Happy St. Patrick's Day (to those who observe it)

In my Twitter bluesky profile, I say that I'd rather be in Ireland. And these days, I sometimes actually mean it, or at least kinda-sorta mean it. In my old age, would I really uproot my existence and plunk meself down in a country far away from family and friends, hearth and home? Sure, I've been to Ireland plenty of times but have never lived there - or any place outside the United States. So it's probably not going to happen (unless fascist putsch comes to fascist shove, in which case...) That's Galway in the pic, by the way, which would be my first choice of a place to live in Ireland.

I have no illusions about Ireland being perfect. To quote my Grandmother Rogers - the daughter of Irish immigrants - "If Ireland were so great, we all wouldn't have had to come over here." True that. The country my Irish great-grandparents - Matthew Trainor, Bridget Trainor, John Rogers, and Margaret Joyce - fled in the 1870's was poor, backward, repressive, priest-ridden. (Not to mention still under Britain's tyranny.) They found a much better life for themselves and their progeny in Amerikay. 

But over the last several decades, with remarkable speed, Ireland has done of very good job of throwing over its poor, backward, repressive, priest-ridden self, and there's certainly an argument to be made that today's Eire (for all its problems, including a nasty right wing nationalistic movement) may be a lot more comfortable, open, and sane place to live than, say, the USA envisioned by the white Christian nationalists. So if I were going to live in another country, it would be a) Canada if New England merged with it and I didn't have to move; or b) Ireland. 

The first time I went to Ireland, in 1973, I have to say I felt right at home the minute I stepped off the boat in Dun Laoghaire in the pouring rain. (I grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and went to Catholic schools - through college - largely populated by Irish-Americans students and teachers, so the fact that everyone looked like everyone I ever lived around just made Ireland seem like home. The gestures, the manner of speaking - it was all pretty familiar.) 

Ah, Ireland...

I love the music. I love the tea. I love the brown bread. And I love the literature, which this year I've been reading a bit of.

So far in 2025, I've read five novels written by Irish authors.

I don't know why I had a copy Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September sitting there in one of the piles on the cedar chest in my bedroom. But there it was. So I picked it up and read it.

Bowen was a well-to-do member of the Anglo-Irish (Protestant) Ascendancy that dominated/exploited Ireland, and kept the Irish Catholics in their (downtrodden) place until that particular yoke was thrown off in the twentieth century. The Last September takes place in a "Big House" in County Cork in 1920. The Irish War for Independence is revving up around them, but the Naylor family and their friends and relations are keeping up the idle rich life they've always lived: House parties. Tennis games. Dances. Condescending to the locals (Irish, Catholic), who as servants, laborers, tradesmen, and peasant farmers, made their lives of jaded leisure possible.

My greatgrandfather Matthew Trainor was one such servant, working  as a stable boy in the grand Protestant manor house in Ballymascanlon, County Louth, until he emigrated. The Big House where Matthew labored is now a hotel and restaurant. When, a few years back, my sister Trish and I had lunch there, Trish commented as we walked in that "this is probably the first time anyone in our family used the front door." 

The manor house in Ballymascanlon survived to become a hotel; the manor houses in The Last September met a different fate. In the final pages of the novel, they were burnt to the ground by Irish soldiers during the war to get the Brits out. The novel is dated but beautifully written and, while some may read it fearing the impending doom, I was rooting for the boyos to get in there with the petrol and light a match. About 300 Big Houses were burnt down to the ground in Ireland between 1919 and 1923, with very little loss of life, as the families were given warning and allowed to get out and sit in their lawn chairs to watch their homes burning. (Up the Republic!)

I am a big admirer of his (The Barrytown Trilogy, Paddy Clarke HaHaHa, etc), so I can't imagine why I hadn't read Roddy Doyle's Paula Spencer Series. I came to it backwards, picking up the third novel The Woman Behind the Door (2024), and then immediately Kindling The Woman Who Walked into Doors (1996) and Paula Spencer (2006) for my February trip to Tucson to visit my sister Kath. These books chronicle the life of a working class Dub (Dubliner) woman through her turbulent marriage to a "charming" wife-beating thug, her struggles with alcoholism, her up and down relationships with her four children, her motherhood, her friendships and relationships with her family (especially her sisters), her crappy jobs, her financial struggles. This all sounds pretty bleak, but in Paula Spencer, Doyle has painted a nuanced, sympathetic but never patronizing portrait of a modern-day Irish woman who's plenty smart (although spectacularly dumb at times), plenty funny, plenty observant (except for those blindspots), and plenty tough. I loved these books, and loved Paula Spencer, her kids (Nicola, John Paul, Leanne, and Jack), her sisters Carmel and Denise, her friends Mary and Rita...The only one I hated was her shite husband Charlo. I was delighted when he got plugged by a Garda. Good riddance! In the third book, Paula's in her sixties. I hope there's at least one more Paula novel in Roddy Doyle. High praise to him for doing a feckin' brilliant job. 

The fifth Irish novel I've read so far this year is Time of the Child by Niall Williams which is pretty much set plunk in the middle between the demise of the the Protestant Ascendancy (Bowen) and the emergence of modern Ireland (Doyle). It's the Christmas season of 1962, and Ireland is still plenty poor and plenty backward, especially in the remote backwater Clare town of Faha, which has only had electricity for a few years and where life is carried on by indirection yet with plenty of room for everyone to be up in everyone else's business. I've read a number of books by Williams, including the two prior novels set in Faha, so I was familiar with some of the characters from minor roles they'd played in those earlier books. Williams is a beautiful, lyrical writer, and his characters and settings are memorable, but his work generally has a fairy tale quality to it that I'm not fully enamored of. (The miraculous abandoned baby showing up...) Not that he ignores the harsh realities of life, but even when dealing with them, the corners are a bit rounded and gentled. I prefer Roddy Doyle's straight-on grit. Still, I much enjoyed this book (and thank my cousin Ellen for the recommendation).

All I can say is that, when it comes to writing, Ireland (population: 5.6 million) sure manages to punch above its weight in producing wonderful writers. No wonder there are times when I'd rather be there.

Roundabout way to celebrate Ireland's national holiday, but Happy St. Patrick's Day to those who observe it.

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I've often written about my Irish (-American) identity and my affinity for Ireland. Here's a roundup of my St. Patrick's Day posts over the years.