This is one of those novels that are told in parallel timelines, with one in the mid 1850s, of the potato famine in Ireland, and the other is the current day timeline in New York. The protagonist of the mid-1850s timeline is Ginny Doyle, happily married farmer and loving mother of 4, soon to be 5, but who (along with all the community) is in dire straits when the blight hits the potato crop and in danger of starvation. The protagonist of the current day timeline is Majella, a writer, wife to a chef, and mother to newborn Emma, learning to be a parent and struggling with those early days. Of course, the protagonists are linked: Ginny is Majella’s ancestor (great-great-great grandmother on the maternal side). And Ginny’s diary is found by Majella in the attic, which intrigues Majella and which gives her strength to confront her own daily struggles. In fact, a pretty standard and unoriginal format and structure for this kind of novel.
The story told in the 1850s of the famine is touching, with descriptions of harrowing experiences of the Irish who are starving, destitute, being exploited by their landlords in distant England who may have never set foot in Ireland, but who have ruthless Irish agents on site to collect rents, “to run their estates for them, to squeeze every last drop of profit they could from the land” (p151-2), charging exorbitant tenancies, seizing improvements made to lands, and turning those who cannot pay their rents – or just on a whim – out of their homes, forcing them on the road, homeless and even more likely to perish.
With the potato blight, things get more desperate, and while some try to organise to collectively refuse to pay rent, they are treated harshly by the law. Cummins gives us a snapshot of the people’s anguish, desperation and grief when they watch their loved ones perish. A neighbour comes to steal Ginny’s hens:
“I said to myself, God has forsaken us, and there’s nothing else for it. He can take me, but I’ll do what I can to save my children before I go. And so I came here, because I knew you weren’t as bad off as all that, and I thought you might spare the hen. But I was here for an hour, that hen clutched in my hand, and it was getting toward dawn, and the light coming into the sky, and me thinking of Mick at home, ailing and coughing. And me knowing that the hen just there might save him. But my conscience wouldn’t allow it, and all I could think of was being close enough to my own end, and having to face Saint Peter with that theft on my hands, and that I was taking food out of the mouths of your own hungry children as well, God forgive me” (p71).
Also, neighbours withdraw into their own homes, grow suspicious of each other, batten down hatches, cease to socialise, and try to just survive the winter.
Because Ginny and her husband, Raymond, do not dare to refuse to pay the rent in sales of oats, and because they have no potatoes to eat this year, they are left with so little food that they will starve unless Raymond leaves them to find work elsewhere, so he joins the migration to the US, hoping to send food and money in a few months’ time. However, winter comes and goes, and by spring there is still no word from Raymond, so Ginny goes to the big house 6 miles from her little village, to seek work as a chambermaid, to stave off the starvation will kill her children soon. She leaves 12 year old, responsible, clever Maire in charge of the younger children, and manages to get hired because the lady of the house, Alice Springs, has an unhealthy fixation on babies, and sees that Ginny is expecting. The story in Ireland is by far the more interesting of the two parallel tales.
The current day story of Majella, by contrast, is fairly tedious. If Cummins was working at writing a whining, complaining, self-pitying, self-indulgent, thoroughly inept character of a woman, she has done a pretty good job. Majella just carps on and on at her husband at how she is struggling as a new mother, and even needs to go for regular therapy sessions (not for postpartum depression, which would be understandable). She even resents her therapist. Majella comes across as a spoilt, entitled woman who seems to have no perspective and feels victimised by her first world problems:
“Taking television away from an already lonely, isolated person is like robbing a tired swimmer of her life preserver. I am a martyr. I watch Drew Carey wistfully, heroically” (p49).
She catastrophizes, imagining the baby will get killed in all kinds of freak accidents, and she counts the hours her husband is at work and away from home,
“I literally count them: four hours to go. Three hours to go. Okay, just two hours to go now, I can do this. I’m lonely without Drew Carey for company, but when Leo’s is home, it’s completely different” (p51).
After giving birth, Majella falls asleep, and when she wakes, she phones her husband from her hospital bed, who cheerfully says he is coming for sure and how he looks forward to seeing his girls. When he asks if she is okay – she is in fact fine, and looked after by the nurses – she says, “Not really […] I’m all alone here” (p14). She complains they have not brought the baby to her – her husband points out she only gave birth 4 hours ago, so the hospital is probably expecting her to get a little rest, plus visiting hours don’t start till 9am, and it isn’t even 7.30am yet.
“It’s just not what I expected,” I tried to explain. “To wake up alone here, in this room. It doesn’t seem right that we’re finally a family, our first morning as a family. And none of us are together. And everything hurts. My body…”
I sniffed again, and there were more tears. Ugh – more tears!” (p14).
Husband, Leo, is consistently patient, cheerful, understanding, supportive, and the reader is left wondering why he doesn’t just run for the hills really. It is not just Majella being difficult after giving birth; it comes across that she was never a nice character. For example, when Majella wanted to move from Manhattan to Queens, but Leo didn’t want to be far from work and from the hub of Manhattan:
“But Leo was already defeated. I was barely nine weeks pregnant then, but I’d already acquired the habit of placing my hand suggestively across my belly in an argument, to illustrate the righteousness of my position” (p59).
For reasons best known to herself, Cummins is definitely sending her character of Majella up. While a reader can empathise with a new mother who is dreading her baby might stop breathing or be accidentally hurt, Majella’s projections go a bit further than this,
“It’s all I think about since Emma was born – how my life is whizzing by, and soon I’ll be gone” (p18).
Majella also resents that her parents have not come to visit her from their new home in Florida, where they have just moved, while Majella was pregnant. Majella phones her mother, who witters on about her own life and barely asks about Majella, which is the norm for their mother-daughter communications. But Majella still takes offense,
“I almost explode on her. […] What about ME? I just had a baby over here! But I am deeply cowardly and the words stay somewhere in my solar plexus” (p44).
She then does explode at her mother,
“In my defense, I know I’m being nasty. Is self-awareness a passable defense for bitchiness? I’m aware” (p45).
It is unclear how self awareness without remorse or resolve to do better, is any kind of defense; in fact, does it not make the offence even more culpable?
As the novel progresses, it is makes one marvel how a tough, giving, uncomplaining character like Ginny can have such a pathetic descendant, apparently devoid of survival abilities or even self-management skills. There is supposedly a big reveal at the end of the novel, but since so much has already been hinting at during the novel, it is not that much of a reveal – which is fine, but what is problematic is that in the reveal, the author and/or novel comes across as justifying even the most horrific of crimes if done in the name of defending one’s children; ethically, the story gets rather murky at the end. Overall, I am left a little surprised that Cummins, who with American Dirt, had proved herself a capable of quite good work, has now produced this rather pedestrian offering.
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