Someone once said that humanity can be divided into those who love Christmas and those who hate it. Well, all are catered for in David Marcus's new collection of stories. The whole gamut is run, from the traditional holly and ivy and snow falling faintly and faintly falling, to the Scrooge-like tormenting of the Tiny Tims of this world. View it with whoop of joy or groan of disillusionment, you're bound to find something to interest you within these covers.
First off, there's a goodly mix of the old and the new. Francis MacManus, Sean O'Faolain, Edmund Downey, Elizabeth Bowen, Lynn Doyle, Canon Sheehan, and Frank O'Connor represent the older generation, while Brian Leyden, Clare Boylan, Terry Prone, Colum McCann, Carlo Gebler, Brendan Griffin, Hugo Hamilton, Rita Kelly, Brian Lynch and Maeve Binchy wave the flag for the newer.
Amidships, as it were, reside gems by Bernard Mac Laverty, William Trevor, John B. Keane and Ben Kiely. And there's also a bow towards the native tongue, with a piece by Padraic Breathnach, translated from the Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock.
Having done justice to all, I can now indulge a few personal preferences. Take for example Ben Kiely's "Homes on the Mountain", a beautiful piece of clear-eyed nostalgia about a couple, newly returned from America, who build their dream house on the eponymous mountain, an undertaking viewed with dispassion by the narrator's mother: "Dreamers . . . An American apartment on the groundwalls of an old cabin. Living in the past . . . Magazines and geegaws and chairs too low to sit on . . ."
The young narrator, his father and his brother, after Christmas dinner there, go further up the slope to visit a couple of brothers who have lived on the mountain all their lives. The contrast between dream and actuality is finely conveyed, the splendour of the new being contrasted with the disenchantment of the old. Conveyed in this author's richly lyrical prose, the tale is the centrepiece in a necklace of real worth.
Trevor's "The Time of Year", with its echoes of Joyce's "The Dead", details how an old tragedy impinges on the thoughts of Valerie as each new Christmas dawns; Bowen's "The Tommy Crans" sparkles in its account of the doomed-before-it-started love affair of Herbert and Nancy; Canon Sheehan, in "Frank Forrest's Mince-Pie", writes of how a boy's good deed at Christmas saves him from future misfortune; while John B. recounts the bitter-sweet tale of "The Woman Who Hated Christmas".
In "The Miracle of Life", Clare Boylan shows how the unlooked-for gift of a pink dress fails to retard a young girl's growing up; Brian Leyden, in "Christmas Promise" and Brendan Griffin, in "Cold Turkey", list traditional country ways of celebrating the feast of the nativity; while Maeve Binchy, in "Be Prepared", shows how the influence of an old, dying aunt changes the direction of the lives of the members of a rather strait-laced family - her depiction of the young boy, Martin, is particularly telling.
Edmund Downey's biographical note mentions that he was a well-known writer of sea stories towards the end of the 19th century. His story, "A Fog Yarn", is the humorous account of how Captain Jack Larrissey overcomes the boastful ineptitude of his nature to sail from Cardiff to Cork in eight days and have his Christmas dinner in that city. Delightfully tongue-in-cheek, it inspired the desire in me to read more of this author's work. I wonder if any of it is still in print?
All in all, Irish Christmas Stories II is a fine compendium to sit down to during the festival season. Or at any time, for that matter. Buy it as a present, but be sure to read it first, before wrapping it.
Vincent Banville is a freelance journalist and writer
