The Heather Blazing | Colm Tóibin #Begorrathon

Oh, this was utterly delicious. Deliciously melancholy, if that's a thing.

The Heather Blazing is the story of Judge Eamon Redmond, and the loss and grief that has defined his whole life. Tóibin writes these rather sad, introspective characters so well. Like Nora Webster, you're left wondering, if perhaps Eamon's first person story is missing an important piece to the puzzle of his life. There are hints, in his relationship with his wife and children, comments they make about his distance, lack of loving gestures and affection, that suggest he wasn't an easy to person to live with. Eamon also struggles with his emotional life, constantly afraid to show his true feelings. Taught from a young age to stay on the sidelines, always watching but not included in the adult decisions being made around him. Seeking solace in solitude, books and walking.

Eamon's sad, lonely childhood affected his ability to show the people in his life that he cared. We, the reader, can feel his emotional pain and see how much he loves those around him, but we can also see that it's all internal. Eamon thinks and feels and deliberates, but he doesn't express or show or share.

The frustrations of his wife and children are tangible, but Eamon is powerless to change.

The political and environmental story line that ran alongside Eamon's story was almost an allegory, with shifting political allegiances and houses slowly crumbling into the sea. The inevitable march of time and natural forces beyond our control reflecting Eamon's faltering progress through his own life.

I also learnt a bit about the history and differences between Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and Fine Gael.

Donaghmore, Wexford County, Ireland

Highly recommended to anyone who loves their Irish Lit to be gentle and thoughtful.
#Begorrathon2020
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Brooklyn
Nora Webster

Actress | Anne Enright #Begorrathon

I have to ask straight up - who is Norah's father? Could you work it out? I wasn't sure. There didn't seem to be any repercussions or exposition after the reveal. Was it all about the #metoo element? But since you kind of figure that out for yourself very early on, it wasn't so much a shock revelation, but a quieter 'I thought so' moment. I'm confused.

Anyway, let's put that all that aside for now and talk about the lovely, lovely writing in Anne Enright's Actress. I loved her descriptions of Norah and her mother, the famous Katherine Odell, her observations of daily life and her empathy for the thinking of a 21 yr old.

• We had the same way of blinking, slow and fond, as though thinking of something beautiful.
• I think I mentioned that my mother was a star. Not just on screen or on the stage, but at the breakfast table also, my mother Katherine O’Dell was a star.
• The boiling eggs chittering against each other and along the metal bottom of the pan.
• My life felt like an imitation, and I was terrified it might become the real thing.

Actress was an fascinating story but there were many times when it felt rather like trying to drive a car and forgetting to put it into gear. The engine was revving sweetly, but we were going nowhere! Which is maybe why I felt the father revelation late in the story was more of a frustration than anything else. I was waiting patiently for a burst of speed that never happened.

I enjoyed my time in Enright's hands, but it's not the best example of her work.

#Begorrathon2020 #ReadingIrelandMonth2020

Epigraph:

• 'the more I applauded, the better, it seemed to me, did Berma act.' In Search of Lost Time

Enright Reviews:

• The Green Road -  my favourite Enright to date. 
• The Gathering

The Green Road by Anne Enright

I finally got around to reading The Green Road thanks to Cathy's #ReadIreland Month. It has been sitting on my TBR pile since 2016.

Over my years of blogging, I've come to realise that writing a rave review about a book I really enjoyed, if not loved and adored, is actually harder to do, than writing about those books that are fine reads but didn't quite reach the heights of ecstasy or move me into speechlessness.

The Green Road was such a wonderful, engaging, poignant read after a bout of books that were fine stories mostly which had failed to move me or delight me. I wonder if it was a coincidence that this bout of books were all written by men? By the end of the Winton, I felt an overwhelming sense of desperation to read a book written by a woman. Either way, I'm left feeling rather bemused about how to write an adequate response that does this glorious book justice.

The story of the Madigan family is a slight story in someway. There is no major crisis or earth shattering family secret. The Madigan's are just a regular family with the usual (in Irish terms) problems, misconceptions and issues.

We start with a series of stories seen from the perspective of each of the four children, Constance, Dan, Emmet and Hanna. We see the fall out of Dan choosing to leave home (for the priesthood, which causes his mother to take to her bed for a week!) via the baby sister's eyes. Ten years later we see him again in New York - a failed priest still coming to terms with his sexuality. The other brother makes his way to Africa as a UNICEF field worker whilst the eldest daughter has stayed in Ireland, married well, had a clutch of children and is battling with her weight. We cycle back to see Hanna, now all grown up, not quite making it as an actor, with a baby of her own and an alcohol problem.

Each of these chapters could almost be a story in their own right. Enright has the ability to weave a sense of place into each chapter so thoroughly, that shifting onto the next one is a little jarring at the start. Ardeevin, County Clare is vividly drawn, as too is AIDS ravaged New York and the hardships of Segou, Mali. Each sibling has attempted to find their own place in the world, their own sense of purpose, all the while their mother's voice and their childhood angst rings in their ears.

Their tale is the usual family tale of coming to terms with the image of your mother as you experienced her as a child, against the mother you wished she had been with the woman she really is. Rosaleen is annoying, at times manipulative and perhaps not quite grown up and at peace with her childhood. In other words, she's a regular woman trying to deal (or not) with her own issues as she brings up a family.

Enright writes with compassion, humour and insight. Like real life, nothing is wrapped up in a tidy bow, for the simple reason that the story goes on. One way or another, we always go on.

The second half of the book centres around Christmas 2005, when all the siblings come home together for the first time in a very long time. The catalyst? Their mother has just declared she is ready to sell the family home. And the Green Road of the title? It's a local road that leads through the fields of County Clare to the beach,

Fanore, Burren, County Clare

This road turned into the green road that went across the Burren, high above the beach at Fanore, and this was the most beautiful road in the world, bar none, her granny said -famed in song and story - the rocks gathering briefly into walls before lapsing back into field, the little stony pastures whose flowers were sweet and rare.

The Green Road was shortlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the Costa Book Award.
Enright won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for 2016.

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#Begorrathon18

Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty

I picked Midwinter Break from my TBR pile to read for Cathy @746Books #ReadIreland18 month. It is a staff pick at work thanks to one of my colleagues, so I was looking forward to it. But I failed to engage.

There was lots to like about the story. I enjoyed the time that Stella and Gerry had wandering around Amsterdam. I enjoyed their cute couple moments - the kiss in the lift, the little in-jokes and intimacies that can only occur over time and with love. It was sad seeing this obvious once-love being destroyed by Gerry's alcoholism.

He wasn't an abusive, violent drunk. There was no need to be scared of Gerry or to fear him. He was a bumbling, deceptive, in-denial drunk. He was sloppy and mocking and selfish.

It was interesting to see how the major event in their marriage - Stella being shot whilst pregnant - was a turning point for all of them, in such different ways. After she had recovered, and the baby survived as well, they made the decision together to leave Ireland for the safer option of Scotland. However, at the time of the shooting, Stella vowed and said a prayer,

Spare the child in my womb and I will devote the rest of my life to YOU.

She viewed the survival of her son as a miracle that had to be atoned - a spiritual debt that had to be repaid - by good deeds, to improve the world through kindness and justice and equality.

Gerry simply saw Stella's survival and the birth of Michael as the miracle,

To him her presence was as important as the world. And the stars around it. If she was an instance of the goodness in this world then passing through by her side was miracle enough.

The tragedy being that he was just pissing all that goodness away.

Normally I don't mind jumps between various times and events, but it felt clumsy here. I kept losing my way. And the very worse thing that can happen to me when reading a book happened at the half way mark - I realised I was bored.

I skimmed through the last half hoping for my very own bookish miracle, but it failed to recapture my imagination.

Sad, but true.

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