Irish Emigrant Book Review, No. 14 (Sept. 1996)

The Cold Irish Earth by Knute Skinner
- Knute Skinner is an American who has been living in Clare for over thirty years. His latest publication, records the poets reactions to the area in which he finds himself in all its aspects, contemporary and historical. There is an immediacy and familiarity to his work, as in the short poem “Manure Bags” in which he describes the shapes these bags, which litter the countryside, can take on a dark night and to a vivid imagination:
“a body slumped in grass at the edge of tyre tracks -no, more likely a dog standing silent guard.”
In “October Morning” the reader is introduced to neighbour Micky Vaughan, and the man, his farm and his animals are a recurring theme throughout the first part of the collection. Part Two goes out beyond the area around Killaspuglonane to take in other parts of Ireland while Part Three differs in that all the characters portrayed in the poems are fictitious.. Each poem gives us a hint of a story but leaves most of it unsaid, as in “On The Hour” in which the speaker and Maura are obviously rivals for the affection of Donal. At Maura’s words:
“I came to give you your letter back. Donal has enough on his plate these days without having to read something like this from the likes of you.”
we are left to wonder what problems Donal has and what exactly was in the letter which is being returned.

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Hood by Emma Donoghue
- Emma Donoghue’s second novel explores the isolation of a bereavement that cannot be shared in the usual way. When Pen O’Grady’s lover Cara dies in a car crash she realises that she cannot expect to be treated with the sympathy and sensitivity usually shown to widows, though this is her exact situation. Living as she does in the house of Cara’s father, she finds it impossible to communicate with him about his daughter. Even more difficult is trying to broach the subject with her own mother over the phone - they end up talking about the weather as usual. Despite the tragic basis to the story, the author manages to inject a good deal of humour into the narrative. Pen has the ability to look objectively at her situation and it is this that provides the humour. When she goes to the headmistress of the school in which she teaches (and which both she and Cara had attended as pupils) to ask for time off, she becomes disarmed by Sister Dominic’s sympathetic response and is alarmed to find herself “lacking the energy even to want scrape my ring into Sister Dominic’s windpipe”. It is this mixture of humour and hurt that makes the story of Pen’s loss of Cara, both past and present, so very satisfying.

The Bend For Home by Dermot Healy
The world of Healy’s childhood and adolescence is brought vividly to life through his memories, not always accurate or logical, but always compelling. The trauma of the family’s move from Finea, a small village in Westmeath where his father was a guard, to the town of Cavan is underlined by their arrival on a Thursday, early closing day in the town. The cosy familiarity of Finea is contrasted sharply with the emptiness of the Cavan street where the sun only shone on one side. The author’s ability to paint a vivid picture is particularly evident in the two chapters which deal first with the half-day in Cavan and then with the season of Lent. “Soon after noon, all activity ceased. The town gave a sigh of relief. Potato sacks were taken in, shop gates raised, grids pulled across displays; the restaurant closed; the bells on the doors of the grocers went quiet;” and so on, a litany unfolds which exactly evokes the winding down of a town on early closing day. The final section of the book, and perhaps the most moving, is the recording of the slow death of the author’s mother and the change in the mother/child relationship when he has to do for her all that she had once done for him. This change is echoed by the change in the relationships between the sisters, Winnie and Maisie. Maisie was left in Winnie’s care by their aunt who left them the bakery in Cavan town but now “that bond has been severed, and both parties are unsure of what relationship remains. It’s Maisie now that worries about mother.” The bend for home of the title becomes the final steps in the journey towards death after “the mouth and the spirit collapsed inwards”.

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Hazel - A Life of Lady Lavery 1880-1935 by Sinead McCoole
This book, developed from a Master of Arts thesis, examines Hazel’s life and her influence on Irish politics in the first three decades of the century. Born an American of Irish descent, Hazel Martyn’s promise as an artist resulted in a journey to Europe where she met John Lavery, a man a good deal older than her with whom she fell in love. Whisked back to the States by her mother to marry a more suitable candidate, it was after she was widowed very early in her married life that she renewed contact with John and eventually married him. After 1918 Hazel began to cultivate her Irishness, even going so far as to move her birthday from 14th March to 17th March. She attended the trial of Roger Casement and subsequently Irish politics became her principle interest. Their house in London became a centre where politicians from opposing sides could meet on neutral ground during the Treaty negotiations and private meetings were arranged between Michael Collins and Winston Churchill. It was at this time that her relationship with Michael Collins began. There is still some doubt as to the actual nature of the relationship, but certainly at his death Lady Lavery had to be dissuaded from appearing at the graveside in widow’s weeds. Collins’ place in her affections was taken by Kevin O’Higgins, a man known for his austerity and conservatism in relation to women. This affair has been confirmed, and after his assassination she began to feel that she constituted some kind of a curse over the men she loved. Her beauty drew many men to her, much to the chagrin of their wives, and there were many disapproving voices when her portrait was chosen to grace the first Irish currency notes. The author has made excellent use of the papers, scrapbooks and letters to which she was allowed access and the book is generously illustrated with portraits, photographs and sketches.

The Fun Palace by Agnes Bernelle
- Agnes Bernelle’s autobiography, covers the years from her birth in 1923 to her starting of a new life in Dublin in 1969, is an entertaining and sometimes moving account of her transition from life as the Catholic convert daughter of a Protestant mother and a Jewish father in pre-war Berlin. With Hitler’s rise to power she persuaded her father that she would never achieve her ambition to be an actress as a Jew in Germany and they moved to London, her mother remaining behind until just before the outbreak of the Second World War, though the family visited each other frequently. Ms Bernelle describes her attempts to break into the world of show business, made more difficult by an inability to receive a work permit, her marriage to Desmond Leslie of Glaslough, Co. Monaghan and the birth of their three children. While the story essentially ends in 1969 when Ms Bernelle’s marriage to Desmond came to an end, a final chapter tells the fate of the “jewel book” which had belonged to her father and which she had tracked down to the museum of a New York synagogue. The book, a story by Heinrich Heinne, had been gradually encrusted with precious and semi-precious stones as it was passed between her father and his partner, but it had been lost when both men had had to leave Germany with no possessions. Ms Bernelle is to be presented with this book by the museum in the near future.

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