Topography of a divided community

Wild December by Edna O'Brien (Weidenfeld & Nicholson: #16.99) Reviewed by Eithne Tynan Both as an 'exiled' Irishwoman and as a writer of unshakeable reputation, Edna O'Brien has liberty to write about those painfully Irish themes that almost everyone else is advised to steer clear of. While modern society wants to express itself in progressive urban realism, O'Brien ploughs on regardless with a vision that was declared out-dated so long ago. Cappuccinos and class A drugs don't come into it. When Edna O'Brien writes about Ireland, she's writing about rural despair, poverty, fear and violence.

Wild December is the third part of O'Brien's trilogy about contemporary Ireland, although you have to remind yourself repeatedly that it is a contemporary story and not one set in the early part of the century. The first book, House of Splendid Isolation, dealt with an IRA terrorist finding an increasingly sympathetic protector in his elderly hostage. Down by the River was a study of the X case, as a 14- year-old made pregnant by her widowed father becomes a pawn in a horribly unreasoned public debate about abortion. Such themes suggested that the author's view of her native land oscillates between beauty and badness.

Wild December is no different. It is set in Cloontha, a landscape of bogs, waving grasses, quiet waters and a magnificent, domineering mountain. The community of Cloontha is quiet and agrarian, though the author wastes no time in revealing the petty evils in the hearts of its inhabitants.

The only blameless character is Breege Brennan, who lives with her brother Joseph, a farmer and a Greek scholar, in their dead parents' house. Among their acquaintances are the Crock, a disfigured man who makes everyone else pay for his rejection; the saucy sisters Reena and Rita, who would ruin a person for money; and a myriad bitchy, bad- minded neighbours.

The apparent peace of the community is disturbed when Mick Bugler arrives from Australia. Bugler has returned to make a go of his uncle's farm and at first everyone wants a part of him. Though Buglers and Brennans were ancient foes, Michael's magnetism and good looks see to it that Breege falls in love with him and that Joseph becomes his ally.

Before long, however, a dispute over ownership of the mountain turns the two men into seething enemies. It begins a legal battle over title, but by the end of the book the cause of the feud has become indistinct; Joseph seems to be fighting as much for ownership of his sister as of the mountain.

O'Brien uses an intriguing juxtaposition in this dispute. She creates sympathy on the one hand for Joseph, who has always lived in Cloontha and whose instinct is to protect his way of life and his inheritance. Then she describes the disgust and loneliness experienced by Bugler, who finds a terrifying army of narrow-minded insular rural people ranged against him.

The ending of this book becomes more or less visible early on and, although it's engaging and readable, the story has not enough substance. What saves the novel is the fact that she's such an exceptionally good writer. Those elegant, tumbling words, and the conviction that the writer is making a really important point make up for that nagging feeling that the point is elusive.

Copyright 1999
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