Note: In May, 2010, TROUBLES was WINNER of the Lost Man Booker Prize, awarded “to honour the books published in 1970, but not considered for the prize when its rules were changed.” The winner is considered the Best Book of 1970.
“A situation which defied comprehension, a war without battles or trenches. Why should one bother with the details: the raids for arms, the shootings of policemen, the intimidations? What could one learn from the details of chaos?”
Originally published in 1970 and newly reprinted by The New York Review of Books, J. G. Farrell’s Troubles, the story of Ireland’s fight for its independence from England, from the close of World War I through 1922, illuminates the attitudes and insensitivities that made revolution a necessity for the Irish people. Farrell also, however, focuses on the personal costs to the residential Anglo-Irish aristocracy as they find themselves being driven out of their “homes.” Life in this novel takes place on the 
coast of County Wexford within the microcosm of the 300-room Majestic Hotel, run by Edward Spencer. Though he regards himself as a benevolent landowner, he demands total submission of his employees and the signing of a loyalty oath to the King, something they refuse to do. The hotel, lacking maintenance during World War I and its aftermath, is now too costly to repair, and it is rapidly becoming a ruin, as the number of British tourists and summer guests dwindles during the early stages of the Irish rebellion, and the number of elderly permanent guests, unable to pay their rent, remains the same.
Major Brendan Archer, newly released from hospital where he has been recovering from the long-term emotional effects of his wartime experience, arrives at the ironically named Majestic Hotel on a bleak and rainy day to reintroduce himself to his fiancée Angela, daughter of the proprietor, and, if they then agree to marry, to return with her to a home in England. The Major, however, is greeted by no one upon his arrival at the hotel desk, and he must find his own way to the Palm Court, “a vast, shadowy cavern in which…beds of oozing mould supported banana and rubber plants, hairy ferns, elephant grass and creepers that dangled from above like emerald intestines.” Despite the claustrophobic and depressing atmosphere, and the lack of an immediate betrothal, the Major remains at the hotel, off and on, for three years.
Perched on the coast of southeast Ireland facing England and Wales, the Majestic is a symbol of British rule in Ireland–the storms, tides, and destructive winds off the Irish Sea have scoured its façade and undermined its structure. 
Windows are broken, the roof leaks, and decorative gewgaws and balconies hang loosely, threatening to crash. The Imperial Bar is “boiling with cats.” Farrell indulges his formidable gifts of description and wry humor here, conjuring up images from our own nightmares by selecting small, vivid details to make the larger thematic picture more real. As the details continue to pile up, the reader’s feeling of claustrophobia and the need to escape builds. When two Irish policemen are killed by Sinn Fein in a distant town, the event has little effect on the inhabitants of the Majestic, but as the reader learns about the earlier Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the number of quick executions by the British administration, along with disturbances at the Peace Day Parade in Dublin, the killing of innocents by Sinn Fein because of their religion, the fighting in Derry, and the continued burnings and raids, the danger becomes more immediate and more obvious.
Injecting small news stories throughout the narrative, Farrell sets up global parallels to the rebellion in Ireland, widening his scope by illuminating that time in postwar British history when virtually all the colonies of the empire were simultaneously agitating for independence. Newspaper stories about the British army’s firing on the populace in Amritsar, the laying down of arms by the Connaught Rangers in India in sympathy with the Irish people, a “native” uprising in South Africa, along with the Chicago Riots and the Bolshevist attacks in Kiev give wider scope to the Irish rebellion and its attendant violence. As violence comes to the Majestic, we see that Farrell has prepared us to recognize that violence is random, its events “inevitable, without malice, part of history.”
Note: The photo of J. G. Farrell appears on the Booker Prize site, honoring his achievement in winning for THE SIEGE OF KRISHNAPUR. Also by Farrell: THE SINGAPORE GRIP
