Sir, - Your paper of January 11th, 1996, showed pictures of death and decay in other lands (Chechnya, Bosnia and China), but a stronger sense of decay and death hit me in reading "About Women" (is this what you call living?) by your talented writer, Mary Cummins. What a tragedy that this gifted writer sees life in Ireland (11 days into 1996) only as a cesspool of lost hopes, and values life in Ireland as hardly worth living!
In 25 years at the Bar I have seen, in cases I have been in, the effects of murder, rape, marital breakdown, unemployment, child abuse and even madness in the victims and perpetrators of almost every known human activity. In that quarter century I have seen more courage, humanity, humour and even laughter at that coal face of human tragedy in a measure so full and so fine that it gives the lie to the picture of the human conditions in Ireland that your bleak critic paints.
Mary Cummins needs no one to talk to. If she could only love herself just a little, she might even learn to live again and to laugh - even at herself. - Yours, etc.,
Park Avenue, Sandymount, Dublin 4.