This sombre tale of jealousy in the fictional Irish parish of Cloontha opens with a prologue describing the Great Famine. The blight, the "enemy who can come at any hour", is the root of the suspicions and insecurities which still bedevil the Irish psyche in the time of the novel. Passing references to discos, hot-pants and cattle-marts suggest that this is the early 1970s, although the atmosphere of Cloontha is more redolent of a somewhat earlier period. The novel, however, is principally concerned with the conflict which arises when an old way of life is threatened. It documents the encroachment of modern values on a resistant Irish countryside. The early 1970s would seem historically appropriate, but the mythical tone of the novel refutes the necessity for precise dating.
Michael Bugler represents the new. A dashing emigrant returned from an Australian sheep station to run a farm he has inherited, he is pitched in a battle of wits and emotion against Joseph Brennan, his onetime friend and neighbour. Joseph is an old-fashioned farmer who lives with his younger sister, Breege, in a sort of Irish sibling marriage. They share a crumbling house which has a mood akin to that of Wuthering Heights - and indeed the spirit of Emily Bronte's novel seems to hover over this one.
Bugler imports ugly city furniture and new farming ideas to Cloontha - he plans to plant cranberries. He also introduces a new, more honest and gentle way of behaving and thinking. We meet him in a vivid opening paragraph astride a large red tractor which disturbs the "profoundly pensive landscape." This landscape is as seductive and treacherous as its many bogs, which provide an excellent symbol of the central theme of the novel. Bugler loves the bog, as he loves women, but in Cloontha both are more dangerous than their surfaces suggest, thanks not so much to their own intrinsic natures as to those of their "owners". A tentative friendship with the Brennans soon disintegrates into violent enmity instigated by Joseph. Bizarre legal battles ensue. The lengthy solicitors' correspondence and eventual courtroom scene provide the novel with some of its most comic moments (in spite of its tragic theme, there is plenty of humour in this book).
The enmity of the two men is initially caused by disputes over land - The Field inevitably comes to mind. But it is also motivated by sexual jealousy. Breege falls in love with the handsome Bugler, who is engaged to an Australian woman. Joseph is as possessive about his sister as he is about his farm - land and women are equated in his mind. Neither are permitted to change hands, to develop or, ironically, to be fruitful. The negative is what his type of mentality promotes, relentlessly if unwittingly.
The novel is a myth of an Ireland emerging from its post-colonial, post-Famine angst. It allegorises the clash of the old negative retentiveness with a new liberal flexibility and progressiveness. Bugler is a heroic figure on an epic scale, returned from mysterious adventures abroad. Reena and Reeta, two minor characters, are hilariously-depicted sexual predators, crafty cottage sirens. The acts of the main protagonists are unapologetically grand and elemental. This book provides a marvellous conclusion to O'Brien's trilogy about modern Ireland - the earlier books of the series being House of Splendid Isolation and Down By the River. It's a complex study of character and psychology, and its texture is correspondingly complex and beautifully woven: religious iconography, traditional songs, a Munster classical education form part of its intricate pattern. Few Irish novelists have written as vividly as O'Brien about the physical details of the countryside or of farming life. Even as ethnographical documents, her Irish novels have considerable value.
Her style, however, is O'Brien's greatest achievement. Most of this novel is written in the simple lyrical language salted with understated wit so typical of her extraordinary narrative voice. She writes the rhythmical, compelling prose of the master storyteller. Her sentences hypnotise the reader. Occasionally she bolts off on a Joycean gallop which, although less appealing (to me anyway) than her simpler voice, reflects her adventurousness, her insistence on progressing as a writer.
She is one of our bravest and best novelists. We have every reason to be grateful that she continues to write and that her substantial corpus, charting her literary pilgrimage, is still expanding.
Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's latest novel, The Dancers Dancing, was published earlier this year.