2 - "Amongst women” by John McGahern (Score 7.43)


Moran’s family, scattered to the winds, comprises Mona, Sheila, Maggie, Michael and Luke. Their step-mother is Rose. Moran lives in Mohill which hosts the Monghan Day fair every February.McQuaid, one of Moran’s compatriots from the “War of Independence” came to visit Moran at that time.The story moves back in time.

Moran falls for Rose after they met at the post office, and after a brief courtship. We see the disapproval of some of the nastier people in the place, and the difficulties when two mature people get interested in each other. They get married.Rose begins to make an impression in Michael Moran’s house. The step-children all seem to like her. She paints the place with their help. She talks to Moran about allowing Maggie to go to England to train to be a nurse.

When Moran receives a telegram from his son Luke in England, he loses his temper at its abruptness and takes it out on Rose. This is the first time. He seems to be a basically decent man whose insecurity causes him to lash out at those who love him. Next day he attempts to make amends by suggesting he and Rose go for a drive. They go to the sea and things seem to improve. However, when Rose sees him changing again she suggests that they go home rather than finding somewhere to have dinner. This pleases him.

Rose seems to be finding the ways in which to keep his temper in check. There is a feeling that his tendency to lash out may be because he feels he has lost the authority which he had as leader of a group of fighters during the “War of Independence”.

On page 102, talking about a girl, Nell, whom young Michael is with, she is described as “as far from ugliness as she was from beauty”. This is so much better than saying “she was plain”, and much less wounding. She is 22. Michael is 15. He runs off to London when she returns to America. On page 132 Rose misuses the term “hoi polloi” to mean posh people instead of “the many”. Maggie clearly also thinks it means “posh people” when she says she thinks Luke’s girlfriend is the daughter of a banker.

There is a hint of intergenerational friction when Moran meets Maggie’s fiancée Mark, and sees that he is a teddy boy. Not only that, he addresses Moran by his first name.
After their marriage and the birth of their first child Moran grows to like Mark. Mark has also made an effort by meeting Moran in the fields and helping him with the work when he can.
When Moran died they stopped ever clock in the house and covered every mirror. These are very old superstitions. I liked this book and scored it at 8.0.

1 - Ireland – “Langrishe, go down” by Aidan Higgins, July 2013 (Score 5.9)


This story starts in 1937. From the first page I got a sense of good writing. The scene is well set. The unnamed “She” is sitting on a stifling bus, surrounded by the smells of people who have not washed or changed clothes for days, or are going home after an honest day’s labouring. The air is thick with cigarette and pipe smoke, something which we never have to suffer these days in public places.

The frequent repetition of text, extended or slightly modified, serves to increase our perception of the woman’s queasiness.

The woman is Helen Langrishe. We learn that she and her sisters Imogen and Lily, living in Langrishe House, are old – hair and teeth falling out. A fourth sister, Emily, is dead. The last paragraph on page 28 locates the house in the way that children put in their books – number, street, town, county, country, planet, solar system, ending with “The Universe”. Here it’s Leinster.

We get a feeling of the empty lives led by the sisters in their worn out clothes and there worn out house. It is late winter.

Higgins’ descriptive powers are excellent. We see everything which Helen sees, adding to our feeling of place. We learn from a cinema advert that these are the days when your cinema showed two films instead of the one we get today.

Their mother came from a cruel world in which she could evict a tenant family at any time, since the law was on the landlord’s side. Such a family could be left homeless and workless to fend for themselves, or starve. Helen has lived in this place all her life, but she clearly does not feel part of it. She is put out when she has to speak to one of the local people who have laboured on her family’s land for years. Helen’s family is now as poor as any of the tenants, clearly the tail end of a grand family, moving down in the world.

In chapter 8 the voice changes to first person, Helen thinking about Imogen, having been in Imogen’s room and read her letters.

Chapter 10 starts the back-story, in 1932, of Otto Beck and Imogen Langrishe. Imogen is 39. Beck is 35. The affair between these two is strange. What does she see in him? She doesn’t like him very much, and he treats her like dirt. Otto Beck is, I think, one of the most odious and self-centred men I have ever come across in literature. Higgins prepares us for the impending breakdown in their relationship. As Imogen’s thoughts tumble about, Higgins’ magnificently descriptive sentences break down into single words, or into short staccato phrases devoid of active verbs, having only gerunds.

Repetition of paragraph 3, page 240, and its expansion into paragraph 5 is interesting because this has happened on a number of occasions throughout the book.

There is a spot of bathetic humour near the end, when we have moved forward to 1938. Helen is being buried. Her grave has been dug deep enough, wide enough, but not long enough and the coffin gets stuck at an angle with the gravediggers struggling to get it back out so they can lengthen the grave. We have to imagine poor Helen’s body being tipped to the downward end.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the story but, because of Higgins’ immaculate use of language, I scored the book at 7.5. I recommend that any reader leaves John Banville’s excellent Afterword until finishing the book, as is intended.