9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
1949 - Liberated Woman, Liberated State., January 18, 2005
Equal parts fiction and history, lines blur as award-winning author Morgan Llywelyn weaves fictional and real-life characters into her masterful novels. The third work in her Twentieth Century Irish State trilogy, 1949, is a fiction-based glimpse into the evolution of the Irish Republic as seen through the eyes of the indomitable, self assured Ursula Halloran. Equally captivating, the first two novels of the Irish State series, 1916 and 1921, don't necessarily exist as prerequisites to 1949, yet it wouldn't hurt to read them first.
Young Ursula is the adopted daughter of IRA foot soldier Ned Halloran, a man deeply involved in Irish Republican skullduggery. Living on the family farm, the Hallorans are a montage of typical Irish dysfunctionality. Requisites drunks exist, but 1949 avoids focusing on caricatured, woe-is-me Irish alcoholics. Living with an unforgiving and unbending father who wants her to inherit and manage the farm, Ursula is surrounded by a number of shiftless male relatives. Female Hallorans don't fare much better, as Ursula's sister marries into the dregs of Clarecastle's Irish society. 1949 boasts the gamut of vanished Irish colloquialism that one would expect to find in a post-famine rural Irish setting, including occasional stock-in-trade Irish wakes, imposing parish priests, stifling poverty and rampant melancholy.
Ursula occupies her time reading books and riding her horse Saoirse. In Saorise she witnesses a mirror image of her own shackles-Ursula runs free, but only to a point, for at night they both remain tethered, Saoirse in a stall, Ursula in an oppressive environment. Ursula rails against limits placed on her by male-dominated Irish society. She promises herself she will never marry, for married women in Ireland were banned from working outside the home during the period.
A distant and uncommunicative Pa, Ned Halloran frequently absents himself from the farm while performing the business of the IRA in the North. Like Ned, Ursula is headstrong and they frequently fall-out. But unlike her step-relatives, Ursula is at once smart as a whip, blossoming into an attractive, passionate young woman. Ursula finds a benefactor in her doting uncle, Henry Mooney, a protagonist of the novel 1921. Mooney sees smoldering in Ursula the portent of success he himself achieved in the literary world. Thus Henry is as determined as Ursula is to free her from rural, backward Ireland. Following a visit to Uncle Henry and Aunt Ella, the stage is set for the ultimate break with Ned. Henry convinces Ursula to accept Ella's offer to send her to finishing school in Switzerland. Ned's reaction is to disown his stepdaughter. With nary a glance backward, Ursula is off to the continent where she is taken under the wing of Constance Markevicz, a real-life heroine of Ireland's independence movement.
In Switzerland Ursula matures into a rough diamond of the young woman she is destined to be. Hobnobbing with the titled, the landed and the idle rich, she yet suffers under the prejudices bestowed on the Irish by the English. Nevertheless, she develops great friendships among Britons of both sexes, including the dashing pilot Lewis Baines, for whom physical desire courses through her loins.
Upon returning to Ireland Ursula takes a position with radio station 2RN writing news copy ticketed for the airwaves. No amount of talent will allow her to crack the male-only news reporting clique and Ursula's informed that she'll never read her own copy on air. Against a backdrop of Nazi fires burning on the continent, she meets an Irishman, Finbar Cassidy, a civil servant and man who represents much of what she rebels against. Lacking ambition, he further urges Ursula to accept status quo at 2RN. He pursues Ursula with uncommon determination, and exhibits kindness to a fault. After the suave Lewis Baines reappears on the scene, Ursula casts the Catholic Church's teachings regarding sexual forays outside marriage to the wind. Not surprisingly, Ursula finds herself pregnant with child.
In Dublin an unmarried pregnant woman stands about as much chance finding work as a statue honoring Cromwell appearing on O'Connell Street, so Ursula is again off to Switzerland where the doomed League of Nations seeks to stave off the Nazi horde threatening Europe. Much of Llywelyn's thoroughly researched World War II history comes to play here, as Ursula takes a job with the League. Real-life characters show up, along with their real-life frailties and failures. Chamberlain boasts that `we will have peace in our time.' Eamon De Valera's former employee, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is on scene. Special dishonor is reserved for the lionized Winston Churchill. Profiling the Irish brand of World War II neutrality, Llywelyn offers a glimpse into what it really was, and what it meant to Anglo-Irish relations. It's terrific reading as marauding Germans roll over Europe.
With young son in tow, Ursula's back in Ireland in time to witness the post-war chartering of the Irish Republic, which occurs, understandably, in 1949. There's more of course: more farm, more Ned, more Lewis, more Finbar. Read it. You can't miss on this natural fit for the silver screen. If your cup of tea is history interspersed with titillating, finely woven fiction, 1949 is a must.
Laying claim to the unofficial title of Novelist Laureate of Ireland, Morgan Llywelyn boasts a body of fiction-based history, a dramatis personae, profiling the Irish condition.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW!!!! Morgan Llywelyn Does It Again!!!, March 22, 2003
1949, the third book in Morgan Llywelyn's series about 20th Century Ireland ( I am told there will be two more) is a compelling story of Ireland's continued struggle for complete independence from British rule, and for those who have been anxiously awaiting for this story, I can assure you, you will not be disappointed.
Ursula, aka Precious, was found wandering the streets of Dublin as a toddler by Ned Halloran, who readers of 1916 and 1921 will remember. Her parentage a question, Ned was taken in by Ned and his wife, Sile, and raised as their own.
1949 is Ursula's story. It opens in the early days of the Irish Free State and ends with the forming of the Republic in 1949. We follow Ursula as she leaves Neds family farm in County Clare at the urging of Henry and Ella Mooney (who readers will also remember from 1916 and 1921). Henry wouldn't let Ella use any of her family's money to help support their family but does agree for her to pay for Ursula's education at an exclusive private school in Switzerland.
When Ursula returns to Ireland she secures a job at the new radio station, helping write copy (but never allowed to be on the air herself). Through her eyes we see the continued political struggle in Ireland and her view of world events in the days before the second world war.
Ursula has vowed never to marry, in large part due to new laws in Ireland against married women working outside the home. Nevertheless, she is very attractive to the opposite sex and to two men in particular - Finbar Cassidy, an Irish government official whose political views frequently clash with her own, and Lewis Baines, a dashing young English pilot whose conquests of beautiful women have become legendary.
Morgan Llywelyn, whose knowledge of Irish politics and history is really unequalled in historical fiction written today, liberally adds historical facts and events to add depth and interest but never detracting from the overall story.
I can't remember when I have looked forward to a book more. Readers of 1916 and 1921 will enjoy visits with characters important in those books including Henry and Ella Mooney, Ned Halloran, and Ned's family in County Clare. Llywelyn's stories appeal to a wide variety of readers and my husband and daughter, both of whom have read 1916 and 1921, were fighting over who was going to get to read 1949 when I finished.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Ending to the Trilogy, March 13, 2003
By A Customer
Assuming this was the last in the series the author started with 1916, it was truly a great finish. The main character in this book was the best of all her characters, and the way she interweaves the fictional plot with real events is just amazing. Through reading this series, the reader learns a tremendous amount of interesting history, and also will meet unforgettable fictional characters. To anyone interested in Irish history, and/or just a series of good books, I would recommend reading 1916, 1921 and most definitely 1949, preferably one after the other, because there are so many recurring characters that they may become hard to remember if one of the arlier books was read too long ago.
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