Although Nolan’s prose has often been compared to that of other, more famous Irish writers-James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, for example–his style is more accessible, making his story more readable, more emotionally powerful, and more personally involving than anything I’ve read by these other great writers. Minnie O’Brien lives, loves, ages, aches, and ultimately haunts. She’s an extraordinary character presented in an extraordinary way by an equally extraordinary author. Nolan brings her to life by following the first rule of fiction: “Don’t tell about something; recreate it.” He does this, in part, by using vivid, emotionally charged words in new ways, sometimes using adjectives and nouns as verbs, conveying not only the emotional sense but also an action: In describing Minnie’s actions at the death of her husband, we find that her cries were “cartwheeling around the room,” before “she sacked her voice of screams” and dried her eyes, going downstairs to “perform the miraculous loaves and fishes reenactment,” for the neighborhood wake. (On my list of All-Time Favorites)
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Frankie Crowe is one of those men who takes shortcuts. A “little” criminal, in the sense that he has a small mind and grand ideas of his own self-importance, he is among the most dangerous of criminals, a young man for whom no one else counts. Life in Dublin—at least the kind of life Frankie wants—is expensive, and his current scheme is to kidnap one of Ireland’s wealthiest men and hold him for ransom. Justin Kennedy, the man selected, has been involved in the purchase of a small private bank, and Frankie figures that he will have an easier time obtaining a large sum of money than some of the other men on the “Rich List.” Collecting a group of petty criminals around him, Frankie and his three associates conspire to make the snatch. Debunking the myth of a jolly Ireland in which life revolves around storytelling, singing, and companionable drinking at the pub, Kerrigan shows the growing pains of economic “progress” and how that has changed the fabric of the country for its young people, a number of whom have put their entrepreneurial skills to use in unsavory ways. (On my Favorites list for 2008)
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Aldous Rex Llewellyn Jones, an elderly widower living alone, has nothing to look forward to. A former art teacher now living an isolated life inside a house for which he takes as little care as he does for his own hygiene, Aldous avoids contact with the outside world, even with his own children. One son lives in Belgium, another lives in the Venezuelan jungle with his Icabaru wife and child, and a daughter Juliette, a reporter for the London Evening News, has her own life. With his unique imagery and eye for the ironic or bizarre detail, Woodward makes Aldous, his friends, and his daily life come vividly to life in this quiet, unpretentious novel. He uses dark humor to makes observations about age which are sharp and memorable. Though there are moments of profound sadness, there are also moments of hope for Aldous’s belated self-awareness and enlightenment. Woodward never descends into pathos or sentimentality, reminding the reader that life is often absurd and that ironies can be found and appreciated even in the most difficult situations. (My Favorite novel of 2008)
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Sir Edward Feathers, known as “Old Filth,” is, ironically, “spectacularly …ostentatiously clean.” His nickname derives from the fact that as a lawyer, he “Failed In London, Tried Hongkong.” A “Raj Orphan,” Filth is a child of British civil servants of the Empire in Malaya. Like other Raj children, he is sent back to England, alone, at the age of five or six, to begin school in a country he’s never seen among people he does not know. Gardam writes a powerful character study of this intriguing character whose fate it was “always to be left and forgotten.” Now in his early eighties and living in Dorset, his wife dead, he reminisces about the past and hints at some terrible event that took place when he was eight, living in Wales with Ma and Pa Didds, who took care of him and two young cousins. Sophisticated and subtle, this novel, shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2005, is also compulsively readable with its poignant scenes and ironic humor. (A Favorite of 2006)
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Booker Prize-winning author John Banville presents a sensitive and remarkably complete character study of Max Morden, an art critic/writer from Ireland whose wife has just died from a lingering illness. Seeking solace, Max has checked into the Cedars, a now dilapidated guest-house in the seaside village of Ballyless, where he and his family had spent summers when he was a child. Images of foreboding suggest that some tragedy occurred while he was there, though the reader discovers only gradually what it might have been. Now renting a room at the Cedars for an indefinite stay, Max broods about the nature of life, love, and death, relives earlier times, and tries to reconcile his memories, some of which are incomplete and imperfect, with the reality of his present, sad life. An ordinary man in his late fifties or early sixties engaging in interior battles with personal demons may not appeal to readers who prefer snappy dialogue and action plots. But other readers, especially those who may have faced the deaths of family or friends and recognized the limitations of memory, may recognize in Max a kindred spirit. (On my All-Time Favorites list)
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