THE YEAR OF THE FRENCH

by Thomas Flanagan ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1979

A thick, rich novel about poetry and revolution in Ireland in 1798, a year whose dense history here requires five narrators as spokesmen for various factions, plus the all-knowing author. The Irish Revolution is now brimming over; loyal Protestants in positions of power abuse the downtrodden Papists who are their tenants--a countless mob of beggars living in mud hovels and hillsides, eating rotten spuds when lucky. And rising over the village of Killala in County Mayo is the Arabian fantasy castle of ""the Big Lord,"" a monstrosity owned by the county's greatest absentee landlord (he turns out to be a half-insane do-gooder who lives in London). The Whiteboys, a growing gang of nightstrikers from the poorest of the poor, are burning down thatched huts belonging to farmers who might switch to cattle-raising and thus increase poverty by hiring fewer hands. Their spokesman? Owen MacCarthy, Killala's hard-drinking poet-schoolmaster, author of an eloquent broadside announcing the revolution, which is delivered to the area's British military commander. No one believes the Whiteboys are capable of mounting a genuine uprising, and Mayo itself is the country's least incendiary county. But the rebels work themselves up, Owen leaves his unlettered mistress Judith for war, and the revolt gets really underway with some opening successes, plus the hope of help from the French Girondists. But when the French arrive, they are too few, uncommitted--and the rebels have already lost three major battles to England's Cornwallis: Killala itself is surrounded. The novel details the infinite layering of motives for and against the bloody uprising, with no side right or wrong. The variety of insights allows minor characters to have leading roles for whole scenes, and the compression of the action into a few months time keeps any sense of the operatic from creeping in. And first-novelist Flanagan's rich rhetoric and powers of natural description allow Owen to become one of the few poets in novels ever to appear to be really a poet, especially when he is at last hung for his eloquence.

Pub Date: May 15, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION