Customer Reviews

The Bodhran Makers

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I was lucky enough to be able to read this book in large chunks of uninterrupted time, which was fortunate because upon stepping into this world I found it difficult to stay away for long. The contrasts between pagan and catholic,town and country, tradition and progress were highlighted by vivid language and colorful characters. As the wrendance was being planned, I could feel the excitement of this one time a year when the country folks could forget their poverty, their adherance to a strict moral code, and just enjoy the music, dance, and the company of good friends. The bodhran served as a reminder of who they were, their past, traditions, and culture, its drumbeat serving as a heartbeat to keep these things alive. I've travelled through Ireland twice in recent years and have seen and heard the culture preserved in music and customs that are often pagan, but veiled by the catholic church. The Bodhran Makers welcomes the reader in with a glimpse at the past through the eyes of characters I won't soon forget. It's at once funny but poignant in its portrayal of class struggle and divided loyalties.

I love traditional Irish music. It is unassuming yet marvelously intricate, exuberant yet with an undercurrent of the deepest sorrow. What I found out on a recent visit to Ireland is how deeply their music is ingrained into their cultural and national identity (every Irish coin is imprinted with a harp). This book goes a long way to demonstrating how closely Irish music is tied to the souls of the Irish.

The bodhran of the title is the simple frame drum of Irish music, and its rhythms come to symbolize the the essence of being Irish. This book is set in the 1950's during one of the great waves of Irish emmigration, and it chronicles the stories of a small community of farmers on the southwest coast of the Island, and in particular, one bodhran player and one bodhran maker. Their lives are filled with poverty, drink, hard work, and song. They are both succored and oppressed by the ubiquitous institution of the Catholic Church. The Church, though, is jelous, and cannot abide traditional music competing for its attentions, so the greatest triumph of the book -- the creation of the perfect bodhran -- also serves to trigger the deepest tragedy. It is the institution of the Church, along with the gossip crucible of small town life and the economic realities of a financial system that is built upon the foundations of support sent home by emmigrants that finally drives the farmers from their home land, though the music, the drum, and the love of the country travel with them. All of this works together to provide a rich mix of literature: tragic and joyous at the same time. It is beautiful. It is musical. And above all, it is intensely Irish.

I happened to pick up one of Keane's essay collections while travelling in Ireland and they were laugh-out loud funny. The Bodhran Makers was even better - this book had everything. A great cast of characters, a fast moving story, love, humor, and the sense of sadness that comes when one finishes a really great book and wishes it could go on forever. I highly recommend this book -- it would be great to read anywhere but if you happen to be heading on vacation to Ireland, ORDER IT TODAY!

This is a poignant account of the activities of a vibrant rural Irish community in the lead up to the annual wrendance. The local manoevering, the after hours drinking, the religion, the sex, it's all there in the best tradition of JB Keane. What differs is the way we see the community gutted by emigration and all the rich lore and traditions lost as the inhabitants are transplanted to sterile urban environments in Britain. Sad, funny, exciting, witty, thoughtful and warm, Keane at his very best.

Keane reminds me of the type of Irish fiction that, after Frank O'Connor and Sean O'Faolain's masterful short stories, has not attained as much respect among the literati as it deserves. It appeared in 1986 even as younger writers like John Banville were adding a continental dimension, and as John McGahern was pursuing his own evocations--in stories and novels--of rural life as it was vanishing in a modernizing Ireland. Keane, writing after O'Connor & O'Faolain but earlier than Banville or even McGahern, takes on mid-20 c Ireland as it decayed by emigration to England, depopulation of townlands, and the pressure of relentless clerical and sexual repression.

I found this much less sentimental than I feared. The nostalgia some praise is tempered strongly but subtly by honest depictions of how the death of two calves could doom a small farm's survival, and how devastating and how alluring a flight to England could be for those raised in these bucolic but unforgiving, scrappy if scenic landscapes. The English midlands hover over the whole narrative. Sexuality and its variations appear in straightforwardly rendered yet non-explicit renditions, and the combination of lust and guilt makes for convincingly nuanced portrayals of all involved, clergy and laity. Keane's insights into parochial life in both senses of the adjective make for impressive insights that do not leap out too obviously--except in a few outbursts, one of which by a protagonist is answered as "you should be a politician."

The novel reads quickly, the prose is not purple, and the humor adds to the tension and quickens the pace. The making of the bodhran is the work's impressive set-piece, but the cast of so many skillfully detailed major and minor characters only strengthens the unobtrusive deftness with which Keane handles this superficially direct narrative arc. One corner of south-west Irish turfland and market town stands for the whole of the island in its fears and hopes within a stagnant economy, a growing population that saw England as its only career goal, and a church that controlled the schooling of its young and away from which--as is charted here down in a chillingly conveyed scene that shows the Church overpowering the last resister among nearly 4,000 parishioners--none could escape its scrutiny. While I wished the scenes of the parish mission and the sermons thundered would have been drawn more thoroughly, given their place in advancing these key last sections of the plot, as a whole, this provides a wide-ranging analysis of how the Church's rigidity poisoned traditions, bodies, and minds.

It wears its anticlericalism lightly but firmly, and to its credit does allow for nimble and sensitive variation in showing how all of the priests and a key nun respond with their own individual sensitivity to what occurs as the town fights the townland. Even the antagonist's dictatorial reign is explained by a fellow cleric as having flourished due to his isolation from episcopal or practical control. Such fair-mindedness that Keane shows makes for a valuable record of mid 20c Irish mentalities as well as a recommended good read.

With the liveliness of a stepdance and the simplicity of a Dingle Peninsula landscape, Keane introduces us to the harsh life of the close-knit community of Dirrabeg, a community facing extinction in the mid-1950's. Many of the young have left for England or America, where there are opportunities and chances for secure lives. Those remaining behind love their land and their independence but fear for the future as the bogs get thin, the yields are poor, and the children have little hope of success.

For Donal Hallapy, devoted father of a large family, times are very tough. But Donal is a bodhran player, an expert in the ancient drums of his Celtic forebears, a musician in great demand whenever the once-a-year wrendances take place, all-night singing and dancing hooleys which can be traced back to pagan times. This paganism, the secret nature of the celebrations, the drinking that takes place, and the fact that the church has no control over them has made them anathema to "the clan of the round collar," in the person of Canon Tett, an ultraconservative and downright sadistic priest determined to bring the free spirits of Dirrabeg to bay by ending the fun of the wrendances.

The prose is straightforward and earthy, the dialogue salty and realistic, and the interactions of the characters so natural that one can share the joys and sorrows, the humor and anger, and the frustrations and all-too-brief personal satisfactions. The natural world, which is exquisitely described, even in its harshness, takes on almost human dimensions, influencing the action directly, while providing a vivid canvas upon which the contest between church and village is played out. The humor is broad, almost slapstick, but tempered by an overarching feeling of melancholy and impending doom. Though some may find the clergy to be caricatures and the message a bit too didactic, Keane provides us a rare glimpse of the last days of a now-vanished world. Mary Whipple

Keane's wonderful storytelling skills draw you into the lives of the characters and not only vividly depict a time now gone, but a spirit which may also regretfully be long gone in Ireland. (No, I take that back, you can still glimpse a bit of that spirit in the "letters" page of the Irish Times!) Keane is tough on the Catholic church and clergy of that era, as well as, the social structures of the town vs. the country people. But it is an honest portrayal and never completely black and white or cartoonish. Although I have seen Keane's play "Sive" I had never read one of his books before and was delighted with this one. I didn't want to put it down and now that it's finished I wish I were still reading it!

I am planning a trip to Ireland and always enjoy reading some books set in the place I am visiting. This novel is a nice look at the older Ireland. It deals with the Church and the conflict with the Church of some local villagers who want to do their traditional "wren dance" celebration. It was a good read and I think I got a feel for the place I am going to be visiting.