🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
The Irish Sea swallows a boat exiles as they flee to Liverpool. A starving boy named Tommy meets an Englishman travelling across the unnavigable Irish townlands, discovering that he’s lost his horse in a bog. A vocal, vibrant young woman named Bridget is determined to get her family a reprieve from the threat of eviction. The people of Ireland are living in poverty; starving and dying from the fever. The English Protestant Landlords are punishing in their determination to get their rent, despite the fact that the blight has ruined most of the crops. With no crops, there’s no money, and it’s the tenants who suffer. As it turns out, some distant members of Bridget’s family were on the boat that sank in the Irish Sea, and she’s determined that her closer family won’t face the same fate. When she angrily takes a walk, she happens upon Tommy, and the two decide to go and find the Englishman’s stricken horse.
Possibly, one of the most charming factors of The Land of the Young is the use of ‘Irishisms’ (for want of a better term). Bridget, in particular, is the epitome (if not slightly clichéd) Irish woman. She talks – a lot – barely stopping for breath as she prattles on about whatever subject is forefront in her mind. As I was reading her monologues (and even short quips), I couldn’t help but hear an Irish accent similar to how Marianne Keyes sounds in my head (imagine Mammy Walsh from any one of the Walsh family novels from Keyes, and you’re there. Albeit, Bridget is a lot young than Mammy Walsh). She was a joy to read, even if she did leave me gasping for breath at times.
However, at times, the narrative wavered from perspective to another, with no warning. It was a bit disorientating, but Robinson writes so beautifully, that it can be overcome.
Well worth a read. Just try and push past the long sentences and the occasional confusing switching from view points.
S. A.
This book was reviewed as part of the Reedsy Discovery Reviewer Program. You can read the original review here
You can buy The Land of the Young here.