The Bodhran Makers: A Novel of Ireland - Softcover

Keane, John B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0941423808 ISBN 13: 9780941423809

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 1993

Synopsis

A novel of Ireland by the bestselling author of The Field

A saga of the struggle between hard-living farmers and the Church, The Bodhran Makers is set in rural Ireland in the 1950s. The Bodhran (pronounced bough-rawn) makers of the title are "a poverty-stricken people who never lost their dignity." Every January, they celebrate their Celtic ancestry with a festival of singing, drinking, and music-making with the Bodhran, a drum made from goat skin. This particular year, however, the revelers are confronted by the parish priest and his cohorts in the local village, who disapprove of the ancient rites on the grounds they are "immoral, drunken, and degenerate." In this faithful re-creation of the life of a spirited people doomed to crushing poverty, John B. Keane documents the death of the old traditions, and, in doing so, the birth of modern Ireland.

About this title

About the Author

John B. Keane (1928-2002) was an Irish playwright, novelist, and essayist. The award-winning The Bodhran Makers was first published in 1986 in Ireland, where it became an immediate success. In America, Keane is best known through the film version of his play The Field, which was released in 1991 and starred John Hurt and Richard Harris.

From Kirkus Reviews

Poverty and the Church-led attack on Celtic traditions force 1950's Irish farmers into exile--in a rich, poignant if occasionally heavy-handed novel (first published in 1986 in Ireland) from Keane, who writes a column for the New York-based Irish Echo. In rural Dirrabeg, farmers work hard cutting turf and raising a couple of cows or pigs, but it's not easy keeping up much less getting ahead, especially when relatives are in desperate need--but as Donal Hallapy reassures his wife before taking hard-to-spare fuel and groceries to his sister and her children, ``We never died a winter yet.'' One bright spot in the year is the ``Wren'': stepdancers and musicians--including Donal, who plays the traditional goatskin drum, the ``bodhr n''--travel around in costume collecting contributions that pay for an all-night ``wrendance.'' The authoritarian parish priest in the town of Trallock, however, considers the wrendancers not just drunker pagans but competitors for money and loyalty; he resolves to crush the old customs--as well as an excellent but unorthodox rural teacher and a couple of budding romances between single men and married (though long-abandoned) women. What ensues is not only a struggle between Catholic and pagan but also between classes, between town and country. Trallock emerges as an oppressive place without privacy or compassion. Ultimately, ironically, villagers like Hallapy--as well as sympathetic priests--find their only chance for dignity in emigration to the enemy country, England. A thorough, pained, loving account of a lost world--with the novel itself an act of cultural survival. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0941423808
• ISBN 13: 9780941423809
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256