They're Irish
Fri., March 7, 02:30 PM
Aside from an accident of geography, there is no reason to write about these two books at the same time. Well, there is also the happenstance that I read them at about the same time. An Irish Country Doctor, by Patrick Taylor, is set in a fictional village not far from Belfast; in other words, it is Northern Ireland. Whitethorn Woods, like almost everything by Maeve Binchy, is set in Ireland — that is, Eire, or the independent republic of Ireland. (I learned that when I collected stamps, a lifetime ago.)
Each novel is excellent on its own, but my mind was making comparisons. The hostility between north and south is mentioned in Taylor’s story, but it is more a general rivalry — Dodgers versus Giants, maybe — than out and out warfare. It’s just the way some things are, certainly less important than local politics. I don’t remember Binchy ever delving into the North/South issue.
Barry, the doctor of the title, is a young, newly qualified physician applying for his first position outside the hospital. Everything is new and strange to him — the locale, the village lifestyle, and especially his new boss, Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly. At this point, I was reminded of the stories of James Herriot, although all the patients in this book are human. Barry soon realizes he is about to learn a few things they don’t teach in medical school.
An Irish Country Doctor is light reading, fictionalized autobiography. I appreciated the maps (of course) and the glossary of Irish terms. I absolutely loved Mrs. Kincaid, the housekeeper. It was definitely a feel-good book.
Whitethorn Woods, on the other hand, took a little more concentration. It is a collection of short stories, all centered around the shrine in the cave within the woods. The series goes something like this:
- a single story about just one person in the village
- one or two more stories, continuing the first one but told from another person’s point of view
- an entirely different story, still in the same village, but about a separate group of people
- again, a follow-up to the previous story…
The reader must not only concentrate on the current story but also remember all the previous ones, because eventually they will re-connect. If you don’t remember the fellow who was “not the sharpest knife in the drawer” from the first story, you won’t recognize him when he turns up at the end.
Throughout the stories, a thread runs regarding the shrine (which is not officially sanctioned by the Church), its effect on the economy of the village, and the ramifications of running a highway through the woods. I will tell you, because it is not truly a spoiler, that everything does work out, the evil are punished and the goodhearted rewarded. One of the reasons I enjoyed Whitethorn Woods was that it was technically excellent; I know I could never do that myself.
I heard a rumor that some local dioceses want to reschedule St. Patrick’s Day this year because it falls during Holy Week. According to what I heard, no saint is to be honored during Holy Week.
The first thought that entered my mind was, you just found out? You can calculate when Easter will be for the next century, and you never noticed that there might be a problem with St. Patrick’s Day? (Passover, incidentally, which often coincides with Easter, will be late in April this year; the Hebrew leap year inserts an extra month.)
The big parade in New Haven this year will take place on Sunday (the ninth). I am well aware that the scheduling of bands and other marching units is what drives the calendar for parades, but I would like to think the powers that be were being respectful. For me, of course, it makes no difference. As I wrote several years ago, St. Patrick’s day excludes me, and I ignore it. Except… there are people like my old friend Gloria, who love that holiday, whether or not they remember why.
