Review
A sprawling, well researched work of Irish historical romance, says Sean McMahon.
- Galway Bay
- Grand Central Publishing
Wherever Green is Worn
The first thing that strikes the reader about this sprawling novel is the evidence of intense, wide and well-assimilated research.
Taking us from the post-emancipation Ireland, with its patterns, over-population and threats of landlords’ droit de seigneur (and resulting ‘tallywomen’) through the bleak horrors of the Great Famine and the coffin ships, involvement in the American Civil War up to its completion in the year of the Chicago World Fair of 1893 it is a prodigious work of historical romance.
The history that is exhaustively detailed with Smith O’Brien, enlistment in the Irish Brigade, the Fenian campaign and Clan Na Gael is worked nicely into the lives of Honora and Máire Keeley, their menfolk, children and grandchildren. This profusion of characters makes it difficult at times to distinguish them and though the author’s knowledge of things Irish is extensive she is on firmer ground once across the herring pond. The romance is touching but the characters, especially the men, are at times hard to bring into focus. It is as though the book waits for a casting director for a film that is crying out to be made.
