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The Valley of the Squinting Windows
Valley of the Squinting Windows is a classic Irish novel set in central Ireland c. 1914–16. Garradrimna is a tiny village where everyone is interested in everyone else's business and wishes them to fail. Twenty years before the events of the book, Nan Byrne has a relationship with a local man, Henry Shannon, hoping to marry him for his wealth. She falls pregnant but Henry refuses to marry her. After a miscarriage, the baby is buried at the bottom of the garden. Henry marries another woman and later dies, while Nan emigrates to England and marries Ned Brennan. They later move back to Garradrimna, where the villagers rejoice in telling Ned about his wife's past.
Ned is now an alcoholic, brought low by the humiliation of his wife's past promiscuity. He makes a little as a labourer, whereas Nan works every day at sewing to support their only child, John, studying in England to become a Catholic priest. However, she has become as cruel, petty and jealous as the rest of Garradrimna, and connives with the postmistress to sabotage Myles Shannon's chance at romance with an English girl, to get revenge on the Shannon family for rejecting her.
John returns to Garradrimna for a holiday, where he befriends Ulick Shannon (son of Henry) and falls for Rebecca Kerr, a schoolteacher. Ulick and Rebecca have a relationship, however, and when Rebecca becomes pregnant she is disgraced and expelled from the village. Ulick abandons her and John murders him, weighing the body with lead and hiding it in the lake. Rebecca leaves for Dublin and an uncertain future. An old gossip informs Nan and John that she was there the night Nan gave birth to Henry's child – in reality, the child was born alive and was given to Henry and his wife – who they raised as their son, Ulick Shannon.
Ned is now an alcoholic, brought low by the humiliation of his wife's past promiscuity. He makes a little as a labourer, whereas Nan works every day at sewing to support their only child, John, studying in England to become a Catholic priest. However, she has become as cruel, petty and jealous as the rest of Garradrimna, and connives with the postmistress to sabotage Myles Shannon's chance at romance with an English girl, to get revenge on the Shannon family for rejecting her.
John returns to Garradrimna for a holiday, where he befriends Ulick Shannon (son of Henry) and falls for Rebecca Kerr, a schoolteacher. Ulick and Rebecca have a relationship, however, and when Rebecca becomes pregnant she is disgraced and expelled from the village. Ulick abandons her and John murders him, weighing the body with lead and hiding it in the lake. Rebecca leaves for Dublin and an uncertain future. An old gossip informs Nan and John that she was there the night Nan gave birth to Henry's child – in reality, the child was born alive and was given to Henry and his wife – who they raised as their son, Ulick Shannon.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1918
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
July 14, 2014
The story is about Nan Brennan, who’s determined to have a priest for a son. His return from seminary one Summer introduces a rancid history in a small Irish town in the early years of the twentieth century. Years earlier the beautiful Nan Brennan, in an attempt to marry the only eligible man in Garradrimna (Henry Shannon), becomes pregnant, and after believing her newborn has died (or murdered) emigrated to England and marries another man. (Henry Shannon, in turn, marries another woman). Foolishly she returns to her native town and after her husband hears of her history endures a life of physical and mental abuse from her now alcoholic spouse. Fast forward 20 years and their son, John, is studying in England, while being financed by his mother taking in sewing when possible. Nan bears the grueling gossip and threats by local townspeople to inform her son of his mother’s past indiscretion. She carries on, believing that having a son as a priest will clear her name, giving her a level of respect which was lost years ago. Nan, however, displays as despicable traits as her neighbors, equally gossiping about others and displaying machiavellian revenge against Myles Shannon (brother of the now deceased Henry). She and the local post mistress intercept letters between Myles and his (possible) fiance in England, informing her of his family’s lack of respect, etc (woman scorned, etc etc). In turn returning letters are discarded so Myles believes his girlfriend is determined to forget about him. He finds out and, enraged, invites a partying nephew, Ulick, who lives in Dublin to Garradrmina, realizing that he and Nan’s son will probably hit it off and hopefully his influence on John will be a negative one. Of course they become fast friends!
Rebecca Kerr has arrived in the town to work as a substitute primary school teacher. She’s pretty, smart, single, young and personable - recipe for being the source of local malicious gossip. She already hates the place before settling down. She falls in love with Ulick though John Brennan is secretly in love with her. She becomes pregnant, her letters to Ulick are interspersed by the postmistress who informs the local parish priest (and everybody else). She’s publicly shamed, fired from her job and required to leave the town. Ulick never finds out about her pregnancy but Nan Brennan (ironically) gleefully informs her son about Rebecca’s situation. In a fit of fury he kills his friend. That afternoon he finds out from a neighbor that Ulick was in fact his half brother, having been taken from Nan, at birth, and given to Henry Shannon and his new wife (who was unable to bear a child) twenty years previously. He goes to the local pub, grief stricken, buying drinks for everybody, gets drunk and staggers home, in front of all the town - Falling through the front door of his mother’s house the final lines of the story read: ‘“Oh Jesus” she said. There were two of them now.’
Its taken me a few weeks to write my review because the book’s tragedy was so miserable. It would be a lie to say it wasn’t depressing but it was Dostoevsky-ian, in its misery. Its difficult to replay the feeling the book has left with me but its a brilliant read. Moreover, what was fantastic about it is that the ruckus it caused when published. Brinsley McNamara was the son of a school teacher in the Irish midlands. When the book went to print the local townspeople were delighted to have a writer in their midst and organized a public reading. Not too long into the story, people were able to clearly identify locals as characters in the story and were, obviously furious. So much so there was a public burning of the book and the writer’s father was ‘run out of the town’. Needless to say the Catholic Church was livid. A court case ensued, after his teaching salary was decimated (due to declining numbers in the school room - parents refusing to send their children to be educated by the father of a heretic). All in all it took over 60 years before the cloak of shame lifted from the town and even in the 1980s older people still spat when they heard Brinsley MacNamara’s name being mentioned in public. Today, The Valley of the Squinting Windows is a euphemism for small minded, gossipy, hypocritical villages (and mind sets).
This later historical episode has given me more food for thought than the storyline itself. Ireland in 1918 (when the book was published) was still drunk on the effects of the 1916 Rebellion. The country had asserted itself, making a final push to pull itself free from England. The nineteenth century was awash with fiction about small town Ireland, petty family feuds, a hyper sensitive and romantic (even violent) population - BUT mainly written by either the English or the Anglo Irish (Maturin, Edgeworth, Croker, Carelton, Lever, Lover, Lady Morgan et al) and all with the intended audience…….. the English. This would have been one of the first novels by an Irish writer for an Irish audience in the new century, yet it did nothing but humiliate a population and depicted them as narrow minded, murderous, drunk, evil, superstitious and destitute. There was nothing romantic about the characters. Actually, aside from the beautiful, tragic, modern, educated Rebecca Kerr, all the other characters were so odious you felt nothing but marked repulsion towards them. Paradoxically, they were nothing more than what the unsympathetic English writer had been depicting for hundreds of years. Clearly the book did nothing but embarrass the nation. The Irish had hoped for consolation and a brilliant introduction. Afterall, Irish drama was well established in Dublin, at the time being the envy of Europe. Why couldn’t the new age of Irish literature do the same.
So why did MacNamara write this one? He may have been ahead of his time but, most likely, he simply detested his home town. The stifling feeling generated by living in rural Ireland (he’d already had a taste of Bohemian Dublin), with the narrow minded, priest centric claustrophobia would have left him bitter and determined to find revenge.
He did touch on one subject that might have been un-noticed at the time - the role of women in the novel. He portrayed the local women not only as victims but as the aggressors as well. In reality female characters in the book are far more evil than their drunkard, simple minded husbands. It is women who drive the back bone of the tragedy, who are despicable in their machinations (principally against each other) and don’t necessarily undertake their horrible dealings as a means of survival. They are, independently, evil!
Its a shame that the book isn’t read more today. Its incredibly modern, salacious, tragic and brilliant. Chekov and even Shakespeare could have learnt a lot from this one. A bit of a hunt from amazon but worth it when you do find it.
Rebecca Kerr has arrived in the town to work as a substitute primary school teacher. She’s pretty, smart, single, young and personable - recipe for being the source of local malicious gossip. She already hates the place before settling down. She falls in love with Ulick though John Brennan is secretly in love with her. She becomes pregnant, her letters to Ulick are interspersed by the postmistress who informs the local parish priest (and everybody else). She’s publicly shamed, fired from her job and required to leave the town. Ulick never finds out about her pregnancy but Nan Brennan (ironically) gleefully informs her son about Rebecca’s situation. In a fit of fury he kills his friend. That afternoon he finds out from a neighbor that Ulick was in fact his half brother, having been taken from Nan, at birth, and given to Henry Shannon and his new wife (who was unable to bear a child) twenty years previously. He goes to the local pub, grief stricken, buying drinks for everybody, gets drunk and staggers home, in front of all the town - Falling through the front door of his mother’s house the final lines of the story read: ‘“Oh Jesus” she said. There were two of them now.’
Its taken me a few weeks to write my review because the book’s tragedy was so miserable. It would be a lie to say it wasn’t depressing but it was Dostoevsky-ian, in its misery. Its difficult to replay the feeling the book has left with me but its a brilliant read. Moreover, what was fantastic about it is that the ruckus it caused when published. Brinsley McNamara was the son of a school teacher in the Irish midlands. When the book went to print the local townspeople were delighted to have a writer in their midst and organized a public reading. Not too long into the story, people were able to clearly identify locals as characters in the story and were, obviously furious. So much so there was a public burning of the book and the writer’s father was ‘run out of the town’. Needless to say the Catholic Church was livid. A court case ensued, after his teaching salary was decimated (due to declining numbers in the school room - parents refusing to send their children to be educated by the father of a heretic). All in all it took over 60 years before the cloak of shame lifted from the town and even in the 1980s older people still spat when they heard Brinsley MacNamara’s name being mentioned in public. Today, The Valley of the Squinting Windows is a euphemism for small minded, gossipy, hypocritical villages (and mind sets).
This later historical episode has given me more food for thought than the storyline itself. Ireland in 1918 (when the book was published) was still drunk on the effects of the 1916 Rebellion. The country had asserted itself, making a final push to pull itself free from England. The nineteenth century was awash with fiction about small town Ireland, petty family feuds, a hyper sensitive and romantic (even violent) population - BUT mainly written by either the English or the Anglo Irish (Maturin, Edgeworth, Croker, Carelton, Lever, Lover, Lady Morgan et al) and all with the intended audience…….. the English. This would have been one of the first novels by an Irish writer for an Irish audience in the new century, yet it did nothing but humiliate a population and depicted them as narrow minded, murderous, drunk, evil, superstitious and destitute. There was nothing romantic about the characters. Actually, aside from the beautiful, tragic, modern, educated Rebecca Kerr, all the other characters were so odious you felt nothing but marked repulsion towards them. Paradoxically, they were nothing more than what the unsympathetic English writer had been depicting for hundreds of years. Clearly the book did nothing but embarrass the nation. The Irish had hoped for consolation and a brilliant introduction. Afterall, Irish drama was well established in Dublin, at the time being the envy of Europe. Why couldn’t the new age of Irish literature do the same.
So why did MacNamara write this one? He may have been ahead of his time but, most likely, he simply detested his home town. The stifling feeling generated by living in rural Ireland (he’d already had a taste of Bohemian Dublin), with the narrow minded, priest centric claustrophobia would have left him bitter and determined to find revenge.
He did touch on one subject that might have been un-noticed at the time - the role of women in the novel. He portrayed the local women not only as victims but as the aggressors as well. In reality female characters in the book are far more evil than their drunkard, simple minded husbands. It is women who drive the back bone of the tragedy, who are despicable in their machinations (principally against each other) and don’t necessarily undertake their horrible dealings as a means of survival. They are, independently, evil!
Its a shame that the book isn’t read more today. Its incredibly modern, salacious, tragic and brilliant. Chekov and even Shakespeare could have learnt a lot from this one. A bit of a hunt from amazon but worth it when you do find it.
November 17, 2013
A look at the country people of Ireland and their sinister ways. It's a Ireland that I'm familiar with and there are pockets that still act the same way.
November 25, 2022
MacNamara's once notorious novel is now more commonly referenced than read. Despite its rather stereotypical portrait of the oppressively narrow-minded bigots and begrudgers of early twentieth-century small-town Ireland, the novel nevertheless succeeds in conveying the perverse pleasure of the disappointed and disgraced in contriving to reduce their upstanding neighbours, male and female, to the same marginal status. Interestingly, although the parish priest may have ordered the boycott of Nan Byrne for her sexual transgression in seducing a gentleman and dishonouring her father, the pursuit of subsequent delinquents is conducted, years later, not by the clergy but by the excoriated woman, now married off to a local drunkard. Even her desired restoration to respectability via the anticipated admission of her son to the priesthood is aborted not by the church but by her own ill-conceived plot in this revenger's tragedy. This mercifully unannotated centenary reissue of MacNamara's most merciless work may serve to remind the reader that confected scandals, malicious gossip and prurient interest in other people's private affairs are no longer confined to quaint scenes from provincial life. The neighbourhood vice-detectors lurking behind their 'squinting windows' have migrated to the vast arena of social media, where the opportunities for damage are unlimited. Plus ça change…?
December 29, 2022
If you're looking for depressing, this will fill it up for you in spades.
It is about a whole village - Delvin, Co. Westmeath supposedly in real life - where every man, without exception, is a drunkard and every woman, again without exception (... sorry, there is one - Rebecca, the heroine), is a spiteful gossip without any redeeming feature whatsoever. Not one person in the whole community has a good word for anyone else and days are spent finding stories to put down the next. It's unrelenting, unremitting and utterly without relief from horrible people. I just can't imagine any town in Ireland that hasn't one decent resident?
The bitterness and bile spills from every page. It's a diatribe against the priest-ridden, Godless country people, full of religiosity but without even a spitoon of Christianity in any of them. It's written in di-diddly-eye English that we see in American Leprechaun films from America. Some examples include (all from the one page) .."this place could ever have a fair look about it", "she began to think of the liking he had towards her" and ".. but well did she know, well"... well, begob and begorrah, but maybees they did bees speakin' loike that back yonder?... Maybe this book became the bible for American Film Directors on how the Oirish do be speakin'...
The story is of Ms Brennan, whose son is studying to become a priest in England and comes home for the summer. Mrs Brennan's husband is a total waster and drunk (the go-to character for every man in the book); she married him on the rebound. Years before, she had the hots for a local, Henry Shannon, got pregnant by him but he left her high and dry, marrying another. She left the valley to have the baby away from prying eyes, but came back, marrying Ned, the alcho and had a son, John, headed now for the priesthood, her pride and joy. The Ma wants only for him to succeed, not because she really loves John, but to be able get back at those in the valley who talked against her by producing a priest.
Life being cyclical is the theme; how you can never really move away from the past and how it always comes back to haunt you.
Anyway, her son and Ulick become pals over the summer. Ulick is Henry's son - Henry now dead so he's staying with his uncle, Myles Shannon. The two lads hit it off - and going drinking all day becomes the norm for them (yawn!). Rebecca, the new schoolteacher, enters the fray and both lads fancy her - Ulick wins hands down while John pines for her. Lo and behold (I'm getting into this Oirish) but doesn't she go off and get herself in the family way .. and begorrah, and begob, doesn't Ulick leave her in the lurch this generation round.
There's lots of pondering and walking Roads of the Dead by John over the wrong of it all... with little drunk men popping up from bushes with barrels of beer, disappearing over the hill with a few hares to sell for drink, cackling oul' ones and oul' fellas in the crappy pubs of the village as they all put each other down and revel in everyone else's misery. Anyway, nothing good comes of it all second time round for the Brennans and the Shannons - and Rebecca is banished by the loathsome priest and his horrible parishioners to languish in oblivion.
Maybe it was literature in 1914 - but time hasn't been kind to it. It reminds of when I was in school and our teacher was comparing (favourably,,,!!) the "literature" of Peig and An tathair Peadar O'Laoghaire with that of Dickens and Hardy????!!!! For some, Brinsley MacNamara marked a new high water mark in Irish literature .. I'm certainly not there. If this (and I can't imagine it is) is a depiction of Irish society in any century, then Christianity was .. and is .. a lost cause in Ireland (I'm using the word Christian to depict those baptised in a Church, not those who practice being kind to others). Mind you, I still can see remnants of this abortion of what is regarded as Christianity in small pockets of Irish society today.
Nonetheless, the unrelenting pessimism, gombeenism, the socio-pathological hordes of nasty people in the book cannot be totally realistic. It's feudal at best - but is supposed to represent rural Ireland in 1914. All that was missing was a gallows in the street and a stocks for something less than getting pregnant out of wedlock. I suspect Brinsley MacNamara himself was unlikely to be a barrel of laughs for a night out.
This is the third book in a row I've hated start to finish. Surely it has to get better. If this is the best of Irish literature, Ireland is vastly overrated as the land of Saints and Scholars.
It is about a whole village - Delvin, Co. Westmeath supposedly in real life - where every man, without exception, is a drunkard and every woman, again without exception (... sorry, there is one - Rebecca, the heroine), is a spiteful gossip without any redeeming feature whatsoever. Not one person in the whole community has a good word for anyone else and days are spent finding stories to put down the next. It's unrelenting, unremitting and utterly without relief from horrible people. I just can't imagine any town in Ireland that hasn't one decent resident?
The bitterness and bile spills from every page. It's a diatribe against the priest-ridden, Godless country people, full of religiosity but without even a spitoon of Christianity in any of them. It's written in di-diddly-eye English that we see in American Leprechaun films from America. Some examples include (all from the one page) .."this place could ever have a fair look about it", "she began to think of the liking he had towards her" and ".. but well did she know, well"... well, begob and begorrah, but maybees they did bees speakin' loike that back yonder?... Maybe this book became the bible for American Film Directors on how the Oirish do be speakin'...
The story is of Ms Brennan, whose son is studying to become a priest in England and comes home for the summer. Mrs Brennan's husband is a total waster and drunk (the go-to character for every man in the book); she married him on the rebound. Years before, she had the hots for a local, Henry Shannon, got pregnant by him but he left her high and dry, marrying another. She left the valley to have the baby away from prying eyes, but came back, marrying Ned, the alcho and had a son, John, headed now for the priesthood, her pride and joy. The Ma wants only for him to succeed, not because she really loves John, but to be able get back at those in the valley who talked against her by producing a priest.
Life being cyclical is the theme; how you can never really move away from the past and how it always comes back to haunt you.
Anyway, her son and Ulick become pals over the summer. Ulick is Henry's son - Henry now dead so he's staying with his uncle, Myles Shannon. The two lads hit it off - and going drinking all day becomes the norm for them (yawn!). Rebecca, the new schoolteacher, enters the fray and both lads fancy her - Ulick wins hands down while John pines for her. Lo and behold (I'm getting into this Oirish) but doesn't she go off and get herself in the family way .. and begorrah, and begob, doesn't Ulick leave her in the lurch this generation round.
There's lots of pondering and walking Roads of the Dead by John over the wrong of it all... with little drunk men popping up from bushes with barrels of beer, disappearing over the hill with a few hares to sell for drink, cackling oul' ones and oul' fellas in the crappy pubs of the village as they all put each other down and revel in everyone else's misery. Anyway, nothing good comes of it all second time round for the Brennans and the Shannons - and Rebecca is banished by the loathsome priest and his horrible parishioners to languish in oblivion.
Maybe it was literature in 1914 - but time hasn't been kind to it. It reminds of when I was in school and our teacher was comparing (favourably,,,!!) the "literature" of Peig and An tathair Peadar O'Laoghaire with that of Dickens and Hardy????!!!! For some, Brinsley MacNamara marked a new high water mark in Irish literature .. I'm certainly not there. If this (and I can't imagine it is) is a depiction of Irish society in any century, then Christianity was .. and is .. a lost cause in Ireland (I'm using the word Christian to depict those baptised in a Church, not those who practice being kind to others). Mind you, I still can see remnants of this abortion of what is regarded as Christianity in small pockets of Irish society today.
Nonetheless, the unrelenting pessimism, gombeenism, the socio-pathological hordes of nasty people in the book cannot be totally realistic. It's feudal at best - but is supposed to represent rural Ireland in 1914. All that was missing was a gallows in the street and a stocks for something less than getting pregnant out of wedlock. I suspect Brinsley MacNamara himself was unlikely to be a barrel of laughs for a night out.
This is the third book in a row I've hated start to finish. Surely it has to get better. If this is the best of Irish literature, Ireland is vastly overrated as the land of Saints and Scholars.
September 29, 2022
“When his lips moved, in mechanical mimicry of the priest, he felt that the way of the hypocrite must be hard and lonely.”
Despite being over a hundred years old, predating even the War of Independence, this both comical and scathing indictment of small-town Ireland still feels quite relevant and poignant to more recent times. Indeed, it’s hard not to chuckle at the sheer irony that MacNamara’s father had to flee into exile after this book was published due to the scandal it caused in MacNamara’s hometown!
For me, the middle part did become a bit repetitious and dull and despite essentially being the two main characters, I didn’t find Ulick and John as interesting or nuanced as Nan and Myles, who I would’ve liked to have seen featured more prominently. However, the beginning and end were both strong and I appreciated the layered cyclicality of what MacNamara did with the respective storylines of the Shannons and Brennans.
The old Irishisms such as “arrah”, “muise” and “a mhic mo chroí” made me nostalgic for my grandparents who would frequently use such turns of phrase in everyday conversation. In fact, I think this book is not only a well-constructed story about revenge, the poisonous seed of bitterness and mean-spirited gossip as the rotten core of rural society, it’s also such an interesting window into pre-independence Irish society and an invaluable historical document, almost a witness statement of how much and how little has changed in the past century.
3.5 stars ⭐️
Despite being over a hundred years old, predating even the War of Independence, this both comical and scathing indictment of small-town Ireland still feels quite relevant and poignant to more recent times. Indeed, it’s hard not to chuckle at the sheer irony that MacNamara’s father had to flee into exile after this book was published due to the scandal it caused in MacNamara’s hometown!
For me, the middle part did become a bit repetitious and dull and despite essentially being the two main characters, I didn’t find Ulick and John as interesting or nuanced as Nan and Myles, who I would’ve liked to have seen featured more prominently. However, the beginning and end were both strong and I appreciated the layered cyclicality of what MacNamara did with the respective storylines of the Shannons and Brennans.
The old Irishisms such as “arrah”, “muise” and “a mhic mo chroí” made me nostalgic for my grandparents who would frequently use such turns of phrase in everyday conversation. In fact, I think this book is not only a well-constructed story about revenge, the poisonous seed of bitterness and mean-spirited gossip as the rotten core of rural society, it’s also such an interesting window into pre-independence Irish society and an invaluable historical document, almost a witness statement of how much and how little has changed in the past century.
3.5 stars ⭐️
June 4, 2022
Rural Ireland down to a t. And with that opened the door springing the inspiration for many more authors to follow suit. A must read. That uproar that surrounded its release says it all. It holds a mirror to the to the institution’s that continue to influence Irish life and the legacy of lies and brushing under the carpet. The windows continue to squint…
September 4, 2021
Nan Brennan is proud of her son, John, who is away in England training for the priesthood. It more than makes up for her loveless marriage to Ned and the sad shame of her youth, a child born out of wedlock to the rake, Henry Shannon: a child she buried in the back garden after a miscarriage when Henry spurned her. When Shannon's nephew, Ulick, is sent back to Garradrimna for a holiday from medical school, he meets John and forms a friendship.
But their friendship is destroyed when both men fall in love with Miss Rebecca Kerr, the young assistant teacher and it appears that history may be repeating itself as the two men fight for her affections in a village where everyone knows everyone's business and is unafraid to use their knowledge in spite to cause misery.
When Brinsley McNamara (John Weldon) wrote 'The Valley of the Squinting Windows', he fully captured the schadenfreude that can hang miasmically over small villages and although the story is fictional, it is no surprise that the inhabitants of his home village of Delvin had the book burned and ostracised his father, the village schoolmaster. Still poignantly tragic when read today, this novel has a biting savagery which holds a dark mirror up to the human soul.
But their friendship is destroyed when both men fall in love with Miss Rebecca Kerr, the young assistant teacher and it appears that history may be repeating itself as the two men fight for her affections in a village where everyone knows everyone's business and is unafraid to use their knowledge in spite to cause misery.
When Brinsley McNamara (John Weldon) wrote 'The Valley of the Squinting Windows', he fully captured the schadenfreude that can hang miasmically over small villages and although the story is fictional, it is no surprise that the inhabitants of his home village of Delvin had the book burned and ostracised his father, the village schoolmaster. Still poignantly tragic when read today, this novel has a biting savagery which holds a dark mirror up to the human soul.
March 3, 2025
Some novels overwhelm you with their epic scope, while others grip you tightly with their suffocating precision. The Valley of the Squinting Windows by Brinsley MacNamara belongs to the latter category. From the very first pages, I felt how this book slowly pulled me into its world—a world of suspicious glances, gossip as a weapon, and a community where every individual is a pawn in a game from which escape seems impossible. The village of Ballycullen, where the novel is set, could just as easily have been a backdrop from my own memories—that’s how sharply and recognizably the social dynamics were portrayed. This book is not just a story; it is a mirror reflecting the toxic power of collective morality with unrelenting clarity.
What struck me immediately in the opening chapters was the almost threatening atmosphere that MacNamara manages to evoke. Ballycullen is not presented as just any village, but as a living entity—an organism that constantly observes, whispers, and judges. The title of the book, The Valley of the Squinting Windows, is no coincidence; the windows behind which the villagers hide are not just eyes but also mouths, endlessly whispering about the missteps of others.
The introduction of John Brennan, the young teacher with intellectual ambitions, felt like a promising contrast to this oppressive world. At first, he seems like an outsider, someone trying to free himself from his mother’s expectations and the suffocating social conventions of the village. Yet I soon realized that his struggle is not just with the community but also with himself. The tension between his own ambitions and the invisible chains binding him to Ballycullen’s morality became increasingly tangible, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with him.
What MacNamara does so convincingly here is expose a social structure in which gossip is not just a pastime but a system of power and control. The village is not populated by individuals, but by people who continuously limit each other’s freedom. And while I found the underlying psychology fascinating, I also started to wonder whether some characters were depicted too one-dimensionally. The dynamics felt absolutely realistic, but some figures seemed to represent a collective mentality rather than fully developed individuals.
As the story progresses, the game of intrigue and manipulation becomes increasingly stifling. The character of Mrs. Brennan, John’s mother, fascinated me in particular. Her ambition for her son is both admirable and suffocating: she wants him to succeed, not just for himself but as an extension of her own social status. Her love for him feels genuine, yet it is also laced with calculation.
Here, MacNamara plays a subtle and ruthless game: the villagers are not portrayed as monsters, but as people trapped in a system that has shaped them. One generation reproduces the constraints for the next, and no one seems able to break the pattern. This realization crept over me more and more as I read.
And yet, I also began to grow frustrated with the one-sidedness of this worldview. The women in the story—except perhaps Mrs. Brennan—largely remain pawns in the chess game of honor and gossip. Their lives revolve around the fear of social exclusion, but they rarely get the chance to be more than playthings of the system. Here, I would have liked to see more nuance; some characters felt more like symbols than real people.
As the tension in the book reached its climax and John’s reputation was finally put at stake, I felt an overwhelming sense of fatalism. Everything MacNamara had carefully built—the invisible laws of Ballycullen, the merciless logic of social control—came together in a scenario that felt as tragic as it was inevitable.
It was here that I fully grasped the deeper irony of the story: the mother who wanted to protect her son from disgrace at all costs turns out to be the one who, unintentionally, pushes him toward ruin. This part of the novel reminded me of a classical tragedy: the characters are not only destroyed by external forces but also by their own blind spots.
What struck me most in this final section was how the language changed. The descriptions of the village became less concrete, more infused with a threat that took on almost mythical proportions. Ballycullen was no longer just a place; it was an entity that had found its prey.
"There was no escape from the valley, no respite from its watching eyes. Every whispered word had already taken root, had already doomed him."
These lines echoed in my mind. The entire novel had been leading up to this moment, and now that it had arrived, I felt both admiration for the careful buildup and a deep unease about its ruthlessness.
A Haunting Window into Human Nature
What makes The Valley of the Squinting Windows such an intense reading experience? For me, it was above all the way MacNamara creates a world that is both specific and universal. Ballycullen may be a small Irish village, but the mechanisms he exposes—the cruelty of collective morality, the destructive power of social control—are recognizable everywhere.
Yet, this was not a flawless book. The psychological development of the characters is sometimes one-sided, and the monotony of the stifling atmosphere made me long at times for a different perspective, a glimmer of hope, a break in the cycle. At the same time, it is precisely this suffocation that makes the book so effective: I felt as trapped as the characters themselves, and that in itself is an achievement.
And so, the story continued to haunt me long after I had turned the last page. This is not a book you simply read and forget. It lingers, like a whisper behind closed windows, like a gaze you feel—even when you think you are alone.
What struck me immediately in the opening chapters was the almost threatening atmosphere that MacNamara manages to evoke. Ballycullen is not presented as just any village, but as a living entity—an organism that constantly observes, whispers, and judges. The title of the book, The Valley of the Squinting Windows, is no coincidence; the windows behind which the villagers hide are not just eyes but also mouths, endlessly whispering about the missteps of others.
The introduction of John Brennan, the young teacher with intellectual ambitions, felt like a promising contrast to this oppressive world. At first, he seems like an outsider, someone trying to free himself from his mother’s expectations and the suffocating social conventions of the village. Yet I soon realized that his struggle is not just with the community but also with himself. The tension between his own ambitions and the invisible chains binding him to Ballycullen’s morality became increasingly tangible, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with him.
What MacNamara does so convincingly here is expose a social structure in which gossip is not just a pastime but a system of power and control. The village is not populated by individuals, but by people who continuously limit each other’s freedom. And while I found the underlying psychology fascinating, I also started to wonder whether some characters were depicted too one-dimensionally. The dynamics felt absolutely realistic, but some figures seemed to represent a collective mentality rather than fully developed individuals.
As the story progresses, the game of intrigue and manipulation becomes increasingly stifling. The character of Mrs. Brennan, John’s mother, fascinated me in particular. Her ambition for her son is both admirable and suffocating: she wants him to succeed, not just for himself but as an extension of her own social status. Her love for him feels genuine, yet it is also laced with calculation.
Here, MacNamara plays a subtle and ruthless game: the villagers are not portrayed as monsters, but as people trapped in a system that has shaped them. One generation reproduces the constraints for the next, and no one seems able to break the pattern. This realization crept over me more and more as I read.
And yet, I also began to grow frustrated with the one-sidedness of this worldview. The women in the story—except perhaps Mrs. Brennan—largely remain pawns in the chess game of honor and gossip. Their lives revolve around the fear of social exclusion, but they rarely get the chance to be more than playthings of the system. Here, I would have liked to see more nuance; some characters felt more like symbols than real people.
As the tension in the book reached its climax and John’s reputation was finally put at stake, I felt an overwhelming sense of fatalism. Everything MacNamara had carefully built—the invisible laws of Ballycullen, the merciless logic of social control—came together in a scenario that felt as tragic as it was inevitable.
It was here that I fully grasped the deeper irony of the story: the mother who wanted to protect her son from disgrace at all costs turns out to be the one who, unintentionally, pushes him toward ruin. This part of the novel reminded me of a classical tragedy: the characters are not only destroyed by external forces but also by their own blind spots.
What struck me most in this final section was how the language changed. The descriptions of the village became less concrete, more infused with a threat that took on almost mythical proportions. Ballycullen was no longer just a place; it was an entity that had found its prey.
"There was no escape from the valley, no respite from its watching eyes. Every whispered word had already taken root, had already doomed him."
These lines echoed in my mind. The entire novel had been leading up to this moment, and now that it had arrived, I felt both admiration for the careful buildup and a deep unease about its ruthlessness.
A Haunting Window into Human Nature
What makes The Valley of the Squinting Windows such an intense reading experience? For me, it was above all the way MacNamara creates a world that is both specific and universal. Ballycullen may be a small Irish village, but the mechanisms he exposes—the cruelty of collective morality, the destructive power of social control—are recognizable everywhere.
Yet, this was not a flawless book. The psychological development of the characters is sometimes one-sided, and the monotony of the stifling atmosphere made me long at times for a different perspective, a glimmer of hope, a break in the cycle. At the same time, it is precisely this suffocation that makes the book so effective: I felt as trapped as the characters themselves, and that in itself is an achievement.
And so, the story continued to haunt me long after I had turned the last page. This is not a book you simply read and forget. It lingers, like a whisper behind closed windows, like a gaze you feel—even when you think you are alone.
February 14, 2019
A tragedy so epic it belongs to the time of centuries ago, this is a tale of narrow-minded people in a narrow-streeted village, and the varied and awful ways their greed and pride brings them to a tragic end. Innocent victims are caught up in the tornado of hubris, to be discarded, battered and broken, later in the book. The plot is abominable, the characters are abominable, and the resolution is surely deserved by everyone it falls on...and yet, the novel frames everything in the context of Irish society at the turn of the century, so that you feel sympathetic towards these monsters, trapped in the cages of the church's making, and question what could they have done, being what they were.
August 4, 2019
Some passages that give a flavour:
1. In rural Ireland the bona-fide, or rather mala-fide, traveller constitutes a certain blasphemous aspect in the celebration of the Sabbath. There are different types of bona-fide, whose characterstics may be said to vary in direct proportion to their love and enthusiasm for porter. The worship of porter, when it has attained the proportions of a perfect passion, is best described as ‘the pursuit of porter in a can’. It is the cause of many drunken skirmishes with the law, and it is interesting to observe such mistaken heroes in the execution of their plans.
2. Just now another incident came to divert his mood. He encountered an ancient dryad flitting through the woods. This was Padna Padna, a famous character in Garradrimna. For all his name was that of the great apostle of his country, his affinities were pagan. Although he was eighty, he got drunk every day and never went to Mass. In his early days he had been the proprietor of a little place and the owner of a hackney car. When the posting business fell into decline, he had had to sell the little place and the horse and car, and the purchase money had been left for his support with a distant relative in the village. He was a striking figure as he moved abroad in the disguise of a cleric not altogether devoted to the service of God. He always dressed a solemn black, and his coat was longer than that of a civilian. His great hat gave him a downcast look as of one who has peered into the Mysteries. His face was wasted and small, and this, with his partially blinded eyes behind the sixpenny spectacles, gave him a certain asceticism of look. Yet is was the way he carried himself rather than his general aspect which created this impression of him. He was very small, and shrinking daily. His eyes were always dwelling upon his little boots in meditation. Were you unaware of his real character, you might foolishly imagine that he was thinking of high, immortal things, but he was in reality thinking of drink.
3. If Bartle shaved him, Padna Pana would take his barber over to Tommy William’s to give him a drink, which was the only payment he ever expected. After this, his first one, Padna Padna would say, ‘Not going to drink any more to day,’ to which Bartle Donohoe would reply sententiously: ‘D’ye tell me so? Well, well! Is that a fact?’ Then, directly, he would proceed to take a little walk before his breakfast, calling at every house of entertainment and referring distantly to the fact that Bartle Donohoe had a shake in his hand this morning. ‘A shame for him, and he an only son and all!’
And thus did he spend the days of his latter end, pacing the sidewalks of Garradrimna, entering blindly into pubs and discussing the habits of everyone save for himself. He was great in the field of reminiscence.
Very amusing, and as Irish as you can get. Powerful realism here too, with Mrs Brennan desperate to prevent her son, pure of heart, falling into the clutches of "the Creature" - to join her husband, a feckless drunk of many years standing. She fails, and following a dramatic final act at the end of which her son, many sheets to the wind, staggers into the house, the language is terse and it's impossible to tell - at least, I found it impossible to tell - if humour or horror is implied:
' "O Jesus!" she said. There were two of them now.'
1. In rural Ireland the bona-fide, or rather mala-fide, traveller constitutes a certain blasphemous aspect in the celebration of the Sabbath. There are different types of bona-fide, whose characterstics may be said to vary in direct proportion to their love and enthusiasm for porter. The worship of porter, when it has attained the proportions of a perfect passion, is best described as ‘the pursuit of porter in a can’. It is the cause of many drunken skirmishes with the law, and it is interesting to observe such mistaken heroes in the execution of their plans.
2. Just now another incident came to divert his mood. He encountered an ancient dryad flitting through the woods. This was Padna Padna, a famous character in Garradrimna. For all his name was that of the great apostle of his country, his affinities were pagan. Although he was eighty, he got drunk every day and never went to Mass. In his early days he had been the proprietor of a little place and the owner of a hackney car. When the posting business fell into decline, he had had to sell the little place and the horse and car, and the purchase money had been left for his support with a distant relative in the village. He was a striking figure as he moved abroad in the disguise of a cleric not altogether devoted to the service of God. He always dressed a solemn black, and his coat was longer than that of a civilian. His great hat gave him a downcast look as of one who has peered into the Mysteries. His face was wasted and small, and this, with his partially blinded eyes behind the sixpenny spectacles, gave him a certain asceticism of look. Yet is was the way he carried himself rather than his general aspect which created this impression of him. He was very small, and shrinking daily. His eyes were always dwelling upon his little boots in meditation. Were you unaware of his real character, you might foolishly imagine that he was thinking of high, immortal things, but he was in reality thinking of drink.
3. If Bartle shaved him, Padna Pana would take his barber over to Tommy William’s to give him a drink, which was the only payment he ever expected. After this, his first one, Padna Padna would say, ‘Not going to drink any more to day,’ to which Bartle Donohoe would reply sententiously: ‘D’ye tell me so? Well, well! Is that a fact?’ Then, directly, he would proceed to take a little walk before his breakfast, calling at every house of entertainment and referring distantly to the fact that Bartle Donohoe had a shake in his hand this morning. ‘A shame for him, and he an only son and all!’
And thus did he spend the days of his latter end, pacing the sidewalks of Garradrimna, entering blindly into pubs and discussing the habits of everyone save for himself. He was great in the field of reminiscence.
Very amusing, and as Irish as you can get. Powerful realism here too, with Mrs Brennan desperate to prevent her son, pure of heart, falling into the clutches of "the Creature" - to join her husband, a feckless drunk of many years standing. She fails, and following a dramatic final act at the end of which her son, many sheets to the wind, staggers into the house, the language is terse and it's impossible to tell - at least, I found it impossible to tell - if humour or horror is implied:
' "O Jesus!" she said. There were two of them now.'
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 9, 2024
My English teacher in school referenced this book as an example of narrow-mindedness, maybe because we were studying Playboy Of The Western World, another Irish work that garnered much controversy when it came to public attention.
It is essentially a diatribe against the malicious, insidious, and cruel trait of judgemental gossip and begrudgery, as well as the power of the Church.
We can all enjoy a gossip, a bit of news, but virtually every character in this goes that bit further, seeking out the malice, revelling in pulling asunder the good name of another, as if, in doing so, it means they are bound for a higher standing.
It centres around Mrs Brennan, herself a victim of being spoken of from the altar, of being shamed and made little, but now, she has become the same as them. Her only ambition is to see her son, John, become a priest, whether he wants to or not really, so that she can pride herself in it and hope to have the sins of her past forgotten.
She has meddled in other lives, and it comes back to bite her as someone she has harmed decides to take their revenge by attempting to derail her son's life.
It is a story with very few likeable characters, a lot of cruelty and sadness in the lives of this community of a small town. It's not an easy read for that reason and also because it did take me some time to get accustomed to the language style.
I absolutely agree with my teacher's opinion that it is indeed the absolute in depicting small-town, narrow-minded behaviour and attitudes.
It is essentially a diatribe against the malicious, insidious, and cruel trait of judgemental gossip and begrudgery, as well as the power of the Church.
We can all enjoy a gossip, a bit of news, but virtually every character in this goes that bit further, seeking out the malice, revelling in pulling asunder the good name of another, as if, in doing so, it means they are bound for a higher standing.
It centres around Mrs Brennan, herself a victim of being spoken of from the altar, of being shamed and made little, but now, she has become the same as them. Her only ambition is to see her son, John, become a priest, whether he wants to or not really, so that she can pride herself in it and hope to have the sins of her past forgotten.
She has meddled in other lives, and it comes back to bite her as someone she has harmed decides to take their revenge by attempting to derail her son's life.
It is a story with very few likeable characters, a lot of cruelty and sadness in the lives of this community of a small town. It's not an easy read for that reason and also because it did take me some time to get accustomed to the language style.
I absolutely agree with my teacher's opinion that it is indeed the absolute in depicting small-town, narrow-minded behaviour and attitudes.
October 23, 2023
Published in 1918 The Valley of the Squinting Windows details the worst of small Irish town life and the small minded people who might live in such a town and their double standards. The book was subjected to public burnings, a court case, and it was banned for a period knowing only those facts was encouragement enough to read it.
The story is one of women who bear the burden of shame for unplanned pregnancy and the pitiless attitudes of their neighbours. It's a way of village life that may have extended well into the century of the book's publication, an apparently representative portrayal of the outwardly pious but scheming gossips who slyly indulge in unconscionable conduct by wielding their unsanctioned power.
The story is one of women who bear the burden of shame for unplanned pregnancy and the pitiless attitudes of their neighbours. It's a way of village life that may have extended well into the century of the book's publication, an apparently representative portrayal of the outwardly pious but scheming gossips who slyly indulge in unconscionable conduct by wielding their unsanctioned power.
April 20, 2019
A story set in a small Irish town. A cast of self-centered, devious, miserable, neighbors. The main character is a young man studying to be s priest. The story revolves around his relationships: his mother, a buddy, and a love interest. A lot of drinking. A lot of gossip. A lot of secrets Oh my! A study of the “seven deadly sins!”
I read this book after an Irish priest mentioned it in a sermon. The 100 year old writing and Irish vernacular makes for a slow read. This is an extremely dark tragic tale with an unsatisfying hanging ending, yet a page turner.
I read this book after an Irish priest mentioned it in a sermon. The 100 year old writing and Irish vernacular makes for a slow read. This is an extremely dark tragic tale with an unsatisfying hanging ending, yet a page turner.
March 6, 2023
damning protrayal of rural Irish town life around 1915, in midlands
revolves around a mother and her hopes for son in training for priesthood.
Everyone is scheming or hoping for downfall of neighbours, revelling in gossip and scandal. Men's lives focused on drinking
overt religiosity masking bigotry and jealousy
hyperbolic I'm sure
revolves around a mother and her hopes for son in training for priesthood.
Everyone is scheming or hoping for downfall of neighbours, revelling in gossip and scandal. Men's lives focused on drinking
overt religiosity masking bigotry and jealousy
hyperbolic I'm sure
January 24, 2023
This is the most perfect novel I've read! It is the story of a place of fixed opinion, as are most places. A demonized down trodden does a heroic act, and for a moment is held in high regard... but quickly the old status quo reestablishes its previous rankings.
July 15, 2025
An excoriating novel about dusty provincial life that happens to be set in Ireland. The subsequent book burning only vindicates the authors view of the pathetic, narrow minded villagers. The book reads in a remarkably modern style for a novel published over 100 years.
April 8, 2018
Small town Ireland of the last century. Attitudes that were typical of the times.
January 10, 2024
Vile, self-righteous people in a village being vicious to each other. ( Yes, I worked on alliteration!) No, thanks; didn’t finish.
November 12, 2024
3*+, actually. It seems there were a lot of nosey folks in small Irish villages back in the day.
November 16, 2024
An interesting insight in to what Ireland might have been like a century ago. I just thought that some parts could have been left out as they didn’t add to the story.
December 29, 2022
If you're looking for depressing, this will fill it up for you in spades.
It is about a whole village - Delvin, Co. Westmeath supposedly in real life - where every man, without exception, is a drunkard and every woman, again without exception (... sorry, there is one - Rebecca, the heroine), is a spiteful gossip without any redeeming feature whatsoever. Not one person in the whole community has a good word for anyone else and days are spent finding stories to put down the next. It's unrelenting, unremitting and utterly without relief from horrible people. I just can't imagine any town in Ireland that hasn't one decent resident?
The bitterness and bile spills from every page. It's a diatribe against the priest-ridden, Godless country people, full of religiosity but without even a spitoon of Christianity in any of them. It's written in di-diddly-eye English that we see in American Leprechaun films from America. Some examples include (all from the one page) .."this place could ever have a fair look about it", "she began to think of the liking he had towards her" and ".. but well did she know, well"... well, begob and begorrah, but maybees they did bees speakin' loike that back yonder?... Maybe this book became the bible for American Film Directors on how the Oirish do be speakin'...
The story is of Ms Brennan, whose son is studying to become a priest in England and comes home for the summer. Mrs Brennan's husband is a total waster and drunk (the go-to character for every man in the book); she married him on the rebound. Years before, she had the hots for a local, Henry Shannon, got pregnant by him but he left her high and dry, marrying another. She left the valley to have the baby away from prying eyes, but came back, marrying Ned, the alcho and had a son, John, headed now for the priesthood, her pride and joy. The Ma wants only for him to succeed, not because she really loves John, but to be able get back at those in the valley who talked against her by producing a priest.
Life being cyclical is the theme; how you can never really move away from the past and how it always comes back to haunt you.
Anyway, her son and Ulick become pals over the summer. Ulick is Henry's son - Henry now dead so he's staying with his uncle, Myles Shannon. The two lads hit it off - and going drinking all day becomes the norm for them (yawn!). Rebecca, the new schoolteacher, enters the fray and both lads fancy her - Ulick wins hands down while John pines for her. Lo and behold (I'm getting into this Oirish) but doesn't she go off and get herself in the family way .. and begorrah, and begob, doesn't Ulick leave her in the lurch this generation round.
There's lots of pondering and walking Roads of the Dead by John over the wrong of it all... with little drunk men popping up from bushes with barrels of beer, disappearing over the hill with a few hares to sell for drink, cackling oul' ones and oul' fellas in the crappy pubs of the village as they all put each other down and revel in everyone else's misery. Anyway, nothing good comes of it all second time round for the Brennans and the Shannons - and Rebecca is banished by the loathsome priest and his horrible parishioners to languish in oblivion.
Maybe it was literature in 1914 - but time hasn't been kind to it. It reminds of when I was in school and our teacher was comparing (favourably,,,!!) the "literature" of Peig and An tathair Peadar O'Laoghaire with that of Dickens and Hardy????!!!! For some, Brinsley MacNamara marked a new high water mark in Irish literature .. I'm certainly not there. If this (and I can't imagine it is) is a depiction of Irish society in any century, then Christianity was .. and is .. a lost cause in Ireland (I'm using the word Christian to depict those baptised in a Church, not those who practice being kind to others). Mind you, I still can see remnants of this abortion of what is regarded as Christianity in small pockets of Irish society today.
Nonetheless, the unrelenting pessimism, gombeenism, the socio-pathological hordes of nasty people in the book cannot be totally realistic. It's feudal at best - but is supposed to represent rural Ireland in 1914. All that was missing was a gallows in the street and a stocks for something less than getting pregnant out of wedlock. I suspect Brinsley MacNamara himself was unlikely to be a barrel of laughs for a night out.
This is the third book in a row I've hated start to finish. Surely it has to get better. If this is the best of Irish literature, Ireland is vastly overrated as the land of Saints and Scholars.
It is about a whole village - Delvin, Co. Westmeath supposedly in real life - where every man, without exception, is a drunkard and every woman, again without exception (... sorry, there is one - Rebecca, the heroine), is a spiteful gossip without any redeeming feature whatsoever. Not one person in the whole community has a good word for anyone else and days are spent finding stories to put down the next. It's unrelenting, unremitting and utterly without relief from horrible people. I just can't imagine any town in Ireland that hasn't one decent resident?
The bitterness and bile spills from every page. It's a diatribe against the priest-ridden, Godless country people, full of religiosity but without even a spitoon of Christianity in any of them. It's written in di-diddly-eye English that we see in American Leprechaun films from America. Some examples include (all from the one page) .."this place could ever have a fair look about it", "she began to think of the liking he had towards her" and ".. but well did she know, well"... well, begob and begorrah, but maybees they did bees speakin' loike that back yonder?... Maybe this book became the bible for American Film Directors on how the Oirish do be speakin'...
The story is of Ms Brennan, whose son is studying to become a priest in England and comes home for the summer. Mrs Brennan's husband is a total waster and drunk (the go-to character for every man in the book); she married him on the rebound. Years before, she had the hots for a local, Henry Shannon, got pregnant by him but he left her high and dry, marrying another. She left the valley to have the baby away from prying eyes, but came back, marrying Ned, the alcho and had a son, John, headed now for the priesthood, her pride and joy. The Ma wants only for him to succeed, not because she really loves John, but to be able get back at those in the valley who talked against her by producing a priest.
Life being cyclical is the theme; how you can never really move away from the past and how it always comes back to haunt you.
Anyway, her son and Ulick become pals over the summer. Ulick is Henry's son - Henry now dead so he's staying with his uncle, Myles Shannon. The two lads hit it off - and going drinking all day becomes the norm for them (yawn!). Rebecca, the new schoolteacher, enters the fray and both lads fancy her - Ulick wins hands down while John pines for her. Lo and behold (I'm getting into this Oirish) but doesn't she go off and get herself in the family way .. and begorrah, and begob, doesn't Ulick leave her in the lurch this generation round.
There's lots of pondering and walking Roads of the Dead by John over the wrong of it all... with little drunk men popping up from bushes with barrels of beer, disappearing over the hill with a few hares to sell for drink, cackling oul' ones and oul' fellas in the crappy pubs of the village as they all put each other down and revel in everyone else's misery. Anyway, nothing good comes of it all second time round for the Brennans and the Shannons - and Rebecca is banished by the loathsome priest and his horrible parishioners to languish in oblivion.
Maybe it was literature in 1914 - but time hasn't been kind to it. It reminds of when I was in school and our teacher was comparing (favourably,,,!!) the "literature" of Peig and An tathair Peadar O'Laoghaire with that of Dickens and Hardy????!!!! For some, Brinsley MacNamara marked a new high water mark in Irish literature .. I'm certainly not there. If this (and I can't imagine it is) is a depiction of Irish society in any century, then Christianity was .. and is .. a lost cause in Ireland (I'm using the word Christian to depict those baptised in a Church, not those who practice being kind to others). Mind you, I still can see remnants of this abortion of what is regarded as Christianity in small pockets of Irish society today.
Nonetheless, the unrelenting pessimism, gombeenism, the socio-pathological hordes of nasty people in the book cannot be totally realistic. It's feudal at best - but is supposed to represent rural Ireland in 1914. All that was missing was a gallows in the street and a stocks for something less than getting pregnant out of wedlock. I suspect Brinsley MacNamara himself was unlikely to be a barrel of laughs for a night out.
This is the third book in a row I've hated start to finish. Surely it has to get better. If this is the best of Irish literature, Ireland is vastly overrated as the land of Saints and Scholars.
April 9, 2016
The Valley of the Squinting Windows is one of my favourite novels of all time. Rich in characterization, plot and prose, with a marvellous twist at the end, the story evokes many unpalatable but universal realities of human behaviour. According to its author, Brinsley MacNamara, it is "the study of the tragic results of envenomed gossip in a small community." This certainly rings true as you turn the pages.
Set around the turn of the twentieth century, the story centres around proud dressmaker Nan Brennan and her son John who is training for the Roman Catholic priesthood and is unaware of his mother's past 'disgrace' when she became pregnant by a local man and had to flee to England after the baby was taken away at birth. In England, Nan had married Ned Brennan, gave birth to John and seven years later they returned to Ireland, to live in a cottage in the valley of Tullahanogue. But Nan had been unprepared for the long memories of many of the local villagers, especially the spiteful women who knew of her "terrible secret." John Brennan, who comes home to the valley for the vacations, "had triumphed over the power of the valley to a certain extent. So long as his mind had been altogether absorbed in thought of the priesthood he had moved about furtively, a fugitive, as it were, before the hateful looks of the people of the valley and the constant stare of the squinting windows." When young new schoolteacher Rebecca Kerr arrives in the valley, John falls in love with her. But so does Ulick Shannon, the nephew of his mother's former lover, resulting in John eventually committing a very unpriestly act...
I found this novel to be a masterful study of the power of gossip in a small rural community and the ugly consequences of pride and revenge. It is also a portrayal of begrudgery - an insidious and corrosive form of envy and resentment of success or happiness in others. "Ye think ye're a great one, don't you, with your son at college, and he going to be a priest." Bitter of heart, begrudgers want to quench the light of others, their yearning for their failure and downfall gnawing greedily at their minds. The more malicious begrudgers set out to thwart or even destroy their happiness and reputation and thereby denying them public approval. Unmarried women who became pregnant were fair game for their rancour. Despite their Christian religion, they withheld support, and, in the case of Rebecca Kerr, gloated over her having to leave town 'in disgrace.' The men of the valley, as elsewhere in Ireland, had quite a serious relationship with drink, "the men of drink", and so portrayed the unfortunate stereotype of the Irish binge drinker.
Written in 1916 the novel caused a sensation after it was published in 1918, and resulted in public burnings of the book in the author's home town. In fact there is an excellent book about this novel - The Burning of Brinsley MacNamara which I highly recommend. Had there not been such a hostile reaction, the novel might have become absorbed within the history of its time. But now, one hundred years on, the power of the pen prevails. In all of its brilliance, The Valley of the Squinting Windows has resulted in a literary gem, a true classic.
Set around the turn of the twentieth century, the story centres around proud dressmaker Nan Brennan and her son John who is training for the Roman Catholic priesthood and is unaware of his mother's past 'disgrace' when she became pregnant by a local man and had to flee to England after the baby was taken away at birth. In England, Nan had married Ned Brennan, gave birth to John and seven years later they returned to Ireland, to live in a cottage in the valley of Tullahanogue. But Nan had been unprepared for the long memories of many of the local villagers, especially the spiteful women who knew of her "terrible secret." John Brennan, who comes home to the valley for the vacations, "had triumphed over the power of the valley to a certain extent. So long as his mind had been altogether absorbed in thought of the priesthood he had moved about furtively, a fugitive, as it were, before the hateful looks of the people of the valley and the constant stare of the squinting windows." When young new schoolteacher Rebecca Kerr arrives in the valley, John falls in love with her. But so does Ulick Shannon, the nephew of his mother's former lover, resulting in John eventually committing a very unpriestly act...
I found this novel to be a masterful study of the power of gossip in a small rural community and the ugly consequences of pride and revenge. It is also a portrayal of begrudgery - an insidious and corrosive form of envy and resentment of success or happiness in others. "Ye think ye're a great one, don't you, with your son at college, and he going to be a priest." Bitter of heart, begrudgers want to quench the light of others, their yearning for their failure and downfall gnawing greedily at their minds. The more malicious begrudgers set out to thwart or even destroy their happiness and reputation and thereby denying them public approval. Unmarried women who became pregnant were fair game for their rancour. Despite their Christian religion, they withheld support, and, in the case of Rebecca Kerr, gloated over her having to leave town 'in disgrace.' The men of the valley, as elsewhere in Ireland, had quite a serious relationship with drink, "the men of drink", and so portrayed the unfortunate stereotype of the Irish binge drinker.
Written in 1916 the novel caused a sensation after it was published in 1918, and resulted in public burnings of the book in the author's home town. In fact there is an excellent book about this novel - The Burning of Brinsley MacNamara which I highly recommend. Had there not been such a hostile reaction, the novel might have become absorbed within the history of its time. But now, one hundred years on, the power of the pen prevails. In all of its brilliance, The Valley of the Squinting Windows has resulted in a literary gem, a true classic.
August 5, 2011
Fascinating book! If it is indeed true, I am not surprised it was banned!
October 11, 2021
Wonderful read...a window on small town Ireland from time's past...
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