Beloved Stranger

by Clare Boylan

After fifty years of marriage in the same Dublin suburb, Dick and Lily Butler enjoy a "safe" life of compromise, of small and loving concessions to each other. Then one night their happy, balanced world is upended forever, when Lily wakes to find Dick under the bed, holding a shotgun, convinced there's an intruder in the house.

This darkly comic incident marks Dick's terrifying plunge into insanity, his freefall into a world of imaginary enemies and sexual fantasies. For Lily, an old-fashioned wife who has accepted her partner for better or worse, there is nowhere to turn. Now, for the first time, she finds herself unable to follow where her husband leads and is utterly disoriented by this freedom. She is forced to confront the rock face of marriage; having been bound together, she and Dick are now marooned together.

Part thriller, part love story, part macabre comedy, Beloved Stranger is also an analysis of marriage at the end of the millennium—a changeless institution in a vastly altered world.

About the Author
Calre Boylan is the author of six novels and three collections of short stories. She lives outside Dublin, Ireland.

Genres: Fiction, Irish Literature, Ireland

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such an unusual book, as there is no real action, but instead it is an exploration of relationships between members of an Irish family, looking closely at the social context and how it has changed between generations, and the evolution of relationships through time. The characters are fascinating, and the book with its unexpected twists and revelations leads to the inevitable conclusion that no matter how close, no matter how long our relationships are, we can never fully know another person.

I loved it!

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book more--lots more--than I thought I would. Perhaps it is the fact that I am something of a seasoned hand when it comes to dealing with elder care and dementia, but I think it has more to do with the deftness of Boylan's prose, her attention to the details and idiosyncrasies of human psychology, and her obvious compassion for all of the characters in this lovely novel. The story focuses on the patriarch, Dick, who is in rapid and dramatic mental decline, his wife of 50 years, Lily, and their feminist daughter, Ruth. I found myself drawn in early and came to care for these characters and the joyful sorrow of spending a lifetime in intimate proximity to one another that is so deeply emblazoned throughout the novel. A lesser writer would have made sentimental hash of this material, but Boylan manages to deliver a work of profound honesty depth while avoiding the maudlin and the cliche.

[Jean Sharp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gentle, wonderfully handled story of an aging couple and their only daughter.
I really don't want to spoil it, but it had me close to tears a few times. It also leaves things open for a further visit to the family.

[Rahul Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not think I have come across a portrait of marriage and family as stunning as this. This 1999-book had everything in perfect measure to make for one of the most entertaining stories on marriage I have read. Mind you, I already love Comyns's stupendous novel this year of the same nature that I read 2 months ago but what this Irish writer does is something excellent. Dick and Lily are in their 70s with a daughter who's 40 and unmarried. Lily has lived her life being the docile, bowed-down wife all her life which she sees her daughter resist with every force she can muster. Dick has imposed himself on Lily in ways she doesn't have the consciousness to resent but simply see it as love and life in the institution of marriage. Now, Dick is losing his mind. He is doling out money to strangers thinking of it as some grand investment plan. He is ready with a gun because he knows a stranger is hiding under his bed. Lily becomes the subject of his fiery impulses until Ruth, their daughter notices this and realises he needs to be moved to psychiatric care. When I came across Boylan, I thought I'd give one try to her and see if it works since I have barely seen her in anyone's domestic-literary-fiction list. But goodness! I have been made a fan. Not once did I want to put this book down. Boylan wrote so convincingly that I found myself feeling one with the family without the years, race, and continents separating us. It was one of those books where I found myself veering toward a sadistic reader. Boylan was smart with her technique. She wanted the reader to feel pleasure watching the fall of a character. A slow yet gradual descent that almost made me question how we think of men tuned by patriarchy themselves and how it eventually paves their way to a collapse. Simultaneously, the story was pulling me on the other end of the spectrum watching Lily rationalise her love and life with Dick despite his flaws. The word feminism is strong in the novel but not once in a way that could make this a feminist manifesto of marriage and how you could better it. Rather, Boylan was simply concerned with showing what it is to be in such a setup and how did the problem really work. It did not engage in seeking solutions because life, more often than not, has not been that for married women who have gone through life seeing things the way their husbands do. I thought a lot about Munro and her marriage while reading this. That Munro was Lily for all said and done. As much as what Munro did was unforgivable to her daughter, her choices did not have to have correspond with what she performed in her works. Munro's choice to protect her husband echoed Lily's steadfast attitude toward Dick in seeing him as the only man who truly understood her; even if that came as a case against their daughters! It's strange to imagine what that feels like at a distance and from where we see it at present but for women embroiled in such exercise of their agency, it's next to impossible to show tell them why their agency could do more harm than good. Feminist rally with this internalised notion of patriarchy. They have fought against it tooth and nail but the question remains: to what extent is such critique on a woman's agency viable? What kind of woman does it serve? How do we then rework the idea of feminism when it is caught in such variegated loopholes? Goodness, I have digressed too far from the novel but these are some thoughts that occupied me. The question this book eventually raises (to me) is: Who is the beloved stranger in a family? The detestable father and husband? The wronged wife? The wrong mother? The unpardonable woman? Or the marriage? Please read this book! I am going to read all of Boylan's novel.

[Joana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very unusual book.
Interesting to find a septuagenarian couple as central characters in a book, particularly a couple that is still full of life and face many of issues that other (younger) couples do. Add to that, the theme of bipolar disease, unfashionably refered to as manic depression in most of the book.
I enjoyed the book, some parts were very humourous, but it didn't grip me and I got a bit lost in the many considerations about marriage. Perhaps it's an age thing, but I found those a little boring. On the sidelines, the story of the daughter Ruth didn't enchant me, the ending was a little predictable and the character felt a little fake to me.
Still, I would like to read more from Clare Boylan.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lily loves Dick. Always has. Even his odd cruel moments and and his total control of her life doesn't dampen it. They have been married 50 years. Then one night in Lily's happy world she wakes to find Dick under the bed; holding a shotgun; convinced there is a robber in the house.
Dicks plunge into insanity is now, for Lily, her duty to take care of .... for better or worse. For the first time Lily has to take control. The relationship with thier daughter seems quite removed from the story.
This is about full blown manic depression to alzheimer's ... it's a clever read and sometimes darkly comic ... but it is compelling.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm on an Irish author's kick. This is a story of a manic depressive father and the effects of mental illness on his wife and daughter. Sounds like a downer, I know, but the author has a deft hand with the subject matter. She strikes a balance between the absurdity and the sadness of the situation. It might be a bit much if you had a history of manic depression in your family, but I found it interesting.

[Madeleine Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this & found her writing quite beautiful & easy, it made me want to read more of her work which can only be a good thing. I'm not entirely sure I accepted the premise of the medical diagnosis but I suspect some of this was in the suthor wanting to relate it to past behaviour & the daughter's possible personality traits.

A lovely study of the intricacies of a long marriage & family dynamics

[Bernadette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up in Hay on Wye with Joy and Liz for £1 - I've become a real stinge about buying from new.
It is a disturbing and painful tale of a father going into mental decline and a picture of a traditional relationship common in its time. Scared me a bit about what the future might hold.

[Marije Vermeulen · Rating 5 out of 5]

So moving!

[Duane Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is deserving of it's 3.5 stars on Goodreads.