The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin [Hardcover]

Maeve Brennan (Author), William Maxwell (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 1997

Maeve Brennan came to America from Ireland in 1934, when she was seventeen. From 1949 through the mid-1970s, she was on the staff of The New Yorker, where she made memorable contributions to "The Talk of the Town" under the pen name "The Long-Winded Lady." She also wrote short stories, some of the best the magazine ever published. Though much of her writing is set in and around Manhattan, her finest work is always set in Dublin, her imagination's home. The Springs of Affection collects all her Irish fiction, twenty-one stories in three story cycles. Some of these stories are autobiographical, and render without sentimentality the rawest emotions of girlhood; Brennan remembers exactly what it was to be five years old and caught in a lie, and to be thirteen and lied to. Others concern the bitter marriage of Rose and Hubert Derdon, and the moments of understanding that should bring these two together but instead drive them further apart. The most ambitious and lyrical stories explore the world of Delia Bagot, a woman whose house and children are the most of what she needs, and whose imagination and ambitions seldom take her far from her own front parlor. The sweep of Delia's life, as considered by the sister-in-law who despised her, is the subject of the title story, an almost novella-length masterpiece that, as William Maxwell writes in his introduction, "belongs with the great short stories of this century."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ireland is once more the source of great, and disturbing, fiction. Most of us will not have heard of Maeve Brennan before opening this volume, yet the quality of her stories is cause for wonder. The first several are autobiographical sketches of her childhood in 1920s Dublin. In one, she takes her brother with her to the Poor Clare nuns, a closed order. Because the little boy is only 2, he gets to see the hidden lives about which his older sister is so curious: "I imagined them, silent and swift, of all ages, descending upon Robert from every part of the convent." In another, following the treaty that turned Ireland into a free state, "some unfriendly men" twice come looking for her father, a Republican. One raider even thrusts his head up the fireplace, only to cover himself and the living room in soot. Despite the disarray, her mother rejoices. "And with us chattering a delighted, incredulous accompaniment, she laughed as though her heart might break."

In Brennan's acute hands, this proverbial phrase has more sorrow than joy about it, and in the collection's two other sequences, the emotions are far more raw. Husbands and wives are deadlocked in loveless marriages--the men longing for escape, the women desperate for contact. These are visions of powerful feelings, powerfully quelled, and there are some heart-freezing juxtapositions. One story ends with a young couple coming together; in the very next, 27 years later, ill will is everywhere.

But Brennan, whose life seems to have been even more tragic than that of any of her characters, can also anatomize peace, or at least respite. In "The Carpet with the Big Pink Roses on It," Mrs. Bagot and her child and pets (also on the shakiest of ground with Mr. Bagot) fall into an afternoon slumber. "They all slept safely. There wasn't a sound in the house. Nobody came to the door. Nobody saw them. There on the bed they might all have been invisible, or enchanted, or, as they were for that time, forgotten." Alas, such states of grace are momentary in Brennan's houses. According to William Maxwell, the title novella--a brilliant anatomy of envy and hate--"belongs with the great short stories of this century." So do several other pieces in The Springs of Affection.

From Library Journal

This collection contains all of Brennan's Irish short stories, all but one originally published in The New Yorker between 1952 and 1973. The 21 stories are divided into three distinct cycles. The first set is autobiographical in nature, chronicling Brennan's Dublin childhood, while the remaining cycles bring the reader into the lives of two Dublin families. Brennan depicts everyday scenes from family life using beautiful and emotionally charged language. The stories featuring Hubert and Rose Derdon are particularly stunning in their stark comparison of home, represented by a warm hearth, comfortable appointments, and a beautiful garden, and family relationships, governed by fear, hatred, and emotional distance. The stories in the last cycle are hopeful, only briefly skirting the periphery of unhappiness and despair. The autobiographical sketches are wonderfully written, and descriptions and events return in the fictitious stories. An introduction by Brennan's colleague and editor William Maxwell provides background and commentary on the author's life and work. Highly recommended.
-?Dianna Moeller, St. Martin's Coll., Lacey, Wash.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 358 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (November 12, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395870461
• ISBN-13: 978-0395870464
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,842,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Work of a mature artist, beautifully written., August 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin (Hardcover)

Maeve Brennan's stories--which I had never heard of before reading this collection-- take their place beside the work of William Trevor as one of the finest probings of middle-class Irish life in the past fifty years. Her comic and terrible accounts of the ordinary lives of people on the edge of distresses for which they have no name are mesmerising in their authenticity of detail. Her crystal-clear memory of and deeply complicated feeling for the everyday abrasions and sudden rushes of light of ordinary life in a Dublin suburb or an Irish provincial town are invariably compelling. And she manages to draw these local people and their surroundings into a drama of universal meanings: her theme is the sheer weight of living, the fragility of the heart's joy, and the profound, mostly speechless realm of sadness where her men and women have to live. Yet, for all the darkness she manages to confront, the writing is a pleasure always: articulate, witty, wise, its lucid, clean, unfussy but surprising sentences are a continuous source of delight and illumination. This is a collection that deserves to take its place beside the stories of Mary Lavin, whose quiet but profound psychological insights (especially into the nature of women) are matched by Brennan's more edgy, fraught, and acerbic understanding. Such mature work is a rarity. For anyone interested in modern and contemporary Irish literature, as well as anyone interested in the short story, the brilliant sketch, or simply in good writing, I believe Maeve Brennan would be--as she has been for me--a discovery to treasure.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Written, Harsh In Their Judgement, June 14, 2001

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taking a rest - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin (Hardcover)

Mr. William Maxwell wrote the introduction to this book. He clearly was a man who valued Ms. Brennan as a writer and a friend. His introduction is as jarring as many of the stories, and it sets the tone for the tales the book contains. After reading this introduction to, "The Springs Of Affection", I would even reevaluate her other collected stories, "The Rose Garden". The quality of her work is not the question rather how her personal life drove the commentary the stories held. Mr. Maxwell refers to the premature end of her writing life and the cause, which was tragic. Though these stories were written before her troubles began a reader has to wonder if they explain so much about this woman who stayed in America at age 17 when her Family went home, and with a brief exception spent her life alone as well. These stories are full of bitterness, regret, and lives that were unfulfilled, children wished for, marriages unwanted, and a decent into madness for one.

The final story that is the title of the book is one of the best short stories I have read. The final story also could serve as a summary of the worst that the previous stories hold. It is riven with hatred, selfishness, and a woman who relishes the possessions of the dead no matter how close they were to her. Her preoccupation with the faults of others, and her one accomplishment of having outlived them all, is a portrait of a person more miserable than that of Dickens' Ebenezer. However this woman is worse, for she neither seeks an affirmation of life and is acutely aware of whom she has been for almost nine decades.

The other stories will document the gradual decay of relationships whether between family members or those who have wed. One husband is driven to sobbing not because he grieves for his dead wife; rather he realizes he lacks the ability to care enough to grieve. A mother looses a child and rejects her religion with an enthusiasm that is jarring. Those who have children often have little use for them, and those who are bereft of issue spend their years bemoaning their absence.

Mr. Maxwell described the stories with words like ferocious and devastating; they are all of that and more. It is a beautiful collection from a woman who was a brilliant writer who laid bare the darker sides of human nature without pause or apology, and felt no need for a redemptive or soft ending. Indeed the final story may be the hardest of all. For if a reader is left standing at the beginning of the final chapter, they will undoubtedly be flattened by its close.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not to be missed, November 19, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin (Paperback)

I had never heard of the author but bought the book after scanning William Maxwell's fine introduction. What a find! Each story is a gem, with not one dishonest emotion in any of them. Too bad Ms. Brennan didn't have a larger body of work. By the way, the title story is a masterpiece. READ THIS BOOK!!!