An unpretentious and captivating short novel - again about
revolutionary Ireland in the 1920's - from the author of The Old
Jest (1979), The Christmas Tree (1982), and The Railway Station Man
(1985). As an old woman on her deathbed, Miranda Martin looks back
over her life, revisiting especially the long-ago moment, when she
was 18, that changed everything for her, causing her not only never
to marry, but to "have known the embraces of no man." As a carefree
young girl of 18, Miranda lived near the sea's edge in Cork,
surrounded by nannies and servants (though her mother was dead), in
the faded, half-ghostly, and generations-old rural family estate
called Termon - far from the turmoil of revolutionary affairs. Her
brother Andrew, however, is an officer in the British army, and
when he returns home one autumn weekend for a visit, accompanied by
a fellow officer and friend, catastrophe occurs. The underground
revolutionary army has identified Andrew and his companion as
spies, and, in the early hours of the morning, after a night of
lightning and rain, three of its representatives arrive at Termon
for the purpose of killing the two in their beds. What they find,
however, is that the British officers have fled, having been warned
by young Cathal Dillon, himself a rebel, but also the childhood
(though working-class) friend of Andrew and - quite sweetly and
tentatively - the young lover of Miranda. Cathal is taken away and
executed; Miranda grieves helplessly; and what might have been only
another historically-set melodrama lingers poignantly in the
reader's mind with moment after moment of precisely realized
character, setting, and mood - from Miranda herself to her
eccentrically idealistic and unpolitical father, to the personal
bitterness of Andrew and his archly cruel impatience with what he
sees as Irish backwardness, to the appealing tenderness and
prepossessing seriousness of the doomed Cathal. Uncliched,
wondrously (and deftly) evocative of time and place, and remarkably
moving. (Kirkus Reviews)
The Great War is over; but the war in Ireland is only just
beginning, as the IRA and the Black and Tans move on to the attack.
It all seems very remote to Miranda Martin, during that miraculous
Indian summer. Her father, hoping to forget his dead wife, thinks
of nothing but his trees; Miranda thinks of the future, a future
which must surely include Cathal, who brings news from Dublin.
Everything seems calm and serene. But then Andrew, her officer
brother, comes home, bringing his eccentric, likeable friend Harry,
and as the Indian summer fades, the scene is set for tragedy.
General
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