Brian O'Doherty (1928–2022)

The setting: a small Irish village in the middle of nowhere: a stark, dreadful winter in which all the younger women die, leaving their menfolk and children to battle on. Their priest narrates much of the story. He's an unlikeable, inflexible man. He tells a tale of poverty and hardship, old-fashioned faith, superstition, suspicion. There's the village idiot and sheepshagger. This is the story of the death of a village and a way of life, and of lives transformed and ruined in two dreadful years.

For all he's a nasty, small-minded old man, Father McGreevy is sympathetically portrayed. The picture of small town life, spiteful and unforgiving, is eloquently drawn. It's a chilling narrative, and an engrossing one… (mere)

Up to p.300 now. Another meandering Irish tale I've not been able to put down..reading till 5am when I should have been sleeping. It's written in a typical Irish fable style (in that) that goes on and on and on, with a plethora of details and sidetracks to waylay you and delay the point and can almost send you mad in frustration but for the regular appearances of black comedy occasioned by the peculiar Irish ironic turn of phrase. It's a storytelling style my old Irish born Uncle was good at and he could delay the point of a story for weeks rambling on and on although every thing he said was fascinating in itself, he had for instance at least a hundred stories about apples & could weave them together in the most astonishing ways with many different meanings. In any event I have more to say but will when I get to the end of it.

It is the story of the decline and demise of a little mountain village during WW2, Ireland, the priest who's powerless to stop it, and the magazine editor who finds himself digging into the village's secrets years later.It's an unrelenting story of the disintegration of an Irish way of life as institutional religion, nationalism and the darker forces of human nature conspire to destroy a people and a place that O'Doherty evokes with great pathos. Musing on the Father's deposition, Maginn ponders "I'm not sure what it tells us beyond the fact that there are some good people, some bad people, and a lot of people who are one or the other depending on the circumstances". It's another Irish lament of hard times but this time aside from the weather, it's really lamenting progress.

There are some excellent annotated notes throughout on historical sources for further Irish history/Gaelic language reading.
… (mere)