"It Will Be, At Times, As If It Were Less Hardship to be Sleeping in the Graveyard of Your Native Land, to be Asleep Underneath the Stones That Cover Your Island in the Sea"

The biggest thing I appreciate about the books on my list of 100 great 20th century works of fiction by women is that I come across books that never in a million years would have crossed into my awareness. I get plenty of suggestions from Goodreads and from BookTok, but even then, so many of those novels are current day fiction that are pretty widely popular. So without this list, I never would have come across a gem like Away by Jane Urquhart. 

This book was just wonderful. It had elements of mysticism based in cultural folklore that was written as true that made the characters complicated, and distant, and unique. And it actually reminded me a little bit of the novel Tracks by Louise Erdrich that I also recently read and wrote about. But this time, as opposed to Native American folklore, it was Irish. And the connection of the Irish to the sea/rivers/lakes and to the land.

Mary is a young girl living on a small island in northern Ireland in the 1840s when one day a sailor (and a multitude of cabbages and teapots) from a nearby shipwreck wash ashore. Mary falls madly in love with the man who dies in her arms and from that moment on, is connected with the soul of the sea in inexplicable ways. She ends up marrying a pleasant enough schoolteacher and has children when the potato famine comes to devastate everyone on their island. She and her family emigrate to Canada to start a new life amid an entirely new set of hardships and isolation. Her children Liam and Eileen become the next generation to learn to live off the land and improve their lives, with Eileen carrying a bit of her mother's mystical ways. Grounding the story is Eileen's granddaughter, Esther, living in present day Canada, in the town where her ancestors settled, and still experiencing a bit of the curses that were wrought over time.

This story was so wonderfully told; it felt impossible but real at the same time. The language was rich and interesting. I feel like there are probably many immigrant stories out there and plenty of Irish fiction, but this felt so unique. Maybe I'm just finding that I like a historical fiction to not always be "just the facts ma'am" and have a little bit of something unexplainable to it. That's probably why I like Beloved so much too. I can see that maybe not everyone would have the same reaction as I did to this novel, but give it a shot and maybe you'll find that generational folklore can hold mysteries that are wonderful to read.

Next up is a pause in the book lists to read Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. I've also been making my way through A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris (based on his journal entries from 2003 to 2020, I read a few every morning before I start working to give me a smile and a happier way to start the day). We'll see which one I finish first. 185 to go.