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Grania: The Story of an Island
First published in 1892, Grania is the story of a fisherman's daughter from the Islands of Aran, off the coast of Galway. Grania O'Malley's life is circumscribed by family duty and her destiny as wife to her feckless fiance, Murdough Blake. When she realises her wants her only for her money and property, Grania rejects him in favour of heroism, although with tragic consequences. Through complex and skilled characterisation, Lawless evokes a vivid picture of island life, with its unforgiving landscape and grinding poverty. Using a unique poetic style, the author conveys both humour and a sense of Gaelic identity, inextricably linked with this remarkable community. Algernon Swinburne described Grania as "one of the most exquisite and perfect works in the language" and Mrs Humphry Ward praised its "breath of sensitive humanity." This scholarly edition, the first for twenty-five years, brings Emily Lawless's extraordinary novel to a new audience.
340 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1892
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215 people want to read
About the author
Emily Lawless
162 books4 followersThe Hon. Emily Lawless (17 June 1845 – 19 October 1913) was an Irish novelist and poet from County Kildare. According to Betty Webb Brewer, writing in 1983 for the journal of the Irish American Cultural Institute, Éire/Ireland: "An unflagging unionist, she recognised the rich literary potential in the native tradition and wrote novels with peasant heroes and heroines, Lawless depicted with equal sympathy the Anglo-Irish landholders."
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 15, 2024
When I was on my Britain & Ireland study program in college, I visited the Aran Islands in western Ireland. I remember taking a ferry from Galway and alighting on Inishmore, the largest island. We had a sunny day, though the lingering presence of clouds made it seem that rain was never far off. We bought locally made sweaters that still had a scent of sheep and walked on the nearly deserted roads between grassy fields and rock walls on one side and the pounding surf of the Atlantic on the other. The bustling world in Dublin receded from my city-weary bones and my friends and I were full of joy as we walked and soaked in the beauty of green grass against the sharp grey of the rocks and the fitful blue-grey of the sea. Now, almost exactly 16 years later, I picked up Grania with my faint and far-off memories of the Aran Islands and felt that my tourist stop had been the merest peep into the story of the Islands.
Emily Lawless's story of a strong, vibrant young woman who loves and feels her emotions fiercely is incredibly evocative. When Grania is set, the Aran Islands were so remote as to be almost its own country. Grania and the other characters speak only Irish. Galway is bewilderingly big and Dublin so remote as to be almost mythical. There are almost no trees on the islands so the huts that the islanders live in are cobbled together with stones and mortar and are as unprotected from the vagaries of the weather as a lone tree would be. The islanders are scarcely less protected from the elements and both the weather and the remoteness of the islands play a huge part in Grania's story.
We get a sense of the community on the islands, and I loved that, even though the story is mostly about Grania and her love for her older half sister, Honor, and the unreliable Murdough Blake, her childhood companion. The story has a tragic bent and it could hardly be otherwise with a story where the wind menaces and the fog creeps. The characters in this story have to deal with intense poverty but Emily Lawless gives them dignity even though my heart ached for them. I was particularly moved by a young man who is around Grania and Murdough's age who has a disability and lives with his deaf aunt and uncle. It's clear later that his aunt also has some kind of mental illness. There is so much I could comment on, but I'll keep it simple. It is a beautifully written and moving story. I want to hug Grania and Honor to my heart.
My edition is from Victorian Secrets Publisher and it has incredible footnotes and other supplementary material, including an introduction, a short essay on Lawless's life, and several appendices with some of Emily's other short writing, information about western Ireland, and early responses to the novel. Emily Lawless is particularly attentive to the geology and botany of Grania's island. She also used Irish words and refers often to local names both on the islands and on the mainland. I loved how that added to the strong sense of place.
Emily Lawless's story of a strong, vibrant young woman who loves and feels her emotions fiercely is incredibly evocative. When Grania is set, the Aran Islands were so remote as to be almost its own country. Grania and the other characters speak only Irish. Galway is bewilderingly big and Dublin so remote as to be almost mythical. There are almost no trees on the islands so the huts that the islanders live in are cobbled together with stones and mortar and are as unprotected from the vagaries of the weather as a lone tree would be. The islanders are scarcely less protected from the elements and both the weather and the remoteness of the islands play a huge part in Grania's story.
We get a sense of the community on the islands, and I loved that, even though the story is mostly about Grania and her love for her older half sister, Honor, and the unreliable Murdough Blake, her childhood companion. The story has a tragic bent and it could hardly be otherwise with a story where the wind menaces and the fog creeps. The characters in this story have to deal with intense poverty but Emily Lawless gives them dignity even though my heart ached for them. I was particularly moved by a young man who is around Grania and Murdough's age who has a disability and lives with his deaf aunt and uncle. It's clear later that his aunt also has some kind of mental illness. There is so much I could comment on, but I'll keep it simple. It is a beautifully written and moving story. I want to hug Grania and Honor to my heart.
My edition is from Victorian Secrets Publisher and it has incredible footnotes and other supplementary material, including an introduction, a short essay on Lawless's life, and several appendices with some of Emily's other short writing, information about western Ireland, and early responses to the novel. Emily Lawless is particularly attentive to the geology and botany of Grania's island. She also used Irish words and refers often to local names both on the islands and on the mainland. I loved how that added to the strong sense of place.
May 6, 2018
This tale of a girl who grows up on Inishmaan, the second largest of the three Arran Islands, evokes its heroine, her fellow islanders and the world that they live in quite beautifully.
It begins on the kind of day that anyone who lives near the coast in a similar climate will recognise:
“Clouds over the whole expanse of sky, nowhere showing any immediate disposition to fall as rain, yet nowhere allowing the sky to appear decidedly, nowhere even becoming themselves decided, keeping everywhere a broad indefinable wash of greyness, a grey so dim, uniform, and all-pervasive, that it defied observation, floating and melting away into a dimly blotted horizon, an horizon which, whether at any given point to call sea or sky, land or water, it was all but impossible to decide.
Here and there in that wide cloud-covered sweep of sky a sort of break or window occurred, and through this break or window long shafts of sunlight fell in a cold and chastened drizzle, now upon the bluish levels of crestless waves, now upon the bleak untrodden corner of some portion of the coast of Clare, tilted perpendicularly upwards; now perhaps again upon that low line of islands which breaks the outermost curve of the bay of Galway, and beyond which is nothing, nothing, that is to say, but the Atlantic, a region which, despite the ploughing of innumerable keels, is still given up by the dwellers of those islands to a mystic condition of things unknown to geographers, but too deeply rooted in their consciousness to yield to any mere reports from without.”
Grania O’Malley is out at sea with her father, on his small fishing boat. She is delighted to be there with him, to be part of what is going on. Her father’s companion, Shan Daly, who is careless of the welfare of his poor family does not impress her, but she is delighted to encounter young Murdough Blake, her greatest friend.
She was a happy child, curious and confident, and utterly at home in the world around her. Her family was better off than many of the islanders, they were respected, and though her mother had died when she was young her father and her elder sister, Honor, were bringing her up well and she loved them both dearly.
‘To her Inishmaan was much more than home, much more than a place she lived in, it was practically the world, and she wished for no bigger, hardly for any more prosperous, one. It was not merely her own little holding and cabin, but every inch of it that was in this peculiar sense hers. It belonged to her as the rock on which it has been born belongs to the young seamew. She had grown to it, and it had grown to her. She was a part of it, and it was a part of her, and the bare idea of leaving it—of leaving it, that is to say, permanently—would have filled her with nothing short of sheer consternation.’
Her father saw Grania grow into a handsome and capable young woman, and when he died she took on responsibility for the family home. It was a simple two-room cabin, but it was comfortable and familiar, and they knew that many of their neighbours had less space and more people to occupy it.
Grania took care of Honor, whose health was failing; and she worked hard, getting in her own crops of potatoes and oats, and fattening her calves and pigs for the market; and she thrived.
‘Did others find the same pleasure merely in breathing—merely in moving and working—as she did, she sometimes wondered. Even her love for Honor—the strongest feeling but one she possessed—the despair which now and then swept over her at the thought of losing her, could not check this. Nay, it is even possible that the enforced companionship for so many hours of the day and night of that pitiful sick-bed, the pain and weakness which she shared, so far as they could be shared, lent a sort of reactionary zest to the freedom of these wild rushes over the rocks and through the cold sea air. She did not guess it herself, but so no doubt it was.’
Everyone thought that Grania O’Malley and Murdough Blake would marry – and they thought so themselves – but he had not grown up as well as she had. He was handsome, but he was vain, he was lazy and he took Grania’s affection for granted. She continued to love him, but one day when she really needed him he let her down, and then she had to accept that he didn’t love her as she loved him.
Grania struck out independently, but the consequences would be tragic.
The pictures of Island life that Emily Lawless draws are wonderfully vivid. She conveys the unforgiving nature of the landscape and the ongoing struggle for poverty that trapped so many of the islanders; she understands the beauty of the island, and the strong sense of identity felt by the islanders. She sees the joys and the sorrows of their lives.
Her characterisations are rich and complex, and I can believe that this community existed and that these people lived and breathed. Shan Daly would always be feckless and his family suffered for it; Peggy O’Dowd would always be gossiping with the other women; Pete Durane and his father were gentlemen in the best sense of the word; and Teige O’Shaughnesse was a little simple but he was devoted to Grania ...
She was the star, and I had to both love and admire her. It was lovely to share her joy in her life and her world, but I was devastated when things went wrong.
Her story is a wonderful variation on the new woman novel of the period. Grania loved her family, her community, her world; but her life was circumscribed by them and she had the capacity to do so much more, to be so much more.
But this book is titled ‘Grania: the Story of an Island’ for a very good reason.
It is also a lovely, lyrical account of an island and a way of life that had been unchanged and untouched by outside influences for generations, but would not be for much longer; and it leaves me haunted by that world and by one young woman who lived there.
It begins on the kind of day that anyone who lives near the coast in a similar climate will recognise:
“Clouds over the whole expanse of sky, nowhere showing any immediate disposition to fall as rain, yet nowhere allowing the sky to appear decidedly, nowhere even becoming themselves decided, keeping everywhere a broad indefinable wash of greyness, a grey so dim, uniform, and all-pervasive, that it defied observation, floating and melting away into a dimly blotted horizon, an horizon which, whether at any given point to call sea or sky, land or water, it was all but impossible to decide.
Here and there in that wide cloud-covered sweep of sky a sort of break or window occurred, and through this break or window long shafts of sunlight fell in a cold and chastened drizzle, now upon the bluish levels of crestless waves, now upon the bleak untrodden corner of some portion of the coast of Clare, tilted perpendicularly upwards; now perhaps again upon that low line of islands which breaks the outermost curve of the bay of Galway, and beyond which is nothing, nothing, that is to say, but the Atlantic, a region which, despite the ploughing of innumerable keels, is still given up by the dwellers of those islands to a mystic condition of things unknown to geographers, but too deeply rooted in their consciousness to yield to any mere reports from without.”
Grania O’Malley is out at sea with her father, on his small fishing boat. She is delighted to be there with him, to be part of what is going on. Her father’s companion, Shan Daly, who is careless of the welfare of his poor family does not impress her, but she is delighted to encounter young Murdough Blake, her greatest friend.
She was a happy child, curious and confident, and utterly at home in the world around her. Her family was better off than many of the islanders, they were respected, and though her mother had died when she was young her father and her elder sister, Honor, were bringing her up well and she loved them both dearly.
‘To her Inishmaan was much more than home, much more than a place she lived in, it was practically the world, and she wished for no bigger, hardly for any more prosperous, one. It was not merely her own little holding and cabin, but every inch of it that was in this peculiar sense hers. It belonged to her as the rock on which it has been born belongs to the young seamew. She had grown to it, and it had grown to her. She was a part of it, and it was a part of her, and the bare idea of leaving it—of leaving it, that is to say, permanently—would have filled her with nothing short of sheer consternation.’
Her father saw Grania grow into a handsome and capable young woman, and when he died she took on responsibility for the family home. It was a simple two-room cabin, but it was comfortable and familiar, and they knew that many of their neighbours had less space and more people to occupy it.
Grania took care of Honor, whose health was failing; and she worked hard, getting in her own crops of potatoes and oats, and fattening her calves and pigs for the market; and she thrived.
‘Did others find the same pleasure merely in breathing—merely in moving and working—as she did, she sometimes wondered. Even her love for Honor—the strongest feeling but one she possessed—the despair which now and then swept over her at the thought of losing her, could not check this. Nay, it is even possible that the enforced companionship for so many hours of the day and night of that pitiful sick-bed, the pain and weakness which she shared, so far as they could be shared, lent a sort of reactionary zest to the freedom of these wild rushes over the rocks and through the cold sea air. She did not guess it herself, but so no doubt it was.’
Everyone thought that Grania O’Malley and Murdough Blake would marry – and they thought so themselves – but he had not grown up as well as she had. He was handsome, but he was vain, he was lazy and he took Grania’s affection for granted. She continued to love him, but one day when she really needed him he let her down, and then she had to accept that he didn’t love her as she loved him.
Grania struck out independently, but the consequences would be tragic.
The pictures of Island life that Emily Lawless draws are wonderfully vivid. She conveys the unforgiving nature of the landscape and the ongoing struggle for poverty that trapped so many of the islanders; she understands the beauty of the island, and the strong sense of identity felt by the islanders. She sees the joys and the sorrows of their lives.
Her characterisations are rich and complex, and I can believe that this community existed and that these people lived and breathed. Shan Daly would always be feckless and his family suffered for it; Peggy O’Dowd would always be gossiping with the other women; Pete Durane and his father were gentlemen in the best sense of the word; and Teige O’Shaughnesse was a little simple but he was devoted to Grania ...
She was the star, and I had to both love and admire her. It was lovely to share her joy in her life and her world, but I was devastated when things went wrong.
Her story is a wonderful variation on the new woman novel of the period. Grania loved her family, her community, her world; but her life was circumscribed by them and she had the capacity to do so much more, to be so much more.
But this book is titled ‘Grania: the Story of an Island’ for a very good reason.
It is also a lovely, lyrical account of an island and a way of life that had been unchanged and untouched by outside influences for generations, but would not be for much longer; and it leaves me haunted by that world and by one young woman who lived there.
July 18, 2020
I haven’t been blindsided like this by a book since A Different Sun by Elaine Neil Orr. With only 37 total ratings on GR this book, too, is criminally unknown. The stories are not similar. But both books came out of nowhere and knocked my socks off.
The setting of Grania is the Aran Islands. Go ahead and google it. Look it up on a map. Three tiny islands off the western coast of Ireland. Remote to be sure, and more so 100 years ago. Barely inhabitable, these rocky islands are quite like a land that time forgot. But generation upon generation, the people who live there are fully at home.
Life in this place, with its capricious weather and its harsh landscape, produces a peculiar breed of people. Hard and unyeilding, but also superstitious and excitable. The story follows only a handful of islanders, mainly Grania O’Malley and her sister. The author’s use of language, and her urgent storytelling style, drew me in utterly. I was there: the layer on layer of gray landscape; the flinty people and their meager existence; their primitive customs and language; the stone cottages, the heavy, shifting skies and the mighty, unforgiving Sea.
And Grania. Oh my goodness, Grania.
I’ll say nothing of the storyline. Trust me, it’s best to go in knowing only that this is
the story of a girl,
and, like the subtitle says,
of an island.
A weighty and powerful book. Easily the best one I’ve read so far this year.
P.S. I will say about Grania what I said about A Different Sun: More people should know about this book.
The setting of Grania is the Aran Islands. Go ahead and google it. Look it up on a map. Three tiny islands off the western coast of Ireland. Remote to be sure, and more so 100 years ago. Barely inhabitable, these rocky islands are quite like a land that time forgot. But generation upon generation, the people who live there are fully at home.
Life in this place, with its capricious weather and its harsh landscape, produces a peculiar breed of people. Hard and unyeilding, but also superstitious and excitable. The story follows only a handful of islanders, mainly Grania O’Malley and her sister. The author’s use of language, and her urgent storytelling style, drew me in utterly. I was there: the layer on layer of gray landscape; the flinty people and their meager existence; their primitive customs and language; the stone cottages, the heavy, shifting skies and the mighty, unforgiving Sea.
And Grania. Oh my goodness, Grania.
I’ll say nothing of the storyline. Trust me, it’s best to go in knowing only that this is
the story of a girl,
and, like the subtitle says,
of an island.
A weighty and powerful book. Easily the best one I’ve read so far this year.
P.S. I will say about Grania what I said about A Different Sun: More people should know about this book.
January 14, 2026
The beauty and tragedy of this powerful 1892 book will stay with me for a long time. I loved learning about the difficult life on this little island off the coast of Ireland. It is definitely a sad book but I admired the main character (Grania) and her strength and determination. Her fiancé drove me crazy. But I enjoyed the writing, getting to know the other islanders, reading the descriptions of the rocky island, and watching Grania and her sister endure their harsh life.
Quotes:
“ There are mothers who have to put up with less. Taking her by the hand the elder sister now attempted to lead her from the shore. It was a slow process! At every rock she came to little Grania stopped dead short, turning her head mutinously back to watch the hooker, as, with its brown patched sails set almost to the cracking point, it rounded the first green-speckled spit of land, on its way to Aranmore. Whenever she did so, Honor waited patiently beside her until her curiosity was satisfied and she was ready to proceed on her way. ”
"Habits grow as rapidly as ragweeds, especially where life is of the simplest, and where two people are practically agreed as to how that life is to be carried on; and that Murdough should trouble himself about anything that it was possible for her to do single-handed had long seemed to both of them a sheer absurdity. ”
“ Murdough’s astonishment and delight burst out then and there like a fountain; burst into a torrent of words—vague, iridescent, incoherent. Projects of every sort—races to be won, victories over rivals, money, much money, to be earned in the future—they all poured forth; flew and hurtled through the air; one golden scheme jostling against another in its hurry to express itself. Grania listened, but her eyes never lost that oddly intent, wistful expression. ”
“ Yet Grania had never ill-used Teige O’Shaughnessy. At least, had she? The question is not so easily answered as may at first sight seem. Given a woman with a larger share of plain human affection than she can conveniently dispose of—an impatient woman, hot tempered and vehement—let her have given away that affection where it is, to say the least, indifferently responded to; let her have someone else at hand to whom she is as the sun, moon, and stars shining in their glory—as wonderful and hardly less unapproachable—what sort of treatment is she likely to mete out to that person? ”
“ Pulse of my heart...there’s nothing for a woman like being a nun—nothing, nothing! Praying and praying from morning till night, and nought to do, only what you’re bid, and a safe fair walk before you to heaven, without a turn, or the fear of a turn, to right or left! Sure, ’tis all over now, as you say, but many’s the time, och many’s and many’s the time, Grania, and for years upon years, I cried myself to sleep because I couldn’t be a nun. ”
“ And yet, so strangely are we made, that a dozen years hence, if you examined one of the inhabitants of your ideal arcadia, you would probably find that all his, or her, dreams of the future, all his, or her, visions of the past, still clung, limpet-fashion, to these naked rocks, these melancholy dots of land set in the midst of an inhospitable sea, which Nature does not seem to have constructed with an eye to the convenience of so much as a goat! ”
---------
E-book: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58443...
Recommended by Kate Howe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glk_l...
Quotes:
“ There are mothers who have to put up with less. Taking her by the hand the elder sister now attempted to lead her from the shore. It was a slow process! At every rock she came to little Grania stopped dead short, turning her head mutinously back to watch the hooker, as, with its brown patched sails set almost to the cracking point, it rounded the first green-speckled spit of land, on its way to Aranmore. Whenever she did so, Honor waited patiently beside her until her curiosity was satisfied and she was ready to proceed on her way. ”
"Habits grow as rapidly as ragweeds, especially where life is of the simplest, and where two people are practically agreed as to how that life is to be carried on; and that Murdough should trouble himself about anything that it was possible for her to do single-handed had long seemed to both of them a sheer absurdity. ”
“ Murdough’s astonishment and delight burst out then and there like a fountain; burst into a torrent of words—vague, iridescent, incoherent. Projects of every sort—races to be won, victories over rivals, money, much money, to be earned in the future—they all poured forth; flew and hurtled through the air; one golden scheme jostling against another in its hurry to express itself. Grania listened, but her eyes never lost that oddly intent, wistful expression. ”
“ Yet Grania had never ill-used Teige O’Shaughnessy. At least, had she? The question is not so easily answered as may at first sight seem. Given a woman with a larger share of plain human affection than she can conveniently dispose of—an impatient woman, hot tempered and vehement—let her have given away that affection where it is, to say the least, indifferently responded to; let her have someone else at hand to whom she is as the sun, moon, and stars shining in their glory—as wonderful and hardly less unapproachable—what sort of treatment is she likely to mete out to that person? ”
“ Pulse of my heart...there’s nothing for a woman like being a nun—nothing, nothing! Praying and praying from morning till night, and nought to do, only what you’re bid, and a safe fair walk before you to heaven, without a turn, or the fear of a turn, to right or left! Sure, ’tis all over now, as you say, but many’s the time, och many’s and many’s the time, Grania, and for years upon years, I cried myself to sleep because I couldn’t be a nun. ”
“ And yet, so strangely are we made, that a dozen years hence, if you examined one of the inhabitants of your ideal arcadia, you would probably find that all his, or her, dreams of the future, all his, or her, visions of the past, still clung, limpet-fashion, to these naked rocks, these melancholy dots of land set in the midst of an inhospitable sea, which Nature does not seem to have constructed with an eye to the convenience of so much as a goat! ”
---------
E-book: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58443...
Recommended by Kate Howe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glk_l...
February 25, 2010
I would classify it as a piece amongst the literature of desolate and isolated places. Lawless wonderfully, and even at times humorously, captures the rocky no-mans-(but suprisingly manned)-land of the isles off the western coast of Ireland. The inhabitants are largely cut off from the main land, both physically and linguistically—they are some of the last speakers of native Irish—and eke out an existence on what very little they are able to pull out of their rocky plots and the cold choppy waters. Bleak, desperate, and at times perfectly beautiful. An unfortunate forgotten novel from the turn of the century. I recommend google-booking it.
June 7, 2013
Beautiful and tragic evocation of the Aran isles. Out of print but available for free in google play.
February 5, 2023
I have mixed feelings about this book, but my overall impression is of the beauty and power of the writing. Emily Lawless's descriptive style immersed me fully into the world of nineteenth-century Inishmaan, from the barren, rocky gray landscape to the people who scratched out a living on its surface. Often, her descriptions would take my breath away and I'd forget where I was; I truly felt I was there, on that island, seeing and feeling and experiencing it.
Grania and Honor, the two main characters, were half sisters but opposites - Grania, very earthy, strong, healthy, and independent (except where it came to her sad obsession with Murdough Blake), and Honor, consumptive, house-bound, and heavenly minded. Murdough, I just wanted him to go away or Grania to finally kick him out of her life. The other characters were distinct, but none of them were very admirable. So although this story hit one high note with its fully realized setting, it hit a low note with likeability of the characters. I cared about Grania and Honor, but I can't say I loved them. The whole tone of the story was pessimistic and melancholy, though that did add to the overall atmosphere Lawless wanted to convey. Judging by what I read of her beliefs, it fit with her worldview as well.
Grania's psychology was intriguing. I haven't encountered a character quite like her in literature before. She was complex; she caught glimmers of hope for a different, better life and glimpses of love and higher things to strive for, but she was also a conventional islander who knew her lot in life and didn't seriously consider breaking from it. She was so strong and independent except for her virtual enslavement to Murdough, an enslavement born of her passion for him. Lawless's depiction of her was a bit distant, but I really liked the way she described Grania's impressions.
The annotated edition is chock-full of supplemental information -- a short biography, extensive endnotes, and several appendices containing articles and essays from the era Grania was published. I was especially interested in Emily Lawless's essay on the bog, articles on the New Woman and feminism, and comments on the people of the Aran Islands. So much of the book is appendices and endnotes that the ending of the actual story came long before I expected it.
Spoiler:
Grania and Honor, the two main characters, were half sisters but opposites - Grania, very earthy, strong, healthy, and independent (except where it came to her sad obsession with Murdough Blake), and Honor, consumptive, house-bound, and heavenly minded. Murdough, I just wanted him to go away or Grania to finally kick him out of her life. The other characters were distinct, but none of them were very admirable. So although this story hit one high note with its fully realized setting, it hit a low note with likeability of the characters. I cared about Grania and Honor, but I can't say I loved them. The whole tone of the story was pessimistic and melancholy, though that did add to the overall atmosphere Lawless wanted to convey. Judging by what I read of her beliefs, it fit with her worldview as well.
Grania's psychology was intriguing. I haven't encountered a character quite like her in literature before. She was complex; she caught glimmers of hope for a different, better life and glimpses of love and higher things to strive for, but she was also a conventional islander who knew her lot in life and didn't seriously consider breaking from it. She was so strong and independent except for her virtual enslavement to Murdough, an enslavement born of her passion for him. Lawless's depiction of her was a bit distant, but I really liked the way she described Grania's impressions.
The annotated edition is chock-full of supplemental information -- a short biography, extensive endnotes, and several appendices containing articles and essays from the era Grania was published. I was especially interested in Emily Lawless's essay on the bog, articles on the New Woman and feminism, and comments on the people of the Aran Islands. So much of the book is appendices and endnotes that the ending of the actual story came long before I expected it.
Spoiler:
April 4, 2023
Too dull to finish, found the characters very elusive.
I found this book at a local thrift store and found the premise of a Irish island girl's story alluring. I read some reviews on GoodReads.com and thought I'd give it a go.
Sadly, I'd only gotten 4 chapters in before I decided to give it up. Totally un-enthralling. There are SO MANY BETTER BOOKS.
This just feels like one of those where yes, it's depicting an era, history, real people lives... but goodness, so dull! Stories are powerful, narrative is meant to capture you. Reading the few pages I did manage to get through just felt like looking at a moody sky, moody men... hoping things would liven up but knowing in my gut they wouldn't. So, rather than slogging through a whole book just to prove the point I'm going to move on to something else.
Fast forward to the final chapter, it looks like Grania drowned in the end. Not sure of all the ramifications, but she doesn't find love and she dies.
I wish I could find a review that tells me why something like this is valuable to persist through? All I could find were lines about it being depictive of a certain writing style, and "very Irish," showing a woman writer of that era, etc. - but none of that tells me about the story. Is it a "good" story - in that does it matter widely or only very narrowly? I'd argue that most books don't matter widely. So, please someone review this book (who has truly read it!) and tell me a good summary and why this book matters. Does author Emily truly tell you something about what it is to be human, what it is the exist in Grania's world.
I found this book at a local thrift store and found the premise of a Irish island girl's story alluring. I read some reviews on GoodReads.com and thought I'd give it a go.
Sadly, I'd only gotten 4 chapters in before I decided to give it up. Totally un-enthralling. There are SO MANY BETTER BOOKS.
This just feels like one of those where yes, it's depicting an era, history, real people lives... but goodness, so dull! Stories are powerful, narrative is meant to capture you. Reading the few pages I did manage to get through just felt like looking at a moody sky, moody men... hoping things would liven up but knowing in my gut they wouldn't. So, rather than slogging through a whole book just to prove the point I'm going to move on to something else.
Fast forward to the final chapter, it looks like Grania drowned in the end. Not sure of all the ramifications, but she doesn't find love and she dies.
I wish I could find a review that tells me why something like this is valuable to persist through? All I could find were lines about it being depictive of a certain writing style, and "very Irish," showing a woman writer of that era, etc. - but none of that tells me about the story. Is it a "good" story - in that does it matter widely or only very narrowly? I'd argue that most books don't matter widely. So, please someone review this book (who has truly read it!) and tell me a good summary and why this book matters. Does author Emily truly tell you something about what it is to be human, what it is the exist in Grania's world.
May 18, 2013
Inspired by a superb plenary address by always excellent James Liddy at the recent ACIS Conference in Chicago, I just had the pleasure of reading GRANIA: THE STORY OF AN ISLAND (1892). Liddy recommended it, along with THE REAL CHARLOTTE, as two Victorian novels that one simply must read to be aware that Irish novelists of the Victorian period could be global, not solely local. GRANIA is a beautiful novel of a young girl on Inishmaan, the second largest of the three Aran Islands. It begins in the 1860s when she is 11 years old and goes on to her young womanhood. It is, indeed, not simply Grania's story but "the story of an island." What joy to read and mentally hear the lyrical, lilting language of the Arans, similar to Synge's renderings. What joy to read imagistic descriptions and lose oneself in the sights, sounds, scents of the Aran land, sea, sky, rocks, shores, cabins, and boats. What joy to meet Grania and more islanders. A small, localized, particularized society of personages - yes; but in the local, so many universals are made gently apparent. Thank you, Jim!!!! I tried to take longer than two sittings to read GRANIA, just to make it last, but I couldn't. My heart broke at its conclusion, but I will never forget it, and I will surely re-read it in future with deep admiration. (I have THE REAL CHARLOTTE waiting for me. I have much work to do and other reading to do over the next few weeks, but I will go to it as soon as possible this summer when I have time to savor it.)
September 19, 2021
Essentially, men suck, don't put your faith in them, they'll let you down.
But seriously, "Grania" is quite a different story to anything I've read before. It's so... Irish in the best way possible. It's the first novel I've read that is set on the Aran islands, the first real Irish book I've read, like Irish-Irish, you know? There's Oscar Wilde poking fun at British society and then there's the ARAN ISLANDS and GALWAY BAY and THE WORKING CLASS. It's a different experience entirely. I loved reading the dialect and really got a sense of place, atmosphere, and the characters. It was interesting to read about some classic Irish superstitions and Celtic-era beliefs, such as fairies and changelings.
But seriously, "Grania" is quite a different story to anything I've read before. It's so... Irish in the best way possible. It's the first novel I've read that is set on the Aran islands, the first real Irish book I've read, like Irish-Irish, you know? There's Oscar Wilde poking fun at British society and then there's the ARAN ISLANDS and GALWAY BAY and THE WORKING CLASS. It's a different experience entirely. I loved reading the dialect and really got a sense of place, atmosphere, and the characters. It was interesting to read about some classic Irish superstitions and Celtic-era beliefs, such as fairies and changelings.
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