Amazon.com Review
The Great Irish diaspora that began in the 1840s with the potato famine soon saw the island's population of 8 million reduced to less than 4 million. The process continued well into the 20th century, and has only finally been reversed with the arrival of tourism in the West of Ireland. In
Hungry for Home,
Cole Moreton traces one of the last of those tragic emigration stories, from one of the very remotest places in the West: Great Blasket, off the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry. The last chapter in the ancient history of the Blaskets began on Christmas Eve 1946, when a young man on the island, Seainin ("little Sean"), collapsed in bed with a terrible headache. There was no doctor, no policeman, not even a priest on the island to help. The only telephone was down. And on Christmas Day, Seainin died, "with his aunt whispering the Act of Contrition into a dead ear." And with that, the islanders realized that their lives on Blasket were no longer tenable. It is the kind of story that has been told before, and by natives of the islands as well, in their unique, poetic style: in
Peig Sayers's memoirs, for instance, or
Maurice O'Sullivan's Twenty Years A-Growing. But Morton's account is equally worth reading, imaginative and sensitively written, as it follows the O Cearna family all the way from Blasket to the mainland, and eventually to America, the New World. It is pleasing, too, that the author does not pretend to some mythical Irish ancestry of his own, as is so fashionable nowadays with politicians and creatives on both sides of the Atlantic. Instead, he states clearly that he is neither American nor Irish, but comes from East London. Good for him.
--Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
British journalist Moreton's fiercely lyrical account of an abandoned island off Ireland's southwest tip, and of its residents' emigration to America, is memorable and evocative. The people of Great Blasket, which was permanently abandoned in 1953, spoke Gaelic and preserved an ancient culture and language to the very end. Work was communal; money seldom changed hands. An informal panel of elders acted as judge in disputes, often meting out rough justice. Mourners at a wake would tell ghost stories, huddled by candlelight in the same room as the corpse. But isolation and poverty drove away the younger generation, fishing and agriculture slowly died and, by 1947, there were just 15 extended families left, many of them petitioning the government to be given new homes on the Irish mainland. Great Blasket became a symbol of an old Ireland, a pawn in a game between politicians with opposing views of what it means to be Irish. By the time of the official evacuation, most of the island's inhabitants had already emigrated to the U.S. Through interviews and historical records, Moreton re-creates the saga of one family, the O Cearna clan (a Gaelic surname anglicized as Kearney or Carney), most of whom moved to Springfield, Mass., where they assimilated while attempting to revive the sense of community they once enjoyed on Great Blasket. The book's cadenced, flavorful first half, evoking traditional life on Great Blasket, is magical; the second half, centered on America, is more pedestrian, though it insightfully traces the shaping of Irish-Americans into a major political force. Moreton closes with a recent trip to the island's ruined, abandoned village, which the Irish government may transform into a national park. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
