davekriebel

I was a little divided on this one, to be honest. Johnston's prose is as beautiful as ever. I love the sense of echoing and silence she sets up throughout the novel, generation echoing generation, the peculiar reverberations and the dying away which shows not only the decay of this particular family, but the decay of the Irish Ascendancy as a whole. The sense of healing and of distance is well-evoked, and it is easy to believe that these pains and hurts are ones which would take a life-time to heal. That said, there is perhaps a little too much silence in this, too much absence. That might not have been so noticeable if the unfolding of the central mysteries of the novel had been more engaging—why Imogen lost the ability to speak; why the hostility towards her mother; what had happened to her brother; why her great-uncle had gone to the Great War—had not been so obvious, but I predicted exactly what was happening within the first forty to fifty pages. The characters, too, remained cyphers; we were simply not given enough even of the main character, Imogen, to make me feel like I had any knowledge of her by the time I finished the book. Maybe too much was elided in general; it was obvious to me that the family in this was coded as Irish Protestant—specifically Church of Ireland—but I don't know how clear that would be to someone who isn't Irish, and how much that would lessen the impact of certain aspects of the book. Recommended, but with reservations.

2020-08-19 07:29