Although this is one of Toibin’s earlier novels, I had not previously read it; but it felt instantly familiar nevertheless, with his distinctive style. This one is set in Toibin’s own birth county, Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland. It begins with a charming chapter on the protagonist, Helen, waking up in the morning to her 2 young sons and her beloved husband, Hugh. They are planning a big Irish style party, which Hugh loves, and which Helen tolerates for love of him. The readers get a glimpse of this normal, charming little family and their cosy life, before the next morning, Hugh takes the boys to Donegal, to his parents’ place, with Helen to follow in a few days after completing some of her duties as principal of a comprehensive school.
The youngest principal in the country, Helen comes from a high achieving family. Her mother, Lily, is a big noise in tech and computing, while her maternal grandmother, Dora Devereux, is another strong woman. The 3 women have fallen out with each other in the distant past, but this novel brings us into their story at the point where Helen’s only (younger) brother, Declan, is dying of AIDS, and he has come to his grandmother’s house on the cliff by the sea, in his final illness. This is not a sentimental book – Declan has not come because they had such a lovely childhood in his grandmother’s house; in fact, Helen and Declan were still not yet teenagers when they first went to stay with their grandmother when their father was taken to hospital in Dublin, where he died without his children seeing him again. It was not a nice house then, or now. The beach is not a nice beach, and when Helen brings her own children to visit, they do not fall on the beach with delight and begin to make beautiful childhood memories of their own:
She realised that they were used to the long sandy beaches in Donegal, and that the marl of the cliff and the short strand seemed strange to them.
p134
In fact, the landscape reflects the standards of living, depicting a grimier, harsher reality at all turns rather than a soft, luxurious one, despite the fact these are all upper-middle class characters. It seems that background poverty and strife has hardened the characters into survival mode, rather than easy going comfort and plenty.
All the women characters in this novel seem extremely tough, and quite reserved and distant. The men seem far more affectionate and open hearted. Perhaps this says something about Irish gender roles and expectations, which may have allowed men more leeway to affability and less constraint. The women seem to be constantly awaiting tragedy, and always holding themselves in tightly, just against such a moment.
Toibin provides lovely back stories for all the main characters. At the heart, and peeling back layer by layer, is the story of Helen’s relationships with her mother and grandmother and how they went wrong, with misunderstandings and silent blame. In this period of enforced proximity with her family in the grandmother’s house, she begins to unpack her own emotional baggage and understand herself better, which enables of course, more reconciliation with the past as well as with present relationships. Helen is afraid to love, because she associates love with loss. She even fears her own love for her husband, despite the fact he is a loving and good husband,
how much she feared her own passionate attachment to him, how much she would hold back awhile
p11
She could never let him know the constant daily urge to resist him, to keep him at bay, and the struggle to overcome these urges […] He tried to understand this but he was also frightened by it […] and he would wait and find the right moment and pull her back in again, and she would lie beside him, half grateful to him, but knowing he had wilfully misunderstood what was between them
p25
Helen is chronically afraid of being ‘pulled in’ as she puts it to herself. In her grandmother’s house, with Declan and her mother and grandmother, she is frightened when her mother softens to her, because she fears not being able to resist, fears being pulled in yet again, and runs out to phone her husband. He offers to come to her, and she resists that too, despite being grateful to be able to talk to him. Helen is a wonderfully nuanced, contrary character, at once so strong and so brittle. But then, that seems to go for most of the Irish characters of Toibin’s writing.
There are some wonderful words and turns of phrases that are so evocative of the place and period. When Helen arrives at her grandmother’s house unannounced, Helen’s grandmother says to her,
Here you are now, Helen
p486
and then,
Now, Helen, there’s tea on and I could make you up a fry
p47
the speech making the welcome sound so very warm.
When Declan’s gay friends start turning up to visit him, Helen’s grandmother says,
Oh God Almighty, I’ll have them all on top of me now […] I’ll have them in droves. […] The neighbours […] will smell the news
p137
Throughout, the wonderful place names (not just the better known Dublin and Enniscorthy, but others which look so quixotic: Drumgoole, Cush, Curracloe, Ballyshannon, Rathfarnham, Knocknasillogue, Rosslare, Clonmel) are scattered in the story as if the reader is as familiar with Ireland as the author himself, charmingly treating the reader as insiders.
In all, a typical Toibin novel, a charming read, and so place and period specific.
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