Ireland: A Novel

March 1, 2009 • written by Frannie Sprouls

History is a story of our past.  Story is even in the word history itself.  We merely repeat the stories on to our children and our children’s children.  The country that we know as Ireland has a rich and violent history, which is portrayed in Frank Delaney’s Ireland: A Novel.  

The reader follows Ronan O’Mara on his quest for the last storyteller in Ireland.  After hearing him speak when he was nine, Ronan is determined to find this man.  Through his journey of finding the storyteller, Ronan must fight his own struggles:  family secrets that appear after his father’s death.

In order to find the storyteller, Ronan follows various clues.  Those clues are stories.  Cleverly woven in to Ronan’s life, the tales of Irish history come alive.  We read about the Architect at Newgrange, St. Patrick, Finn MacCool, Brian Boru, and the story of the only man who could handle Handel.  These stories give Ronan hints into the past and into the life of the mysterious storyteller. 

Delaney crafts this story in a way that I rarely see.  He writes the history of Ireland as well as the basic plot of the novel.  As in any book, there are certain points when I wanted to read more about Ronan than I wanted to read the story and vice versa.  Some parts in the novel were a bit dry and I almost didn’t complete it.

Some of the best novels are those that can weave a story within a story.  At first, it seems as if there’s no connection.  By the end of the book, though, the story begins to blend with the other story.  That’s when we begin to see that every story is the same.   

Filed Under Arts and Academics
Tagged: book review, Ireland  

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