Book Review: ‘The Rebels of Ireland’, by Edward Rutherfurd (’06)
Rutherfurd’s a heavyweight author, and this is book two of a three-part series that began with The Princes of Ireland which chronicles Ireland’s beginnings. This one respectfully kicks the left-behind Druid past, noting how the modern church’s beginnings gently interweaves with reverence to the pagan past. Through admittedly hard-to-follow-at-times progression of fictional characters in the backdrop of the everyday walled city of Dublin, Rutherfurd takes us slowly forward to events and times that we Americans can actually recall learning about, or at least hearing about. There’s nothing difficult to read; readers need to acclimate to the British way of phrasing style and should have it down pat, oh, by page 50 or so. Finally, Rutherfurd’s the real mccoy–the use of Irish expression here intended–and tackles my favorite genre’, historical fiction (that’s ‘literature’ to all you Library of Congress fans) pretty darn well.
My gripe, then? Eight hundred-plus pages is a lot to hold. A book that takes me a long time to read is either too complicated or too long. This one, packed with mundane conversations and situation that, by sheer numbers, bog down the time progression he’s shooting for, would be skinned down by editors or by the publisher itself (and Doubleday’s the biggest of the bunch in getting their way) if a less-than-Cambridge educated author tried to pull this off. However, he did, so like it or not, one gets the benefit of the author’s terrific talents for developing characters.
I never knew this, but Benjamin Franklin visited Dublin for the premier performance of ‘The Messiah’. Dublin was to the British Isles what New Haven, CN is to New York’s Broadway: the best shows played in Ireland first. I also didn’t know that Dublin’s a crown jewel of Eurpean architecture, rivaling that of St Petersburg.
I didn’t know that The American Revolution shaped the relative autonomy of The Irish Parliment from England’s, and the French Revolution’s massacre of Catholics there seemed to finally bolster the lot of Irish Catholics. I knew that the Catholics there had rather a poor deal, but had no idea that a very-powerful military leader named Oliver Cromwell rudely set the tone for all of this centuries ago by killing as many Catholics as he could.
The centuries-old Protestant/Catholic conflict didn’t start with Cromwell, and Cromwell’s time didn’t confront just ‘papist v. presbyterian’ issues. The main struggle was rulership from London, which has tended to be on the arrogant side over the ages.
Through a series of ongoing repressive laws–some not at all unlike modern Israel’s over occupied West Bank–the Irish as a whole have grown as dozens of generations as a people. Franklin’s wise words proved as theraputic as they were true.
Not at all unincluded here is America itself. By 1792 (and I am skipping huge sections of the book here), one of every two immigrants to the New World was Irish. In the seventeenth century, a full quarter of Dublin’s population–men, women, and children–bought passage from the old and into the new. This book is handy for illustrating just why people came here, and just what their conditions were before leaving the old country for good.
Again, this is a massive volume, but Rutherfurd reveals impressive wisdom of crops as Ireland society grew them. The potato was the one that delivered tremendous prosperity in the early 19th century; small plots could create self-sufficiency in peasant families, a concept unheard of anywhere in the World until that point. The horrible famine that brought a great surge to America (and I include opportunistics like the Kennedys who arrived during this time) was brought to Ireland–and thus to America, by the lowly potato.
This, the second book of The Dublin Saga, the final book currently in progress but out soon by this prolific writer, is one that readers probably could skim rather than plow through like I did. I bought it, read it, and donated it to the library, where they already had a copy. This means that your library will have it as well. Enjoy!
Doubleday Press