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The Flood
Book by Broderick, John
367 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 3, 2026
{GR says this novel was first published in 2000 - it was first published in 1987}
From the jacket flyleaf of the 1987 hardback edition from Marion Boyars:
"John Broderick's latest novel is a superb recreation of small town life in the Southern Ireland of the early 'thirties. The book is obviously inspired by the author's love affair with the place of his birth and boyhood and in the process he has produced what may well be a comic masterpiece.
"As with most Broderick novels there is another layer of meaning in 'The Flood'. On the surface, life seems slow and steady, but the appearance is based on a complex etiquette in which deference and pointed insult - often hilariously funny - are kept carefully in balance. But when something happens in Bridgeford everybody wants to make it their business, either for profit or for the deep satisfaction of knowing what is going on.
"An Englishman arrives in the town one day, offering good money for a few acres of land along the banks of the Shannon (which everyone knows will be under water for at least three months of the year!). The sale of the land means a great deal to the poor of Bridgeford. And it also affords the rest of the population a rare opportunity of putting one over on the perfidious English. Of course , what happens when the Shannon floods and the precious acres are submerged is a different matter entirely.
"But what is really important is that in this novel we meet the unforgettable publican Benny O'Farrell and his sweet wife Helen; the night-and-day porter at the Duke of Clarence Hotel and the unfortunate Hamlet, his assistant; old MacDonnell, the Tammany politico and Macroom, his sidekick, who has put a new word into the language; the ineffable Hosannah, champion candle-lighter and cougher-in-church, the sane and solid Mrs. 'Pig' Prendergast, who knows more about people and Irish history, and fluttery Miss McLurry who has a guilty secret; as well the delicious Maud Daly and her pure bred mother. Hector Slyne, the English visitor, is no mean joker himself."
It has taken a disgracefully long for me to finally get around to reading John Broderick - an exceptionally fine Irish author who while not ignored does not enjoy the readership he deserves. This is his penultimate novel (though the last one published while he was alive) and he continues to explore the world he was born into and grew up in the 1930s. But it wasn't just Broderick who came of age in the 1930s - in some ways Ireland did as well. De Valera came to power in 1932 for the first time and stamped his vision on the country which was to last until the 1980s? some might say it disappeared later but admit that it started crumbling as far back as the 1970s or even late 60s.
[I am sorry but I am going to say more about Broderick but if you only want my review skip down a few paragraphs.]
Broderick sets most of his novels in the midlands - Roscommon and Westmeath - where he grew up. I was struck powerfully by his sense of these provincial places - not that his stories are in anyway provincial and I was happy to discover that my sense that there was a strong echo of French writers was confirmed when I read:
'...he admitted on numerous occasions that (Francois) Mauriac was the only influence of which he was aware. Undoubtedly a commitment to Catholicism was a shared preoccupation, but so too was their acute sense of place, which resulted in the graphic descriptions of the Landes district near Bordeaux for which the Nobel laureate is rightly renowned, and the uncannily accurate rendering of the topography of Westmeath and Roscommon by Broderick in some of his work...' (see my footnote *1 for source). Like in Mauriac 'Religion is a common trope in Broderick’s writing. He demonstrated a genuine understanding of the clerical caste and a deep dislike for the hypocrisy and small-mindedness of the moneyed provincial middle classes, to which Broderick belonged...'
His first novel, The Pilgrimage, was banned by the Irish censorship board (one year after Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls and four years before John McGahern’s The Dark so he was in good company) and 'Friend and critic Patrick Murray describes Broderick as “a fugitive from a superior civilisation, struggling to survive in a meretricious wasteland”, which is as apt a summation as one will find. Murray adds that his friend was “a disillusioned romantic” at sea in a world which he saw as being devoid of culture and sophistication. His own learning was impressive and some of his best work was done as a literary critic for this newspaper.'
MY REVIEW:
In the synopsis quoted above the publishers describe this novel as 'often hilariously funny' but it didn't read that way to me - I found within this tale the sharp dissecting talent of Flaubert or even Ibsen in 'Hedda Gabler'. I found not a comic masterpiece but a coruscating cri de coeur of desperation at cant and hypocrisy that brought to mind some of the harhest parts of O'Casey's 'The Silver Tassie' I do not say that Broderick did not intend for elements and his characters to be humorous - but it is the cackling humor of the grotesques like Mrs Dilber and her gang of thieves in Dickens.
I can't help thinking that this is wonderful satire and social commentary but it is as far from a 'comic masterpiece' as Gorky's 'From the Lower Depths'. I believe Broderick is too fine and intelligent an author to produce slapstick poor people. This is another of his novels dissecting the 'culture' he grew up in for all its trite vulgarity - it is the vulgarity that existed in the 1980s and probably now - though many of the sacred cows of Irish life have been toppled.
This is an exceptionally fine novel by an author I am buying and will read more of. Although completely different I rank him with other authors who I love without measure like James Purdy and Gwyn Griffin.
*1 from: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...
From the jacket flyleaf of the 1987 hardback edition from Marion Boyars:
"John Broderick's latest novel is a superb recreation of small town life in the Southern Ireland of the early 'thirties. The book is obviously inspired by the author's love affair with the place of his birth and boyhood and in the process he has produced what may well be a comic masterpiece.
"As with most Broderick novels there is another layer of meaning in 'The Flood'. On the surface, life seems slow and steady, but the appearance is based on a complex etiquette in which deference and pointed insult - often hilariously funny - are kept carefully in balance. But when something happens in Bridgeford everybody wants to make it their business, either for profit or for the deep satisfaction of knowing what is going on.
"An Englishman arrives in the town one day, offering good money for a few acres of land along the banks of the Shannon (which everyone knows will be under water for at least three months of the year!). The sale of the land means a great deal to the poor of Bridgeford. And it also affords the rest of the population a rare opportunity of putting one over on the perfidious English. Of course , what happens when the Shannon floods and the precious acres are submerged is a different matter entirely.
"But what is really important is that in this novel we meet the unforgettable publican Benny O'Farrell and his sweet wife Helen; the night-and-day porter at the Duke of Clarence Hotel and the unfortunate Hamlet, his assistant; old MacDonnell, the Tammany politico and Macroom, his sidekick, who has put a new word into the language; the ineffable Hosannah, champion candle-lighter and cougher-in-church, the sane and solid Mrs. 'Pig' Prendergast, who knows more about people and Irish history, and fluttery Miss McLurry who has a guilty secret; as well the delicious Maud Daly and her pure bred mother. Hector Slyne, the English visitor, is no mean joker himself."
It has taken a disgracefully long for me to finally get around to reading John Broderick - an exceptionally fine Irish author who while not ignored does not enjoy the readership he deserves. This is his penultimate novel (though the last one published while he was alive) and he continues to explore the world he was born into and grew up in the 1930s. But it wasn't just Broderick who came of age in the 1930s - in some ways Ireland did as well. De Valera came to power in 1932 for the first time and stamped his vision on the country which was to last until the 1980s? some might say it disappeared later but admit that it started crumbling as far back as the 1970s or even late 60s.
[I am sorry but I am going to say more about Broderick but if you only want my review skip down a few paragraphs.]
Broderick sets most of his novels in the midlands - Roscommon and Westmeath - where he grew up. I was struck powerfully by his sense of these provincial places - not that his stories are in anyway provincial and I was happy to discover that my sense that there was a strong echo of French writers was confirmed when I read:
'...he admitted on numerous occasions that (Francois) Mauriac was the only influence of which he was aware. Undoubtedly a commitment to Catholicism was a shared preoccupation, but so too was their acute sense of place, which resulted in the graphic descriptions of the Landes district near Bordeaux for which the Nobel laureate is rightly renowned, and the uncannily accurate rendering of the topography of Westmeath and Roscommon by Broderick in some of his work...' (see my footnote *1 for source). Like in Mauriac 'Religion is a common trope in Broderick’s writing. He demonstrated a genuine understanding of the clerical caste and a deep dislike for the hypocrisy and small-mindedness of the moneyed provincial middle classes, to which Broderick belonged...'
His first novel, The Pilgrimage, was banned by the Irish censorship board (one year after Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls and four years before John McGahern’s The Dark so he was in good company) and 'Friend and critic Patrick Murray describes Broderick as “a fugitive from a superior civilisation, struggling to survive in a meretricious wasteland”, which is as apt a summation as one will find. Murray adds that his friend was “a disillusioned romantic” at sea in a world which he saw as being devoid of culture and sophistication. His own learning was impressive and some of his best work was done as a literary critic for this newspaper.'
MY REVIEW:
In the synopsis quoted above the publishers describe this novel as 'often hilariously funny' but it didn't read that way to me - I found within this tale the sharp dissecting talent of Flaubert or even Ibsen in 'Hedda Gabler'. I found not a comic masterpiece but a coruscating cri de coeur of desperation at cant and hypocrisy that brought to mind some of the harhest parts of O'Casey's 'The Silver Tassie' I do not say that Broderick did not intend for elements and his characters to be humorous - but it is the cackling humor of the grotesques like Mrs Dilber and her gang of thieves in Dickens.
I can't help thinking that this is wonderful satire and social commentary but it is as far from a 'comic masterpiece' as Gorky's 'From the Lower Depths'. I believe Broderick is too fine and intelligent an author to produce slapstick poor people. This is another of his novels dissecting the 'culture' he grew up in for all its trite vulgarity - it is the vulgarity that existed in the 1980s and probably now - though many of the sacred cows of Irish life have been toppled.
This is an exceptionally fine novel by an author I am buying and will read more of. Although completely different I rank him with other authors who I love without measure like James Purdy and Gwyn Griffin.
*1 from: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...
February 11, 2020
Very entertaining and intelligent tale of the residents of an Irish town reacting to an Englishman who descends with offers of loot for the lands they own along the Shannon. But who’s the cute hour and who’s the patsy?
The author’s love of phonetically transcribed dialect can become a little wearisome.
“Tanks be to de Lord God Almighty an’ His Mudder, an His faster-fodder St Joseff, an’ all de saints of Ireland includin’ them dat’s not canonicated or ized - yet- like me own fadder and mudder dat’s always prayin’ in heaven above fur me an’ me friends..” can be amusing in the short term, but palls by page 300.
But when Broderick switches to third person narration, he can delight.
“And all the time the fire in the range burned lower and lower and the lane outside darkened and voices were heard faintly from the street and a cat jumped up on the window-sill and the wind blew a paper across the door and the little old house creaked and nothing apart from the torn old newspaper came to the door nor had anything else or anybody for a long year now.”
The author’s love of phonetically transcribed dialect can become a little wearisome.
“Tanks be to de Lord God Almighty an’ His Mudder, an His faster-fodder St Joseff, an’ all de saints of Ireland includin’ them dat’s not canonicated or ized - yet- like me own fadder and mudder dat’s always prayin’ in heaven above fur me an’ me friends..” can be amusing in the short term, but palls by page 300.
But when Broderick switches to third person narration, he can delight.
“And all the time the fire in the range burned lower and lower and the lane outside darkened and voices were heard faintly from the street and a cat jumped up on the window-sill and the wind blew a paper across the door and the little old house creaked and nothing apart from the torn old newspaper came to the door nor had anything else or anybody for a long year now.”
February 20, 2012
Brilliant
August 28, 2011
This was one of several books that I bought 20-odd years ago and which, because of my travels, have been sitting unread until now. Most have been read as long-lost treasures recently found, but not, I'm afraid John Broderick's The Flood.
A rambling tale of scullduggery in 1930s Ireland, this crams in the stereotypes which might play to a stage-Irish American readership, but to me seemed tired and overplayed.
It is OK, but not much more and there were moments when it came close to going unfinished into another box bound for the OXFAM shop.
A rambling tale of scullduggery in 1930s Ireland, this crams in the stereotypes which might play to a stage-Irish American readership, but to me seemed tired and overplayed.
It is OK, but not much more and there were moments when it came close to going unfinished into another box bound for the OXFAM shop.
January 30, 2013
Very long drawn out account of Irish "cute hoors" in action !!!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews