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Big Windows
Irish History at its very best must read for Irish history students collectible
211 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 14, 2020
This was an unusual reading experience for me. Completely different from the other Peadar O’Donnell book I read (The Knife, which was very political), The Big Windows is a disorienting tale about an insular community in Ireland whose way of life is shaken up when a strong-minded outsider marries into their midst.
The disorientation begins by sweeping you into an unfamiliar location along with the main character Brigid (if we’re told what year this story takes place, I missed that), and makes you subject to the same inexplicable experiences she is. Brigid has the upper hand over the modern U.S. reader, though, in that she kind of knows what she’s getting in for—a life with her new husband and his mother in a tiny house right next to a mountain—and knows the regional dialect. The residents of Glenmore have a stylish old-fashioned mode of speech, peppered with unfamiliar items like creepies (some sort of chair or hassock), casans, glaze peak caps, streeling skirts and so on. People are always “ridding their throats” and saying things like, “She has a lumpy nature,” “Stop foxing!” and “I am burned smoking.” These are just a few random examples of the continually picturesque language.
The book of course features unfamiliar agrarian and work customs, related to peat-cutting, lime kilns, herd dog management, and chicken raising. (Ladies, think very carefully about the herring net you’re bringing to the mainland as part of your trousseau and how you will introduce its use to the locals.) But the main focus of the story is the town’s gossip, resistance to change, and interpersonal relationships. Glenmore offers nosy neighbor small town life the likes of which I’ve never seen before. The frequent impassioned interactions between characters are another source of disorientation for the reader. O’Donnell does not include paragraph breaks in the conversations he relates, so it’s often difficult to tell if something being said is a continuation of a person’s previous comments or if it’s from a new conversational participant. It requires close reading, and these giant unbroken paragraphs of talk add to the feeling of suffocation that characterizes the setting.
I enjoyed the surprise factor in the book as it chronicled Brigid’s introduction to the town and the slow reception of her new ways. The evolution of her relationship with her new mother-in-law/roommate gets close attention and is well-done. I was bemused that husband Tom, who is the cause of everything, doesn’t get the vivid characterization that the women do and is often absent from the text at times when you’d expect him to have a major presence. It’s nice to have strongly written female characters, but as a motivating factor in a lot of what happens, I think O’Donnell might have done more to show why Tom was worth it. His nominal personhood was really glaring in the abrupt ending too, which I won’t spoil here. Overall, though, The Big Windows deserves a wider readership….definitely ripe for the NYRB Classics series to pick up, since I think it’s out of print.
The disorientation begins by sweeping you into an unfamiliar location along with the main character Brigid (if we’re told what year this story takes place, I missed that), and makes you subject to the same inexplicable experiences she is. Brigid has the upper hand over the modern U.S. reader, though, in that she kind of knows what she’s getting in for—a life with her new husband and his mother in a tiny house right next to a mountain—and knows the regional dialect. The residents of Glenmore have a stylish old-fashioned mode of speech, peppered with unfamiliar items like creepies (some sort of chair or hassock), casans, glaze peak caps, streeling skirts and so on. People are always “ridding their throats” and saying things like, “She has a lumpy nature,” “Stop foxing!” and “I am burned smoking.” These are just a few random examples of the continually picturesque language.
The book of course features unfamiliar agrarian and work customs, related to peat-cutting, lime kilns, herd dog management, and chicken raising. (Ladies, think very carefully about the herring net you’re bringing to the mainland as part of your trousseau and how you will introduce its use to the locals.) But the main focus of the story is the town’s gossip, resistance to change, and interpersonal relationships. Glenmore offers nosy neighbor small town life the likes of which I’ve never seen before. The frequent impassioned interactions between characters are another source of disorientation for the reader. O’Donnell does not include paragraph breaks in the conversations he relates, so it’s often difficult to tell if something being said is a continuation of a person’s previous comments or if it’s from a new conversational participant. It requires close reading, and these giant unbroken paragraphs of talk add to the feeling of suffocation that characterizes the setting.
I enjoyed the surprise factor in the book as it chronicled Brigid’s introduction to the town and the slow reception of her new ways. The evolution of her relationship with her new mother-in-law/roommate gets close attention and is well-done. I was bemused that husband Tom, who is the cause of everything, doesn’t get the vivid characterization that the women do and is often absent from the text at times when you’d expect him to have a major presence. It’s nice to have strongly written female characters, but as a motivating factor in a lot of what happens, I think O’Donnell might have done more to show why Tom was worth it. His nominal personhood was really glaring in the abrupt ending too, which I won’t spoil here. Overall, though, The Big Windows deserves a wider readership….definitely ripe for the NYRB Classics series to pick up, since I think it’s out of print.
August 13, 2024
Deep intricate story of how a group of neighbors relate to an outsider and to each other. These are the secret dynamics of people, which I did not know before. I shall read this again before I die.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews