Announcing the Eilís Dillon Book Club as part of Galway's Great Read

The name Eilís Dillon always had an intriguing ring for me. I recall the book cover we had at home with its curious title, Across the Bitter Sea, and the world-weary, sphinx-like gaze of its dark-haired heroine on the cover, gently confronting the reader, with a crumbling ruin of a Famine cottage in the background, an ocean and a seated gentleman.

I knew the book had that sweeping ‘saga’ look about it, but to my child's eyes, it seemed like something of a tome - too large and prohibitive to navigate. So, it was not until relatively recently that I finally got my hands on a copy of the novel that had graced our shelves in my childhood home in Carrick-on-Shannon, and knuckled down to reading it. Ambitious in its historical time span (1851-1916) and thematic reach (post-Famine up to the Easter Rising), yet written with a fluid and compelling touch, it's no wonder the novel achieved bestseller status when first published in 1973. After years of being unfairly neglected, Eilís Dillon is a name to conjure with once again. So many Irish households own at least one copy of an Eilís Dillon novel and yet we hear so little about her. Why so? Now, in her centenary year, it is heartening that there are celebrations taking place throughout October and November across Galway city and county and I’m delighted to announce that, as part of Galway’s Great Read, I will be facilitating the free online Eilís Dillon Book Club for Galway Public Libraries throughout the month of October.

“I was born, in Galway in 1920, into a world of ghosts”, Dillon wrote in her captivating memoir, Inside Ireland (1982) and we will be unpacking what exactly the writer meant over the course of the book club sessions with a special focus on her 1958 novel, The Bitter Glass - the first of the six historical novels written by her.

I decided to explore The Bitter Glass because of its richness as a socio-historical document of the civil war era in Ireland (relevant in this decade of centenaries) and as a novel that evokes the whitewashed homesteads and turf-fires of Connemara. Eilis Dillon’s West-of-Ireland sensibility and deep feeling for the landscape and its people pervades her books, offering glimpses of the songs, traditions and folklore of the Galway hinterland. While Across the Bitter Sea is probably her most famous novel, The Bitter Glass is a quiet work of art with its simple storyline and tense plot that raises subtle, yet haunting, questions around the 'Irish conscience' and that also explores themes of confinement, especially apt in our pandemic era. Gripping enough to read in a couple of sittings, I know it will be ideal for our book group discussions. I was also impressed to discover that the book was included in the Peter Boxall's 1001 Books you must read before you die compendium and that the great Eudora Welty was "completely won by it...the world of Connemara was flawlessly conveyed". Each week, on Thursday evenings from 7pm, (beginning on 8th October), we will focus on particular passages in the book, discuss the novel’s themes and also have a chat with a special guest who will enrich our understandings. With the truism of its very opening sentence, proclaiming that: “Galway was like a different world”, how apt that it is Galway's Great Read for 2020! To register for a place click on this link and be sure to sign up for each of the 4 sessions. I look forward to chatting with you about this fascinating and highly versatile writer. The first three chapters of The Bitter Glass are now available to read for free on the Eilís Dillon website here. The book will also be available via Kindle very soon. Happy reading and I hope you might join us for what promises to be a fun and engaging exploration of a truly gifted writer!

Book review: One Hundred Views of NW3 by Pat Jourdan

Renowned author and artist, Pat Jourdan's new novel, One Hundred Views of NW3 paints a vivid picture of London in the early 1960s through the eyes of Stella, recently graduated from art college and finding her feet in the world. With her clear aesthetic vision of the 36 scenes she is going to paint, Stella accrues much more material from life than she bargains for.

A kind of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, without the egotism of Joyce, Pat’s painterly eye observes small, mundane realities through a fresh lens; her detached, autofictional voice looks askance at her own 20s as if through an artist’s viewfinder. We witness her internal thought processes making sense of each scene as it unfolds around her – a curious combination of the bohemian and the pragmatic. With Jourdan’s characteristic flair for detail, the book is shot through with nuggets of psychological wisdom, insight (there many fascinating asides gleaned from Stella’s Liverpool art school training) and a searing honesty about her struggles. Her lost tampon vignette is like a whole new feminist antidote to John Donne: “Making contact with the magic little thread was like discovering radium or America; suddenly there was hope. The next worry was that by tugging at this little strand she might break it. It had never done, ever, before but there could always be a first time. In fact Stella had never thought of it. Writhing about, rolling over on this dirty carpet, she felt in sight of success. A lookout in the crow’s nest. Land ahoy.” (p. 38) We witness Stella’s hard-won lessons about the grasping, predatorial men who leave her to pick up the pieces as they drift in and out of her life. Though never didactic or preachy, this book will certainly consolidate your feminist sensibilities. (How were standards for men ever so low and so acceptable?!) The topography of London is laid out seamlessly as Clapham Common, Shepherd’s Park, Stockwell Green/Road, Hampstead Heath and many other locales are brought to life, while the excitement around the burgeoning poetry scene is palpable. One Hundred Views of NW3 is also a social document of a time when smog filled the London air, the Vietnam war was waging and Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual” topped the charts. Often struggling to pay her rent and to afford her next meal, the book highlights the plight and privations of young artists who have to find ways “to get by in other occupations”. I also read it as an indictment of a system and a time that was hostile to fledgling female artists starting out with no supports in place, and when work as a secretary, nurse or cleaner was an unavoidable destiny. Opting for the latter, Stella joins the ‘Daily Maids’ agency and notes that: “it was impossible to draw or sketch at work even when a house or flat was empty. But she always kept a small notebook in a pocket for any rapid lines of poetry that might occur, worried that if not written immediately, they would disappear forever. Otherwise entire days were wasted with nothing to show for her efforts. The houses re-dirtied themselves, there was no result much longer than an hour. So much of the work ordinary people did was like this; untraceable and repetitive.” (p. 62). Pat’s poetic gifts for language also pervade the book. On her first date with Dave, she is led “through galleries towards the showcases filled with clocks. The ticking of so many timepieces together made a clacking sound as if these hulking grandfather and grandmother clocks were chattering together over centuries while London traffic milled about outside in messy chaos.” (p. 7). Pat gallantly changes the names of her characters so we are left wondering about the identity of many of the seriously dodgy male poets in the book, especially ‘Stu’. The renowned female poet, Stevie Smith, is the only one permitted her true name. What is apparent, however, is that we are smack bang in the era of the Mersey Sound poets when even Ginsberg himself trekked to the UK to check out the new craze for poetry. Glancing at my second-hand copy of The Mersey Sound Penguin Modern Poets now, I’m struck by the gaping lack of a female poet in the slim volume - containing Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten - though, tellingly, a maniacal female ‘fan’ is depicted on the cover, reminding us that women were clearly perceived as the accessories and the cheerleaders, rarely ever the art-makers. (Interestingly, much of the poetry in The Mersey Sound doesn’t hold up so well at a remove from its time, looking rather trite and self-involved now).

One Hundred Views of NW3, on the other hand, is perfectly paced with just the right mix of wisdom-laced narrative summary and lively direct speech to keep us wanting more. What shines through, indomitably, is Stella’s genuine interest in people and curiosity about the world around her, no matter how tough her travails. She is never self-pitying through hardships and heartbreaks, but always a remarkable combination of pragmatic and inventive. And, most of all, she finds true elation and 'natural highs' in her art and in the creative process: “It was being an artist after all that was important.” This book’s combination of heart, great prose and insight into early ‘60s England makes it a compelling and rewarding read. One Hundred Views of NW3 is available now from Amazon in both print edition and Kindle editions. See: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pat-Jourdan/e/B001K7ZMWI%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share