CIVIL & STRANGE
By Cláir Ní Aonghusa
Houghton Mifflin. 305 pp. $24
This first novel tells the story of a 38-year-old Dublin schoolteacher, Ellen Hughes, who decides to emigrate in the wake of a failed marriage.
So far, so Irish.
But when Ellen leaves latté-slurping Dublin and relocates -- possibly retreats -- it's not to America she's heading. And certainly not to the romantic Wild West of Ireland (the real estate's too expensive). Ellen settles for the rather ordinary village of Ballindoon, where she has traces of family connection. Her maiden aunt's village house is now her own. Or, she is determined, with the help of a handsome young builder, to make it so. And she can claim one living local connection, her stoic Uncle Matt, who welcomes her with advice to "play it civil and strange." That is, "Be polite, but be extremely wary, and keep them at arm's length."
With deft touches of humor and an artful grasp of this world, Cláir Ní Aonghusa recounts Ellen's challenging reorientation to village life. Her North Cork/Tipperary borderland is by no means sunny Provence. Neighbors and gossipy shopkeepers are suspicious of anyone from "away," single women especially. And no matter how deep a newcomer tries to dig in, he or she will always be "from away" -- unless generations of forebears can be retroactively implanted. Then there are those long and tedious drives to buy fairly traded coffee and find a decent selection of cheeses.
Ellen manages the renovation of her house and substitute-teaches at a big, ugly school in a nearby town. She falls in love with Eugene, the tool-belt guy, stirring up a nest of local envy. Questioning whether she has made the right move, she is reassured by a quick trip back to Dublin: Once you've stepped off the whirling city, it's almost impossible to step back on.
The female characters here -- Ellen; her heedless Dubliner mother, Kitty; her childhood playmate/local gossip, Terry -- are excellent. Uncle Matt, the stoic farmer, is anything but simple.
The love story, though, is unsatisfying: Handsome Eugene is idealized almost to the point of girl-porn. Not only does he wear the tool belt and perform kitchen renovations on time and within estimate, he's a few years younger than Ellen, a magnificent cook, a sexual athlete and impeccably sensitive. Plus he has a charming mother with a cool haircut, who approves of Ellen. This all feels too good to be true. But the rest of this wry, accomplished novel feels exactly true enough.
-- Peter Behrens 's "The Law of Dreams" has just been published in paperback.
