring, summer, autumn, until finally at the end it is winter. It is the tiny thought out details which make this text one of the best.

There are repeated themes within the stories which send Joyce’s message about the paralysis of Dublin and issues plaguing Irish culture. The Catholic religion looms over many of the characters. Worries about committing sins, GUILT, and remaining in unhappy marriages are all blamed on religion. There is a suggestion of a rhetoric of fear and silence among the people. The Irish live in a society where much goes unspoken until it is too late. The last words of Eveline’s mother in “Eveline” warn her daughter: ‘After pleasure comes pain.’  Ready to escape Ireland with her bethrothed, Eveline cannot. Her mother’s words bring fear,guilt, she is paralyzed.

Due to years of oppression through colonialism-mostly British-the Irish are poor. Not only do they live in poverty, but the ramifications of little freedom and hopelessness in the country has led to alcoholism, abuse, and the feeling of worthlessness among its citizens. In “Araby,” for example, the small boy wants to go to the Araby bazaar. He waits until nine o’clock for his careless, drunken uncle to come home, only for the man to toss him barely enough money to pay for the train to the bazaar. When he finally arrives he must pay the entry fee, and hasn’t enough money to buy anything for the girl he likes.In addition,the people working at the concessions are British and he feels inferior. The poor little soul leaves the event solemn, thinking he had been ‘derided by vanity’ for having wanted to go in the first place. Only a child, he already feels he doesn’t deserve the smallest things out of life. Where will he go from here? Does he have a way out or will he perpetuate the cycle? The psychological instead of plot driven writing approach Joyce takes with his characters to create a unique situation for each of them allows the reader to understand that despite their paralysis each person deals with it differently. At the same time, it is easy to see how the similar cultural barriers they all face may lead to their immobility in life-the story within a story.

The last story of the book, “The Dead” becomes representative of the conclusion of all the other stories. This story deals with the secrets people carry with them all their lives. Gabriel and Gretta are a married couple but when she confesses to him about her broken heart from years before, he finds there are things about loved ones that people may not want to know. There are experiences and pain of others that we cannot relate to. This story communicates the transience of life, shadows, grayness, and loneliness. It is the winter of Gabriel’s life as snows fall outside the window below him. His paralysis is the tendency to keep the past alive. Is he truly dead or only dead at heart?

The closing of “The Dead” is one of the most captivating and praised in literature.  The inevitability of life coming to an end and the existential  questions: what is the point of trying, striving, living at all, brings this last story and the preceeding stories together with grace and elegance. Joyce is one of the few authors to take the world around him and dig down to it’s core, while still remaining true to his groundbreaking, unparalleled style. Yes he is negative, but his characters are fighters and living such a difficult existence, I don’t know that you can ask for more.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

For more information:

Read: extensive biography James Joyce by Richard Ellman

James Joyce Centre

Film: The Dead(1987)

Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

04 Monday Jul 2011

Posted by in book reviews, Classic lit, Gothic, Irish Lit, Romanticism, Victorian

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With the popularity of vampire novels, films, and television shows in today’s society, people have developed a common set of beliefs regarding  vampires and their evolution. Most of us have heard that vampire folklore has existed for a very long time. Those people interested in the cultural history of the vampire have also heard of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but they may not have read it yet. Reading this novel is essential for lovers of vampires, horror, and psychological thrillers. But, there is much more to Stoker’s text than its reputation  indicates.

Due to the current reputation of the novel, I began my reading expecting a horror story, but one that was not exactly well written. However, Stoker meets his readers at the start with literary techniques to match the best of authors. Utilizing descriptions so well they cannot be matched in film, Stoker terrifies his reader to the point of immobility by recording his narrator,  Jonathan Harker’s  thoughts and experiences,  as a prisoner in Dracula’s castle. The ability of the reader to gain access to the psyche of each character as they experience psychological turmoil, as opposed to mere death by violence, is what makes the novel truly gruesome and horrid in its ability to torment.

The major themes of folklore, Satanism, paganism largely attributed to the character Dracula and his origins in the East are no surprise to a reader of the 21st Century. In contrast; however, the novel is heavily layered with Victorian principles of Christianity. Lucy becomes the target of Dracula’s appetite, and it is she who Dr. Seward, Dr. Van Helsing, Harker, and others must attempt to save from the ‘evil’ that is the vampire. Different from modern notions, Lucy does not immediately die from Dracula’s bite. Instead, she must suffer his attacks again and again. The more she loses blood, the doctor gives her transfusions and she clings to life, only to be attacked once more.

Lucy is the picture of Victorian womanly perfection before her attack. Yet, as soon as she is compromised by the vampire, the question is raised as to whether or not she is a demon.  Along with this unholy quality she is believed to possess, Stoker eroticizes her description. ‘She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lie there; the pointed teeth, the bloodstained voluptuous mouth-which it made one shudder to see-the whole carnal and spiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity.’ In becoming more a part of Dracula, Lucy had turned into what society hated, a sexual being.

Dracula can be viewed as representative of the Devil himself, a symbol of the breakdown of the church and Christianity at the time the novel was written. In order for Lucy to make the transformation from life to ‘Undead,’ Dracula must speak the words: ‘Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.’ Just as Adam and Eve, Dracula makes a bodily, spiritual, intimate connection with Lucy. In this time period, as Nina Auerbach has written, the vampire was more of a seducer, friend, and romantic. The novel and folklore of vampire of the times was less about violence than vampire stories of today.

In many ways the Victorian novel  is  different from  the modern view of the vampire. Reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula most likely alters preconceived notions readers may have had before reading it. Still, there is much to learn about folklore and religious beliefs of the past. An author willing to combine two such contrasting themes and add in ample amounts of sexual content allowed his readers a multitude of possible interpretations of his work. In  the present day, when science has dispelled many of the myths associated with pagan beliefs and folklore; one could argue that it is in large part thanks to Stoker the culture of vampirism is strong and thriving in its many forms so many years 
later.

Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago UP, 1997.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

For more information: Read

Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror by David Skal

Dracula:The Novel & the Legend by Clive Leatherdale

Review:The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

30 Thursday Jun 2011

Posted by in Aestheticism, book reviews, Classic lit, Irish Lit, Victorian

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At a young age, many people can be influenced to make poor decisions. Some of these can haunt them for the rest of their lives, while most mistakes are less severe. Oscar Wilde makes an example of Dorian Gray by allowing him to make the ultimate sacrifice-his soul. Although influenced by others, Dorian makes his own choices. Will he ever come to regret the life altering choice he has made?

In the beginning of the novel, Dorian Gray is depicted as an attractive young man with a magnetic personality which causes people to want to trust him. Dorian Gray could be considered innocent simply because he has yet to corrupt or harm others. It is not until he is constantly praised by Basil and convinced by Lord Henry Wotton that youth is the one and only important thing in life that he considers the things that tempt his soul. Perhaps Lord Henry had merely told Dorian Gray what he already knew, or would soon find out on his own about himself. In any case, hearing about “the great secrets of life” sounds alluring to a young person.

Lord Henry Wotton convinces Dorian Gray that youth is the only thing worth having. Neither Lord Henry nor Dorian Gray ever consider that there might be a perfectly logical explanation for why people age or what it might cost a person to reverse the natural process. Dorian Gray is perfectly willing to trade his soul for beauty, despite the fact that he misunderstands the true meaning of both. The fact that one soul is able to be traded or would be asked to be traded for any mere consideration of mortal pleasures is what makes the both the temptation and the act itself evil. Dorian Gray believes he finds his love match in Sybil Vane because of her beauty and artistry, the two things he values most in the world.

What more could Dorian Gray ask for than a beautiful girl who conveys beauty of art through her acting? But through Dorian, Sybil Vane comes to believe that she no longer needs the stage. She tells him, “You taught me what reality really is. You brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection.” But, if art and beauty are mere reflection, then Dorian sacrificing his soul for his outward appearance in the name of aesthetics has all been a lie. In fact, when he gave his soul for the painting in his attic, his outer appearance grew more and more beautiful while his soul became as hideous as the reflection in the painting. Had Sybil’s philosophy involving art and beauty really disappointed Dorian Gray, or did he come to the realization that he had ruined his own life through vanity?

Even after his encounter with Sybil Vane and her untimely death, Dorian Gray cannot admit that he was wrong to tempt fate. He thinks, “And, yet, who, that, knew anything about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?”  People may not know everything about life, but can still suspect some greater purpose leading them down life’s path. Dorian Gray is still to ignorant to realize that aging leads to wisdom and youth is a time for making mistakes.

Instead of learning from his mistakes and moving on, Dorian Gray spends his time trying to accumulate material possessions. Slowly he begins to see what his choice has done to his existence. He reflects, “As he investigated the subject-and he always had an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in whatever he took up-he was almost saddened by the reflection eventually decay, but Dorian Gray is no longer similar to anyone else. He must live with the fact that he has made this decision to exchange aging and goodness for good looks. The problem is he does seem to be regretful.

He was young and influenced by others when he made this mistake. He will go on to make many, many more. The reader searches the text from beginning to the end trying to find; will there remain any remnants of humanity in Dorian which will lead him to seek forgiveness for his actions? Would he be forgiven if he did repent? Does he deserve forgiveness?

I don’t see Dorian Gray as the repentant type, he had years to get back his old life but choose the selfish path in order to stay young and radiant looking. Wilde’s use of the mirror to give the body what it may not otherwise have in return for something sinister is similar to Goethe, Marlowe, and Shelley implying a “pact with the devil,” certain type of forbidden knowledge than humans have the ability to possesses but should not.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

For more information: themes from the novel~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticism

Victorian art http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/mar/26/aestheticism-exhibition-victoria-albert-museum

Film(2009) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235124/

also by Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Goal (written while he was in prison) and De Profundis, a long and tragic love letter

about the author: http://www.cmgww.com/historic/wilde/

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