Islanders: An Epic Story of Life in a Small Island Community Off Donegal

by Peadar O'Donnell

A powerful novel of life in a small island community.

Genres: Ireland

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

Reviews

[Differengenera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peadar O'Donnell was an Irish socialist and at the height of his political influence in the 30s worked on the left of the IRA, trying to mobilise a left-republican popular front to skew the movement away from militarism and into working-class agitation. He wrote most of his fiction after this enterprise had broken up in failure. His accounts of the early stages of the Irish and Spanish Civil Wars, with their ruminations on solitary confinement, the road not taken for the Irish left had Liam Mellowes lived, street fights against Blueshirts, his affective identification with the revolutionary fervour of anarchism > Moscow-styled officialdom, are all mandatory but at the same time are prone to a certain amount of over-writing and self-congratulation, so I had no expectation that there would be any restraint here.

Happily I was very wrong. This is a highly focused work, short, relatively sparse but completely convincing in its representation of life on the islands off Ireland's western coastlines, the poorest and most underdeveloped parts of the nation. The colloquialisms, the ways of life are so accomplished and consequently dense, that they became something more akin to family lore twice removed than a part of the terrain so well riffed-on by generations of Irish writing. The crushing, grinding quality of poverty is so well done. A mother whose every waking moment is to steward the mechanism of her household into generating adequate sustenance, and of course regarding her own intake as the easiest to relegate... Also a couple of admittedly improbable but still involving 'fuck yes' moments

[Vera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Léite i nGaeilge (aistr.Seosamh Mac Grianna) mar go ndéanann muid staidéar ar aistriúcháin. Tá an leabhar seo níos 'nádúrtha' i nGaeilig, agus é suite ar oileán taobh theas ó Árainn Mhór.

I recommend the book in English (where the idiomatic 30's sometimes grate a little like stage-Irishry) or in Irish (although not translated by the author himself).

[Althea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read on a singing trip to Inishowen penninsula in the north of Ireland, a place very like the story describes. Well drawn characters, authentic, and I cried. Helped ground me there. And I'd been in the Derry pub Peadar O'Donnell, wonderful music, next to the Gweedore bar.