What do you think?
Rate this book
The Irish: A Character Study
Explores the formation of the Irish racial mind through important political and cultural events from 300 B.C. to the present
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
1 person is currently reading
66 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 1, 2025
Perhaps a harsh rating but by god this was one of the worst books I’ve ever read - overly verbose with no real punchline? Last chapter picked up a small bit but surely there has to be a better way to describe the Irish genius than this….
August 16, 2016
O'Faolain sets himself the task of explaining the 'Irish character'. His depiction is not up to date, obviously, since the book was published in 1949. He wants to describe the 'feel of the country', that hard-to-describe something that a visitor feels in another land. Today we might use the term 'culture'; he used the term 'character'. And maybe that actually is a better fit, if a less used term today. Because what it comes down to in a single phrase is a love of individual liberty that has persisted there through the ages--for good or ill.
O'Faolain begins 'way back, with the stories that have come down of the heroes of old.
Being of Irish descent myself, I realized that terms I have heard but which are not used here, like the love of one's 'immediates' rather than a sense of belonging to a clan or an organized system of any kind, has ancient roots in the Irish psyche.
He would like to stay with literature (there really isn't much art or architecture to consider anyway, for reasons he is forced to reference in the history). In this respect, his organization of the material and the datelines he provides are extremely helpful to one like myself who does not know much Irish history. It provides a necessary context for getting at why the 'character' is as it is.
The successive invasions and suppressions of the Celtic people, from Danes to Normans to Tudors to Cromwellians, the Plantations and and the horrific effects of the Penal Laws, account for much of what one sees when visiting Ireland, even today: the abbeys and castles in ruins, providing shelter to animals at best; the absence of monuments (outside of Dublin); the subject of much of Irish theater.
The Anglo-Irish, with whom O'Faolain identifies, were Protestants. Catholics of course were barred from education, so how could they develop much more than an oral tradition for many centuries. And when the Catholic Church was allowed to express itself or finally to have a seminary, the teachers were exiles from France, Ultramontanists , Jansenist moralists which infected the Irish Catholic Church for much of its history thereafter. The clergy for centuries felt they had to please England in order to exist publicly at all. And on and on. . .
I was so put off by O'Faolain's writing style, that staying with this book was an exertion of will. But in the end, I'm glad to have persisted. It helped contextualize impressions and helped me appreciate an attachment I hardly understood.
O'Faolain begins 'way back, with the stories that have come down of the heroes of old.
Being of Irish descent myself, I realized that terms I have heard but which are not used here, like the love of one's 'immediates' rather than a sense of belonging to a clan or an organized system of any kind, has ancient roots in the Irish psyche.
He would like to stay with literature (there really isn't much art or architecture to consider anyway, for reasons he is forced to reference in the history). In this respect, his organization of the material and the datelines he provides are extremely helpful to one like myself who does not know much Irish history. It provides a necessary context for getting at why the 'character' is as it is.
The successive invasions and suppressions of the Celtic people, from Danes to Normans to Tudors to Cromwellians, the Plantations and and the horrific effects of the Penal Laws, account for much of what one sees when visiting Ireland, even today: the abbeys and castles in ruins, providing shelter to animals at best; the absence of monuments (outside of Dublin); the subject of much of Irish theater.
The Anglo-Irish, with whom O'Faolain identifies, were Protestants. Catholics of course were barred from education, so how could they develop much more than an oral tradition for many centuries. And when the Catholic Church was allowed to express itself or finally to have a seminary, the teachers were exiles from France, Ultramontanists , Jansenist moralists which infected the Irish Catholic Church for much of its history thereafter. The clergy for centuries felt they had to please England in order to exist publicly at all. And on and on. . .
I was so put off by O'Faolain's writing style, that staying with this book was an exertion of will. But in the end, I'm glad to have persisted. It helped contextualize impressions and helped me appreciate an attachment I hardly understood.
August 30, 2025
The book is observations and reflections of the author made during and about his travels through Ireland, circa 1940. A fine concept, but not compellingly delivered. Although it is the same sort of book, it compares unfavorably to Michener's Iberia or Roads to Santiago by Cees Nooteboom, for example. To many sentences begin with "I." It seems to me to be a missed opportunity for a much better book.
The author (a novelist, as he frequently informs the reader) claims, oddly, that "the people for whom I write are the few and the discriminating, usually the poor." It seems to me that "the poor" are neither few, nor as a whole known to be particularly discriminating in taste. Regardless, to this reader, who is perhaps insufficiently discriminating, there is an air of intellectual pretentiousness about the book. Yet it references "Michael Angelo." And there is this: "I gazed at the dusty facia-board with something of the astonishment of old Turbeyville, in Hardy's novel The Return of the Native, when he was told his magnificent line of descent." The author is thinking, of course, of John Durbeyfield in Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
These criticisms aside, it is a worthwhile and at times interesting read.
The author (a novelist, as he frequently informs the reader) claims, oddly, that "the people for whom I write are the few and the discriminating, usually the poor." It seems to me that "the poor" are neither few, nor as a whole known to be particularly discriminating in taste. Regardless, to this reader, who is perhaps insufficiently discriminating, there is an air of intellectual pretentiousness about the book. Yet it references "Michael Angelo." And there is this: "I gazed at the dusty facia-board with something of the astonishment of old Turbeyville, in Hardy's novel The Return of the Native, when he was told his magnificent line of descent." The author is thinking, of course, of John Durbeyfield in Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
These criticisms aside, it is a worthwhile and at times interesting read.
March 22, 2023
This book was simultaneously fascinating and dull. The big ideas in this book—about Ireland as individualists, about how the many invasions of the island have shaped its culture and people—these really gave me a lot to think about. But the writing style was so dry, overly-complicated, and laborious to read that it sort of ruined some of my enjoyment of the ideas. I pushed through, and I’m glad I did, but I’m also quite glad to be done with this book.
August 21, 2024
This has not aged all that poorly. Captures the feel of Ireland - really quite strikingly in specific places as specific as Graiguenamanagh, showing how they are different from other parts of Ireland. Places Ireland, rightly, in an international context, and critiques accordingly. Deserves to be back in print.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews