I put up a Facebook photo a few days ago showing a stack of books I’ve read—or partially read or am just about to read. It includes nine golf books I reviewed. (All of those can eventually be found elsewhere here at The Bookshelf.)
It brought me up to date with Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson epic, so that now fans can just hope he survives to finish the concluding volume. I was hoping that might be soon, but if not I guess I’ll have to plow ahead in my Presidential biography reading odyssey and tackle Tricky Dick.
I did read Caro’s engaging Working, a behind the scenes look at his works. That leaves only Caro’s massive tome on Robert Moses, The Power Broker, sitting unread on our bookshelves as it has for more than fifty years. Autographed! One of these days….
But that’s not the story I came to tell you today. It’s the Irish angle, which gives me a chance to make some recommendations. From the top of the stack, down to six, seven and eight, are the three Irish entries.
A lot of my reading revolves around the book group I belong to, and shortly after her death in late July last year we read Edna O’Brien’s early and somewhat scandalous ground-breaking work, The Country Girls. It eventually became a trilogy, and my edition includes all three works. I’ve read the second novel, The Lonely Girl, and look forward to the third, Girls in Their Married Bliss.
I’d never even heard of Niall Williams, but I’m glad someone in the group recommended This Is Happiness, a book that brought just that to all of us. It’s a coming-of-age novel, to be sure, from the vantage point of an elderly man looking back at a time in his small village when it was, unaccountably, not raining for a long stretch. It was also at an historic juncture—the town is about to get electricity.
Our young/old narrator, Noel, meets up and makes rounds with Christy, an emissary from the electric company, to assess peoples’ concerns about the changes to come. But Christy has a hidden agenda—seeking out a woman from the town he had left at the altar many years before. To apologize? To seek forgiveness? Christy only gradually divulges all to Noel, who becomes squarely involved in this and other misadventures, frequently oiled by many a pint and a frequently crashing bicycle.
Nostalgic it is, yes, but Williams completely skirts undue sentimentality, sounding just the right notes of poignancy, ripe humor and musical prose, the tale meandering in the most tender ways possible. “Life is a comedy, with sad bits,” we read. So it is here. Curmudgeons might not enjoy this book; everyone else should have a grand old time.
Donegal Golf Club
I had the pleasure of visiting Ireland in late July, playing five golf courses in the northwest and having a few pints myself and many a great meal. Before heading over I tried to lay hands on a copy of Brian Friel’s most famous play Dancing at Lughnasa, as Friel largely lived in County Donegal, where I would visit. But no luck.
One day while there, between rounds, we spent a bit of time in Donegal town, and I ducked into the Four Masters Bookshop. Unsurprisingly, there was a good selection of Friel’s works. But still no Dancing at Lughnasa! I settled on Stories of Ireland, and a piece of luck that was.
Friel was more of a short story writer before he turned to the stage, and a not infrequent contributor to The New Yorker. In the September 5, 1964 issue, the magazine ran Friel’s “The Widowhood System,” one of the stories in the collection.
To not bury my lead any further, find some way to read this story. If you subscribe to The New Yorker you can no doubt corral it online easily enough. There are probably other, if trickier ways to find it online, too. And of course there’s the book itself—what a notion—where you get a dozen more tales plus the one worth the price of admission.
The effort will pay off. This is, hands down, one of the most pleasurable stories I’ve read in years, and maybe in my entire reading life. And I say this about a story that at first glance appears to be about pigeon racing. Well, it is, but in the end it’s something else altogether.
I’ll say no more. Let me know what you think.
I first put this up on my Substack page, Tom’s Bedellicatessan
