A Review of "O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare"

On the surface "O Come Ye Back to Ireland:  Our First Year in County Clare" is a book about a married couple moving from New York City to a small farm in the west of Ireland. But on a deeper level it's about the changes in relationships that result from a life changing decision.

At first, the differences in the new place swell in importance. The driving on the "wrong" side of the road. The accents and local expressions.

Then the wetness, the unrelenting wetness slowly drives them crazy.

Slowly, the initial shyness and subsequent openness of their new Irish friends begins to reward their patience.

Still, the missed conveniences and special worlds in New York nag Christine and Niall. The lost excitement of densely populated New York gnaws at them. The variety and ease of food, in the metropolitan center they used to live in, is sorely missed.

Some images of Ireland, formed before they crossed the Atlantic, might not materialize.

Will Niall bond with the land? Could it start with the backbreaking work of cutting, drying, and collecting turf to burn through the long dark winter? Even with expert help, the task appears hopeless to achieve. 

Will Christine always be grinding out the existence that rural life demands? Can she catch up and get ahead enough to produce art strongly connected to the land and its people?

All these quandaries are told in the organic weave of unflinchingly truthful stories.  

Stories are the root core of memoir, but the stories in this book relate the surprises, the connections, the struggles, the disappointments, and the breakthroughs that are as stirring as any great fiction.

If you have an interest in the real Ireland, not just the tourist attractions, you will enjoy this book.

If you may have little or no interest in Ireland, think on this - from the lessons of people of different cultures relating, experiencing the lows and highs of emotion, and finding grace in the face of vast change, you will enjoy this book.
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"O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare" Paperback,
 233 pages, a memoir by Niall Williams, Christine Breen

 

Look for it at your local used or new book store! My store for new books in the USA is Market Block Books.

 

Other reviews? Goodreads

 

 

 

9/11 In Ireland: The Tenth Anniversary

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Crowds gathered to pay their respects outside City Hall in Belfast, and at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin.

The City of Belfast in Northern Ireland joined with those New York and around the world by observing 1:46PM, the time it was in Ireland when ten years ago the first passenger jet slammed into north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The Belfast Telegraph reported Isobel Gallagher from New Jersey and her sister Geraldine McGeown from Belfast, at the city hall memorial, recalled the death of their cousin Jean Andrucki.

Isobel related, "She was in the Port Authority building,"Her mother phoned her to tell her to get the heck out. She said she just had to get two older ladies on to the stairwell and then she was going to leave. But it turned out the stairwell was full of smoke. That was the last time her mother talked to her."

Niall O Donnghaile, the Mayor of Belfast said: "We are not strangers to the circumstances where a loved one leaves the house for work and never returns home again. There are so many people in this city and across Ireland who live with that experience every day of their lives. So we share a common bond of hurt, of bewilderment, of loss between the people of New York, and across America, and Belfast."

A recorded message from the Fire Department of New York's Edward Kilduff was broadcast to those assembled. He thanked the people of Belfast and the emergency services in Northern Ireland for their support.

Mary McAleese, the President of the Republic of Ireland, spoke at the ceremony at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin, and said, "The television pictures are etched on our minds and the tide of grief has never ebbed.

Ireland stood then, as we stand today, shoulder to shoulder with our friends and family in the United States.

We share our remembering as an act of solidarity with all those who were bereaved or injured and with all those who gave their lives or sacrificed their health in order to help, for if terrorism manifested the meticulously planned worst of human nature that day, there were surely so many others who with no more than a heartbeat to decide, displayed a selfless generosity and spontaneous courage of astounding depth."

She ended with a plea. “May love triumph always.”