THIS COLD COUNTRY

Third-novelist Davis-Goff (The Dower House, 1998, etc.) offers a leisurely, elegiac portrait of a decaying Anglo-Irish family in County Waterford during the dark days of WWII.

Daisy Creed, the daughter of an English vicar, volunteered for national service and became one of the “Land Girls” who helped run Britain’s farms while the men were off at the front. On a farm in Wales, Daisy was introduced to Patrick Nugent, an Irish relation of her employer. Whirlwind romances were the norm in wartime, and Daisy and Patrick managed to fall in love and become engaged over the course of one weekend. When Patrick, an army officer, received word soon after that he was being ordered back to France, he and Daisy were quickly wed. Patrick then shipped off for the Continent, and Daisy journeyed to Ireland to visit her in-laws. Anglo-Irish Protestants, the Nugents were landowners whose fortunes had come pretty far down since Ireland’s independence. Only three Nugents were still living on the old family estate of Dunmaine, in County Waterford: Patrick’s senile grandmother Maud, his feeble-minded brother Mickey, and his somewhat disreputable sister Corisande. Daisy moved into this cold and unhappy household and slowly accustomed herself to a strange new world. From the perspective of neutral Ireland, the war in Europe seemed at once more distant and more ominous. Irish president De Valera’s refusal to open Irish ports to British warships brought fears that the republic would be invaded by the Germans. Axis bombings in Belfast prompted Dublin to send fire trucks across the border in violation of neutrality laws. An exiled English fascist was murdered. Daisy’s wartime fears grew even more intense when she learned that Patrick was in a POW camp. After a fire raged through Dunmaine, she resolved to stay and rebuild a new home for her and her husband.

A lovely tale, in an old-fashioned unhurried style, that succeeds in re-creating a strange, lost world.