Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans [Hardcover]

Thomas Lynch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 2005

"So, Tom That Went and Tom that would come back!" is how Nora Lynch greeted the young American Thomas Lynch in 1970, at the edge of the ocean in West Clare, outside the cottage that his great-grandfather--another Thomas Lynch--had left nearly a century before on a one-way ticket to America. In thirty-five years and dozens of return trips to Ireland, Lynch has found a template for the larger world inside the small one, the planet in the local parish. The neighbors and characters he found there--spinsters and farmers, local heroes, poets, clergy, and corner boys-taught him to look, as Montaigne said we ought, for "the whole of Man's estate" in every man. Part memoir, part cultural study, Booking Passage is a brilliant, often comedic guidebook for those Lynch calls "fellow travelers, fellow pilgrims" making their way through the complexities of their own lives and times.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Undertaker-cum-poet Lynch (Bodies in Motion and at Rest) recalls his long romance with Eire and how it has affected his life in this compelling memoir. He takes off for the Emerald Isle early in 1970 to meet his people, who live on the edge of the Atlantic in County Clare. He stays with his elderly cousins, Nora and Tommy, a brother and sister who never married. The humble cottage has no water and is heated by a turf fire. Here the young Yank absorbs his culture shock and learns how life is lived without television, cars and other modern distractions. After Tommy's death, Lynch and Nora become closer, and he begins to bring the 20th century into the house in the form of running water. Along the way he tells the story of the Lynches of County Clare: how they survived "starvation, eviction and emigration—the three-headed scourge of English racism"—and the pain of diaspora as they emigrated to the U.S. Along the way Lynch examines his own life: his love-hate relationship with the misogynist Catholic Church and pedophilic priests; his battle with alcoholism; the breakup of his marriage and remarriage; and his unusual love of the undertaking trade. This is a deeply thought-out book filled with poetry, pathos, triumph and lots of Irish laughter.
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About the Author

Thomas Lynch is the author of the National Book Award finalist The Undertaking and Bodies in Motion and at Rest. He lives in Milford, Michigan.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (June 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393042065
• ISBN-13: 978-0393042061
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #524,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas Lynch's stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Granta, The Atlantic, Harper's, the Times (of London, New York, Ireland, and Los Angeles), and elsewhere. "The Undertaking" was a finalist for the National Book Award; he is also the author of "Still Life in Milford," "Booking Passage," "Apparition & Late Fictions" and "Walking Papers." Lynch lives in Milford, Michigan, and West Clare, Ireland.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Scattered musings, best read in parts, November 3, 2005

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans (Hardcover)

When three of the sections have these headings: Bits & Pieces, Odds & Ends, Fits & Starts, you get the idea: lots of thoughts mainly about but not always about Irish in America and in the US. Lynch writes well, perhaps too self-consciously (but you could say the same about Beckett, Joyce, McGahern, or Banville) about his place within the past & present Irish identity increasingly available to trans-Atlantic "passengers" reversing the emigration of their ancestors. The strength of this book comes from Lynch's determination to act out a point attributed to one of Brian O Nolan's many literary guises: to be Irish you need not have been born there, merely to claim allegiance.

Comparisons to James Charles Roy's more acerbic accounts of restoring a "castle" in Co Galway and herding about Yanks on a tour, respectively "The Fields of Athenry" and "The Back of Beyond," provide a fine counterpoint to the themes Lynch takes on--a rejoinder in turn to the Niall Williams "back to nature" tendency to romanticize rural Irish life for second-home owners.

The most fluent and unified part of Lynch's collection, apparently knocked about for a while in gestation since about 1970 and added to as life added to Lynch's accumulated experiences revolving around Ireland, mortality, and his place within both realms, the section "Death Comes for the Curate" tracks his priest relative who died early back three-quarters of a century ago in New Mexico, and from this Lynch frames a meditation examining Irish Catholicism from many angles, both in Ireland and its remnants in America. This portion of the book hit home, and worked in its concentration around a central theme.

What worked less effectively was, as the opening paragraph about the chapter headings foreshadows, the scattered organization of much of Lynch's other musings. To his credit he steers clear of "The Troubles" and largely bypasses the cute anecdotes and clever pub banter that sinks many a travelogue about the oul' sod. Yet, in his putting thoughts to paper, he tends--like Montaigne whom he cites--to drift before coming back to where he started, at best. In sections about relatives, the old house he restores, poetry that mattered to his younger and present self, and the irritation aroused by travel and its delays in a post 9/11 world, he is often sharp and worthwhile to learn from.

But in many of these same chapters, the control lessens and you feel as if too many undigested and unrevised ideas crowd out the better prose. The book wanders about mightily, and too much to reward a long sitting or two, although in parts it can be dipped into for a few pages with pleasure. Perhaps I need to re-read Montaigne to acclimate myself to Lynch, but the latter seems to treat the Irish concerns as ultimately as disorganized and fractious as any other Lynch may have. While true for him no doubt, this disorganization makes for less than fluid streams of consciousness on these finely wrought but rather too crammed and caroming essays that leave a reader as often stranded as enlightened. Yet, again, that chapter on Catholicism's superb!

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly Saga, July 20, 2005

By 

Ramblin' Iggy (Grand Haven, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans (Hardcover)

Ah yes, the grand saga of the Lynch clan as told by their own poet and fireside seanachi, Milford's favorite son undertaker and Rotarian, Thomas Lynch. Make no mistake, he has labored mightily to produce a history of his people that will endure to enlighten and instruct Lynch progeny for generations to come. His scholarship is impressive in its casual presentation. His ear is perfectly pitched for the colorful colloquial turn of phase.

While the essay subjects ostensibly provide historical context, it is his dissection and examination of the minutia found in daily life that draws forth the foibles, contradictions, and eternal mysteries of existence. Deeply spiritual, he nonetheless is unflinching in presenting a litany of grievances against The Church of his ancestors. His lengthy petition to the Irish Arts Minister for intercession with the bureaucracy of land management is a masterpiece of unrelenting, yet humanistic logic. Global tribal conflicts are almost rendered banal by his catalog of international conflicts.

Were it not for their heroic stoicism and deep mysticism, the sparse inhabitants of Mr. Lynch's West Clare coast could all be characters in a play by Samuel Beckett. These hardscrabble subsistence farmers, often reduced to dodging freak man-eating waves to gather seaweed for sustenance, would be astounded by the agricultural wealth of John B. Keane's "Kerry Gold" farmers just across the Shannon River.

This book should be required reading before embarking on a Celtic genealogical journey or a pilgrimage to the old sod.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensitive stories skillfully told, July 22, 2006

By 

Larry Edsall "journalist and author" (Phoenix) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans (Hardcover)

I'd been waiting for what seemed like too long for a third book of stories from Thomas Lynch, but wondered if his Irish-based tales could possibility be as compelling as his earlier works, which were stories about life based on his career in dealing with the dead (in addition to being a writer, Lynch is an undertaker). But again, just as he used the funeral home as a backdrop for stories not about death but about life, Lynch uses Ireland, land of his ancestory and his frequent visits, as the canvas for telling poignant stories about life. Now I'll give friends copies of "Booking Passage" while i wait for a fourth book from Thomas Lynch.