Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987 - 2007

Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987–2007 is the authoritative guide to some of the most inventive and challenging fiction to emerge from Ireland in the last 25 years. Meticulously researched, it presents detailed interpretations of novels by some of Ireland’s most eminent writers.

• This is the first text-focused critical survey of the Irish novel from 1987 to 2007, providing detailed readings of 11 seminal Irish novels
• A timely and much needed text in a largely uncharted critical field
• Provides detailed interpretations of individual novels by some of the country’s most critically celebrated writers, including Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Patrick McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O’Brien and Colm Tóibín
• Investigates the ways in which Irish novels have sought to deal with and reflect a changing Ireland
• The fruit of many years reading, teaching and research on the subject by a leading and highly respected academic in the field

Introduction: Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987–2007 1

1 In the FamilyWay: Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy (1987–1991) 23

2 House Arrest: John McGahern’s Amongst Women (1990) 51

3 Malignant Shame: Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy (1992) 75

4 Uncertain Terms, Unstable Sands: Colm T´ oib´ýn’s The Heather Blazing (1992) 105

5 Unbearable Proximities:William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey (1994) 127

6 History’s Hostages: Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation (1994) 151

7 Shadows in the Air: Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark (1996) 173

8 The Politics of Pity: Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way (2005) 197

9 Mourning Remains Unresolved: Anne Enright’s The Gathering (2007) 217

Bibliography 243

Index 259

“In addition to developing intellectually bold arguments, Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel is also enjoyable to read – an enviable achievement for any academic book. There is an ease to Harte’s style and a lightness of touch in the way he deals with an expansive range of socio-historical contexts that makes this book deserving of a broad readership beyond the walls of the university.” (Irish Studies Review, 18 March 2015).

“It offers an excellent primer in each chapter that I can easily imagine being of great use not only to students of literature, but also to those of us engaged in the work of teaching and studying such works.” (New Madrid, 1 October 2015).

“Students and scholars of Irish literature, history, and culture will find much to admire in this wide-ranging book; not only is it an insightful complement to Harte’s other monographs but also it is especially valuable to those teaching the Irish novel.” (College Literature, Summer 2018).

“All in all, an accomplished and insightful critical success. Harte brings wide reading to his analyses and great light to the novels he discusses in depth. Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel is must reading for Irish Studies scholars.” (New Hibernia Review, Spring 2016).

“Harte’s readings demonstrate the kind of fluency and comprehensiveness that one has come to expect of his criticism.” (South Carolina Review, Spring 2016).

“As a guide to some of the major issues and concerns of Ireland in the last thirty years and how writers have dealt with them, this is a substantial engagement with the field.” (Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies, 19 March 2015).

Liam Harte is Senior Lecturer in Irish and Modern Literature at the University of Manchester. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (2000; co-edited with Michael Parker), Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-First Century (2007; co-edited with Yvonne Whelan) and Modern Irish Autobiography: Self, Nation and Society (2007). His The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725–2001 (2009) was a Book of the Year in both the Times Literary Supplement and the Irish Independent, and appeared as a Palgrave Macmillan paperback in 2011.

This critical study is an authoritative guide to some of the most inventive and challenging fiction to emerge from Ireland in the last quarter century. Meticulously researched and lucidly written, it presents detailed interpretations of novels by some of the country’s most critically celebrated and internationally successful writers, including Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Patrick McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O’Brien and Colm Tóibín. Harte’s discussion of these novels addresses centrally important themes in contemporary Irish society, including the inescapability of the past, the troubling legacies of cultural and psychic traumas, the tensions created by the shedding of predetermined gender roles, the re-evaluation of traditional family values and the re-imagining of rural and urban space during a period of far-reaching social, cultural and political change.

Each novel is set in its social and compositional contexts and Harte focuses on the historical and cultural realities of which these works are both a product and a critique. Central to the book’s overall argument is the belief that fictional responses to contemporary Irish society have taken on a heightened sociological complexion in the work of the country’s leading novelists, each of whom seeks a language, a rhythm and a form to match the angular nature of a society in a state of constant self-examination.

“Nothing is more difficult for a critic than to excavate the meanings of the present cultural moment, but that is precisely what Liam Harte has done in his sensitive analysis of recent Irish novels. The result is a generous, open-hearted book in which analytic brilliance is combined with imaginative audacity.”
—Declan Kiberd, University of Notre Dame

“In his brilliantly incisive and illuminating study, Liam Harte offers a superb critical appraisal of the most stirring and provocative works of Irish fiction in recent times. Subtly alert to the pervasive themes of history, memory and belonging, and always sensitive to the language, rhythm and form of individual works, Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel is an indispensable guide to the map of modern Irish fiction.” —Stephen Regan, University of Durham