Books

Books in brief: From overlooked Irish women to the taboo of suicide

Round-up also includes a farming memoir and William Faulkner’s road to a Nobel

Rosie Hackett, an Irish insurgent and trade union leader

Sat Dec 29 2018 - 00:00

Bold, Brilliant and Bad: Irish Women from History

By Marian Broderick
O'Brien Press, €16.99
Some of the women whose short biographies feature are well known but many aren't. Scientists, sports people, activists, artists and performers are expected categories covered but criminals, "hidden voices" and "women of faith" are unexpected and none the less interesting for that. Aristocratic Lizzie Le Blond became an inveterate mountaineer and photographer; a horrified grandaunt sent a frantic message: "Stop her climbing mountains! She is scandalising all of London!" It's unlikely that Lilian Bland, the first woman to design, build and fly her own aircraft, or Kay McNulty, co-inventor of the first general-use digital computer, or Lena Rice, the only Irish woman ever to win a Wimbledon singles title, are well known. Among the accomplished scientists are microscopist (and author and artist) Mary Ward, astrophysicist Agnes Clerke and BCG pioneer Dorothy Stopford Price. Activists included are Winnie Carney, Rosie Hackett and Gretta Cousins (40-year campaigner for Indian independence and women's rights). "Unheard voices" include that of Bridget Hitler, sister-in-law of Adolf, who was Bridget Dowling, born and raised in Dublin.

A Very Human Ending: How Suicide Haunts Our Species

By Jesse Bering
Doubleday
Combining personal testimony, research, cultural studies and his own training as a developmental psychologist, Jesse Bering's latest book is concerned with a subject perhaps even more taboo than his previous works, which have become renowned for their exploration of "deviant" sexualities. Paradoxically, considering its subject matter, Bering's prose, his range of reference and his quick humour makes this a gentle read, though the topics covered are often harrowing. Infused with his own experience of suicidal thought, Bering's book explores the persistence of the ideation – the way triggers can morph over time, adapting but not always disappearing. Treating suicide as an epidemic – a million people a year kill themselves, translating to roughly one person every 40 seconds – A Very Human Ending casts its net wide, moving from fin-de-siècle French literature to cutting-edge scientific studies to unpick a vast web of information and misinformation alike. A necessary contribution to the demystification of a subject still underdiscussed, Bering's book is wise, warm, and sure to encourage conversation.

Till The Cows Come Home

By Lorna Sixsmith
Black & White, £12.99
When Sixsmith decides to return from the UK and take over the responsibility of running the family farm in Garrendenny, Co Offaly, she does not do so lightly. With a new baby in tow, Sixsmith and her husband leave their permanent jobs – and lives as they knew them – embarking on a whole new way of life. The farm has been in the family for three generations and requires modernisation and a firm commitment. Lorna is the first female Sixsmith to take on such a task. However, as the memoir reveals, women have been ever-present in the farming community and often without praise. Relegated to the kitchen or to helping out with the less manual labour, the farmer's wives and daughters were often employed elsewhere (teachers/nurses) but utilised in times of need. Delightful nuggets of social history are retold, with the electrification of rural Ireland, harvest-time traditions and the origins of field names, among others. A little repetitive at times, nevertheless, for myself and other "townies", this is both enchanting and eye-opening. Warm, honest and humorous.

The Fall at Home: New And Collected Aphorisms

By Don Paterson
Faber & Faber, £16.99
Having revived the aphorism, Don Paterson has been growing this superfine gritty collection for more than a decade. "A poem is a ladder to the sky; an aphorism just a stair to the cellar." And although he would probably classify Ecclesiastes as wisdom literature (there are pages of aphorisms defining aphorisms here), I felt a delightfully dour kinship between them. Paterson is much funnier, of course, his dark view bizarrely comforting. What could be seen as arrogance must be brave, whether he's examining "the self" or himself. That honesty earns the reader's trust even though I couldn't quite decide if his appreciation of women unnerved or pleased me. But truth and wit carry the day, as he takes the reader on his subterranean journey and "... we stand before the world like a projectionist behind his dusty cone of shadows, illuminating only what we already know". He nails our current unease: "Right now there is probably more you need in the cellar than in the sky."

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William Faulkner – Critical Lives

By Kirk Curnutt
Reaktion Books, £11.99
Washington Post columnist Jonathan Yardley bemoaned yet another Faulkner biography released in the noughties: "Apart from his writing ... he really didn't do much." This judgment gives an inverse appeal too, though; the writer who fixed to the discipline of his craft and got on with, for better or worse, the idea of living. Yardley would have little complaint about this book. Curnutt delivers a fine blend of Faulkner in little more than 200 pages, which should prove a good starting point for anyone wishing to learn more about one of the defining literary voices of the 20th century.

Curnutt offers the right blend of research and anecdote, and astute analysis of the novels, short stories and evolution of Faulkner’s style. He manages to fit in the heavy family history in Mississippi; the initial struggles of “Ol’ Bill” to find his métier that eventually led to a remarkable run of books; the reluctant Hollywood years, the booze, marriage troubles, and slump into relative obscurity, before a renaissance of recognition resulted in the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. Impressive.

Invisible Countries

By Joshua Keating
Yale, £20
What defines a country, asks Joshua Keating, in this fascinating, thought-provoking read. Is it borders, a government and recognition by and of other countries? Today's world is "the product of a series of accidents and historical processes that could just as easily have gone another way". Is the past 25 years of remarkable geographical stability coming to an end in the era of Brexit, China's island-building, Putin and Trump? Following a short historical overview of how countries emerged, Keating considers the cases of five "invisible countries", Abkhazia (Georgia), the Mohawk community of Akwesasne (straddling the Canadian-US border), Somaliland (Somalia), Kurdistan (Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran) and Kirbati (Pacific Ocean), all of which he has visited. Somaliland is autonomous and possesses more of the features associated with a country than Somalia, of which it is a nominal part, but the rest of the world is unaware of – or has opted to deny – its existence. Iraqi Kurdistan shows the cruel absurdities of the current Middle East map but also the potential dangers of redrawing, and Kirbati's very existence is threatened by climate change.