Farewell Happy Fields

by Norah Hoult

Adam Palmer, determined to defy God in revenge for his detention in an asylum, embarks on a personal quest to destroy his soul, inflicting small sustained acts of cruelty and violence on those around him. His long-suffering wife, Kathleen, struggles to maintain her self-respect in the face of her husband’s gaslighting.

Among the most elusive of Norah Hoult’s works, Farewell Happy Fields was published in 1948 and, like many of her books, was promptly banned in Ireland. A dark comedy full of acerbic wit, it brings searing insight into a lost post-war generation of lower-middle-class women and men as they deal with shame, financial insecurity and emotional poverty. Back in print for the first time in decades, New Island is delighted to bring this startling modern Irish classic to a new generation of readers.

Genres: Fiction

350 pages, Paperback

Published July 17, 2019

About the author

Norah ‘Ella’ Hoult was born in Dublin in 1898. Her mother, Margaret O’Shaughnessy, was a spirited Irish-Catholic girl who eloped with a Protestant English architect named Powis Hoult when she was 21. After Norah and her brother were orphaned they were sent to live with their father’s relations in England, where they went to school. Norah Hoult was a journalist for the Sheffield Daily Telegraph and then moved to London to work on a magazine, becoming a full-time writer after her first book, Poor Women (1928), was published. She lived in Dublin from 1931-7 (and was briefly married to a quantity surveyor) and then in New York; in 1939 she settled in London, living in Bayswater, not far from Violet Hunt upon whom Claire Temple in There Were No Windows (1944) is modelled. Between 1928 and 1972 she published twenty-five books; in 1957 she returned to live in Ireland, and died there in 1984.

Reviews

[Britta Böhler · Rating 3 out of 5]

30 Books in 30 Days / Book #10 /started in July

[Annie 2manybeautifulBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

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This book read for me like the way I sometimes feel when I watch some football matches … not even just a game of two halfs but also one that is just never going to be as good as that amazing previous game. Perhaps this book was always going to suffer a little under the big thinking greatness that I found The Passion According to GH to be.

This was my second Norah Hoult - I really enjoyed the Persephone edition of There Were No Windows - and so I had high hopes. It started well with what felt like a great story being delivered, with well written tangible flawed characters, some nice turns of phase and some sharp observations of human nature.

In the end I didn’t make many notes or underline many sentences for this book. Having liked the first half and garnered a few sympathies for Adam, the Irish male protagonist who has just found himself discharged from an asylum in England for a profound bout of depression and seems determined to find himself a wife and take her back to Ireland.

- it was disappointing that the second half did not continue to engage my interest or my sympathies. He was just too nasty and unpleasant to everyone around him imo, and seemed to be obsessed with a vengeance against God himself for his personal suffering.

When the same biblical reference that I had looked up in my Lispector book occurred, (Revelations 3:16 ‘So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.’) I did pause for a moment and wondered if my books were trying to send me a message

However, this one then descended into what felt like an endless stream of biblical references, and religious rhetoric, and because my upbringing hadn’t been steeped in these doctrines, I became less invested and was rather desperate to be finished.

And then,
well…. the last few pages I turned with almost a trembling hand, as I was left with a sense of the very fine line that exists in humanity between what is evil and what is madness/insanity/illness; and perhaps it is I, the reader who has been nasty in my judgment.

To return to my (nonsensical perhaps) football analogy it was like the author played really promisingly in the first half and this reader was sure she was going to score but when the team returned after halftime they played so poorly and, just when I’m thinking of leaving the stadium, out of nowhere, the ball is in the net.

2.5 stars upgraded to 3 for that last minute goal⚽️!
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[Kim Becker (MIDDLE of the Book MARCH) · Rating 3 out of 5]

***3.75 stars.

[Felicity · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably the least favourite of Norah Hoult's novels that I have read to date. The curious reversal of the Faustian bargain -- promising one's soul to the devil in exchange for lifetime use of demonic power -- remains unconvincing. Marlowe's Faustus supposedly derived some fleeting pleasure, however worthless it may seem to the reader of the text, but Adam Palmer shows only grim determination in his commitment to making his wife's life, and his own into the bargain, hell on earth. Palmer's grievance is against the psychiatric profession, the demigods of the modern world, for committing him to a secure hospital, where he was detained for twenty years, but his subsequent campaign to sabotage the happiness of his new wife brings him no reward. Revenge is neither sweet nor self-satisfying, and it doesn't even succeed because he proves incapable of sustaining the war of attrition against God and all that is good. Defying God does not imply denying God, which would in any case have been difficult for one who was reared in what was then a rigidly Catholic Ireland. In the end, he's a sad and unfulfilled second-rate sinner, a deviant from his perverse dedication to damnation. Palmer's desire for revenge reminded me of a notorious double murder committed by a deeply disturbed young man determined to commit a spectacular offence against the community that had rejected him. I have no idea if Hoult had a model in mind for Palmer, but she does not accord him as much sympathy as she would normally extend to her flawed characters. Hoult's characteristic mordant wit issues from him; it rarely embraces him, poor man!