Deirdre Madden

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Works
Fiction, Hidden Symptoms (Boston & NY: Atlantic Monthly 1986), 142pp., Do., rep. (London: Faber 1988); The Birds of the Innocent Wood (London: Faber 1988); Remembering Light and Stone (London: Faber 1992; rep. 1993); Nothing is Black (London: Faber 1994, 1955), 139[151]pp.; One by One in the Darkness (London: Faber 1996), 188[192]pp.; Authenticity (Faber & Faber 2002), 385pp. For children: Snake’s Elbows (London: Orchard 2005), 205pp.

Miscellaneous, That Childhood Country (London: Pan 1993) [rep. edn.]; Introduction to Kate O’Brien, The Ante-Room [rep.] (London: Virago 1996).

Reviews incl. Kathleen Ferguson, The Maid’s Tale, and Aisling Foster, Safe in the Kitchen, in “Summer Books”, Fortnight Review [Belfast] (July-Aug. 1994), p.18.

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Commentary
Andrea Ashworth, review of Nothing is Black, in Times Literary Supplement (8 July 1994): ‘Madden’s sentences are carefully composed and executed to produce simple, sometimes starkly poetic prose. But the dialogue, although never monotonous, can be monochromatic; in framed discussions, her characters stop doing and start discoursing on set-subjectism, displaying their thoughts in speech whose finish is suspiciously smooth. At such points, Madden’s art is too abstract [...&c.]’

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Rory Brennan review of Nothing is Black, in Books Ireland (Sept. 1994), calling it ‘an insightless tale of a woman painter, a kleptomaniacal wife and a divorced Dutch expatriate [also female] who gather near a far-flung village in Donegal’; narrator is the painter. The review is intemperate in several places, speaking expressly of Madden’s inferiority as a writer.

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Maxine Jones, review of One by One in the Darkness, in Tribune Magazine (26 May 1996), feels that ‘no other book has left me with such a lasting impression of the hurt of Northern Ireland’. Novel deals with lives of three women set in Northern Ireland, one working for London glassy magazine, another a solicitor in Belfast, who return to the third sister; Cate comes back from London to tell her sisters and her mother that she is pregnant; the sisters’ single status as working women sets them on shifting sands, as well as the murder of their father; Helen returns from Belfast; Sally has never left home. (p.20.)

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Patricia Craig, ‘A Cabinet in Co. Clare’, review of One by One in the Darkness, in Times Literary Supplement (24 May 1996): criticises the vagueness of her information about the terrorist organisations involved in the plot and notes that the father Charlie Quinn was shot in mistake for a brother involved with the IRA. Craig locates Madden’s world in ‘a small bleak area of near Lough Neagh on a dismal afternoon in February’ and describes hers as a ‘lucid voice but one that admits no note of bravado or gaiety [and] creates a thinly populated world in which everyone is more or less fraught and unfulfilled.’ She remarks that Madden has resumed her customary dolefulness; that a thoroughly Catholic sensibility has shaped and goes on shaping her view of things ‘though she has learned to tone down the kind of unnatural and overwrought profession of belief which loomed unduly large in Hidden Symptoms. Craig Complains of the ‘mopishness of characters enduring “strange, sad lives”.’ Further: ‘Her approach to the terrorist element in Northern Irish life is the opposite of a thriller-writer’s: she takes no interest in the mechanics of plot-making [...] what saves her as a writer, and makes her novels likeable, despite their refusal of qualities such as charm, high spirits, robustness and aplomb, is a formidable descriptive gift which is harnessed to the small-scale and quotidian: the lunchtime hush of an Italian hill village; the contents of a china cabinet in Co. Clare.’ (p.20.)

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Carlo Gèbler, ‘Specifically personal’, review of One by One in the Darkness in [?Fortnight Review, q. iss.], p.36, offers a summary: a neighbour of the Quinns blows himself up going to plant a bomb; an uncle Brian is harassed by security forces; father killed in error for him; Emily grows up in Ballymena and realises early that the Protestants (Orangemen) hate her just because she is Catholic; later joins Civil Rights marches; Gebler criticises lack of continuity at this level (‘insufficiency of material’ to join up ‘the dots’), but praises ‘the primacy the author ascribes to the personal in human behaviour’, and her ‘determined and admirable commitment to specificity.

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Anne Fogarty, review of Authenticity, in The Irish Times (17 Aug. 2002, Weekend, p.8): interconnected stories of Roderic Kennedy, Julia Fitzpatrick and William Armstrong; ‘while the former becomes her lover, the latter, whom she meets as he is on the verge of suicideal despair, exerts a hold over her because he seems to her to embody some authentici but unrealised version of the artist. / Moreoever, the two men appear to be doubles ... Madden’s nuanced narrative, however, shows that such neat contraries are insufficient to describe the turmoil of her protagonists’ lives ... Just as Madden uses her multiple cast of artists to dislodge abstract views of this métier, so too she indcates that art is impossible without the active support of others.’ Speaks of ‘the crystalline exactitude of her style, the oblique rendering of social milieu, and the broken nature of human communication’ as hall-marks of this novelist’s art.

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Eileen Battersby, notice of Molly Fox’s Birthday (2008), in The Irish Times (30 May 2009), Weekend, “Paperbacks”, p.13: ‘Molly Fox is a famous actress and enigma even to her friend, the narrator, an equally well-known playwright. While the narrator stays in Molly’s charming Dublin home battling writer’s block, she considers Molly, who is away in New York. It is Midsummer’s Day, Molly’s birthday. Deirdre Madden’s elegiac seventh novel is a subtle, gentle study about one woman reassessing her life and the various ways in which her friends have interacted with each other. A hint of missed opportunity prevails. The narrator is a forensic observer who watches, listens and remembers. A strong contender for this year’s Orange Prize, Molly Fox is shaped by Madden’s disciplined intelligence, humanity and understanding of how people behave and above all, how they survive. Molly, with her belief in her identity as an actor, who assumes the lives of others, is a survivor, whereas the narrator, whose career began in a gesture towards a deep hurt, has spent her life nursing an impossible love.’

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Jeannie Vanacso, ‘Method Writing’, Title New York Times, (23 March 2010), “Sunday Book Review”: ‘Here’s an exercise for the blocked writer: Write what you don’t know about what you know. That’s the approach the unnamed narrator of Deirdre Madden’s ninth novel chooses. She takes her friend of 20 years and revisits memories from their times together, wondering whether she truly knows her. And in doing so, she conquers her writer’s block and creates this novel, Molly Fox’s Birthday. / Madden’s book, a finalist for the Orange Prize, is so honestly told that it feels less like fiction than personal revelation. The action takes place on a single day, June 21, the longest day of the year, which is also (of course) the birthday of an Irish woman named Molly Fox. Molly, as she always insists, is an actor, not an actress (“If I wrote poems would you call me a poetess?”), and the narrator is the playwright who jump-started both their careers with her very first play. While Molly is off performing in New York, the narrator has borrowed her friend’s cluttered home in Dublin, where she tries, with much difficulty, to begin a new play. The narrator used to believe that Molly hated to celebrate her birthday because she was insecure about her age. What the narrator later learned was that June 21 was the day Molly’s mother abandoned her family. [...] The novel is structured as if the narrator were walking through a dark room, feeling the walls for a light switch. Nonetheless, it has form: the conflict, crisis and resolution are interior. It engages our attention and sympathy because the narrator wants to understand Molly. It is the intensity of the wanting that keeps us reading. / The turning point comes with the entrance of a minor character, a fan who has been so moved by one of Molly’s performances that she’s been inspired to ring the bell at Molly’s front door. This visit leads the narrator to a counterintuitive epiphany: “that so much social interchange is inherently false, and real communication can only be achieved in ways that seem strange and artificial.” What better argument is there for art?’ [End; for full version, see RICORSO Library, “Criticism > Reviews”, via index or direct.]

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References
Dermot Bolger, Contemporary Irish Fiction (Picador 1993), gives excerpt from Remembering Light and Stone [1992].

Books in Print (1994), Hidden Symptoms (Boston/NY: Atlantic Monthly 1986; London: Faber 1988); The Birds of the Innocent Wood (London: Faber 1988), Somerset Maugham Award; Remembering Light and Stone (London: Faber 1992, 1993); That Childhood Country (Pan rep. 1993); Nothing is Black (Faber 1994); Food, Home and Society (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1900), 387pp; Better Homemaking (Gill & Macmillan 1984).

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Quotations
Remembering Light and Stone (1992) [Aisling - on returning to Ireland]: ‘Then I thought of Italy, and at once the decision came into my mind, clear and resolute in a way it would never have been had I mulled over the question for weeks. I would leave S. Giorgio. When I went back to Italy, I would stay only as long as was necessary to pack mythings, and work my notice in the factory. I’d come back here.’ (London 1992; rep. 1993, p.180.)

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One by One in the Darkness (1996): ‘[…] it was something more than the English being less comfortable with the bereaved than the Irish were. What they were thinking only dawned on her slowly, and it was so horrible that she shrank away, afraid of having to confront it until she was forced to do so; and of course it wasn’t long before that happened. /  One day, about three weeks after she returned to work, a journalist who had often done freelance work for the magazine in the past had called in to discuss a supplement which had been commissioned in Cate’s absence. As she looked through the initial work he’d brought along she remarked, “I’m sorry I wasn’t in on this from the start, but I was in Ireland”; and she didn’t know why she added, “My father died.” / “Yes, I know,” the man replied. “I read about it in the papers.” Cate lifted her head from the material she had been glancing through and stared hard at the man, but he stared back coldly [91] at her, and did not speak. “He thinks my father was a terrorist,” she said to herself. “He thinks that he brought his fate upon himself; that he deserves the death he got.”’ (See longer extracts.)

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Notes
Hidden Symptoms (1986): After her brother’s brutal murder, a twenty-two-year-old university student in Belfast is torn by her conflicting feelings of spirituality, as her religion tortures more than comforts her. (COPAC.)

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Remembering Light and Stone (1992): ‘Aisling has gone to Europe to get over the death of her parents. She is a disturbed, strange young Irish woman, out of sorts with herself and at odds with the world. It is 1989 and Europe is in turmoil. She falls in love and after various crises becomes reconciled to who she is.’ (COPAC.)

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Nothing is Black (1994): ‘A story of three women who, for different reasons, find themselves in a remote part of Donegal at a defining moment in their lives. The author won the Somerset Maugham Prize for "The Birds of the Innocent Wood", and her "Remembering Light and Stone" was nominated for the 1992 Booker Prize.’ (COPAC.)

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One By One in Darkness (1996): ‘A story about three Northern Irish sisters. It has a double narrative, part of which describes their childhood and shows the impact of the political changes and the violence of the late-1960s upon the people of Ulster, as the wholeness and coherence of early childhood gradually break down.’ (COPAC.)

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Snake’s Elbows (2005): ‘Extraordinary things happen in Woodford when kind and timid pianist, Barney Barrington, and his enemy, Jasper Jellit, both want to buy the same painting.’ Sundry reviews: ‘With its unlikely mix of illegal arms dealing, art auctions, telepathic pets and magic fudge, this is a morality tale with a difference and a thoroughly entertaining read. A wry and mocking take on contemporary culture (not least the fickleness of tabloid journalism), this book evokes a whole community with a marvellous subtlety of tone and lightness of touch. The writing is constantly distinguished and supple. [...] intriguing title to its triumphant end, it's a slice of wise and playful brilliance. [...] delightful and funny tale with just a touch of Dahl [...] seemingly loopy [...q]uite simply marvellous [...] quirky and delightfully humourous story of some strange goings-on in a small town.’ (COPAC, online; acessed 28.08.2010.)

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Molly Fox’s Birthday (2008): ‘Dublin, Midsummer: While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend, who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly’s, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, whom she has known since university. Why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How have their relationships evolved over the course of many years? Molly Fox’s Birthday calls into question the ideas that we hold about who we are; and shows how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined.’ (COPAC.)

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