Customer Reviews

Troubles (New York Review Books Classics)

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Originally published in 1970 and newly reprinted, Troubles, the story of Ireland's fight for independence from 1919 - 1922, illuminates the attitudes and insensitivities which made revolution a necessity for the Irish people. Farrell also, however, focuses on the personal, human costs to the residential Anglo-Irish aristocracy as they find themselves being driven out of their "homes."

Edward Spencer, a conservative Protestant loyalist, runs a decaying 300-room hotel on the coast of County Wexford. Regarding himself as a benevolent landowner, he nevertheless demands total submission of his tenants and the signing of a loyalty oath to the King. His ironically named Majestic Hotel, lacking maintenance during the war and its aftermath, is now too costly to repair. When British Major Brendan Archer, newly released from hospital, arrives at the Majestic to reintroduce himself to his fiancée Angela, daughter of the proprietor, the reader quickly sees the Majestic as the symbol of a faded aristocracy which has outlived its usefulness. The windows are broken, the roof is leaking, and decorative gewgaws and balconies are hanging loosely, threatening to crash. Walls, floors, and even ceilings, are swelling and cracking from vegetation run wild, and the hotel's ironically named Imperial Bar is "boiling with cats," some of which live inside upholstered chairs and all of which subsist on a diet of rats and mice. Irish rebels live just outside the hotel's perimeter.

With wry humor and a formidable talent for description, Farrell conjures up nightmarish images of life in the hotel, selecting small, vivid details to make the larger thematic picture more real. Homely details enlarge his canvas and bring his symbolism home to the reader as the rebellion by the Irish poor continues to grow and affect life within the microcosm of the Majestic. The reader's feeling of claustrophobia and the need to escape builds, and one is not surprised when violence strikes.

By injecting small news stories throughout the narrative, Farrell informs the reader about the progress of the rebellion. He also sets up global parallels, widening his scope by reporting problems in India, South Africa, and other parts of the Empire, along with the Chicago Riots and the Bolshevist attacks in Kiev. Humor and sometimes satire leaven even the most emotional moments, and Farrell paints his characters with a broad brush which makes one constantly aware of their absurdity. Clearly delineating the emotional issues behind the drive for Irish independence, Farrell makes the reader see both sides with empathy. When Edward and the Major finally begin to shoot the Majestic's cats in preparation for a large ball, the reader is prepared for a final round of violence at the Majestic and almost welcomes it. Mary Whipple

Imagine Henry James collaborating with the macabre cartoonist Charles Addams, with a droller version of Joseph Heller serving as war consultant, and you begin to get an idea of the tone of this captivating novel. Through the first 100 pgs or so it can seem like nothing more than a well-written novel of manners covering familiar territory of upperclass, "the quality," holding on to pretense of gentility(though the discovery of a rotting sheep's head in nightstand drawer early on is a pretty good tip of what's to come), but stay with it because Farrell uses this potentially well-worn setting brilliantly to develop a bizarre but moving story that covers everything from unrequited love to political assassination to existentialism, all with a lyrical prose and bewitching tone that never raises its voice above that of bemused and befuddled exasperation. Farrell creates menace the old-fashioned way, by leaving much of it offstage, described after the fact or reported 2nd and 3rd hand, including newspaper clippings, a la Dos Passos, in the USA Trilogy, or by having it creep up on you unexpectedly like a cold draft from one of the many cracks and darkened, musty corners of the Majestic Hotel, where the ghosts are still alive but unable, or unwilling, to comprehend that the world as they knew it is inexorably disappearing one roof shingle, floor board, and beloved pet at a time. Farrell is masterful at lulling you into a false sense of security with a patient detailing of the minutiae of domestic life in the hotel -- the petty jealousies among the ancient "guests" (who really have no where else to go); the dedication to dull routine and tradition to fill up empty hours -- before reminding you with a stealthy jerk just when you're about to doze off after tea time that violence laps at the gates and untended gardens of the Majestic as inevitably as the ocean tides some of the resentful locals use for revenge against those who oppose their rebellion. For all the vivid eccentricity of the other characters, it is Major Brendan Archer, British gentleman of wealth and traumatized WWI veteran (though Farrell, again, skillfully reminds of his war experiences only when you least expect it), who best reveals the confusion and frustration of attempting to reclaim a former world gone corrupt and obselete, and move into a new world without sacrificing the values and codes that once served him so well. That is his dilemma, and it is part of Farrell's brilliance that he never offers his main character, or his audience, any pat answers. Instead, Archer stumbles his way trough this chaotic, crumbling life with an outdated sense of honor and duty he knows has become futile but can't figure out how to replace. If all this sounds a bit heavy, fear not, for if you like your humor on the dark side, this book is filled with marvelous moments, including a gala ballroom scene that would make Flaubert applaud. (And you'll never look at your cat the same way after reading the conflagration scene!) My only criticism is that the political views of some characters tend to sound, at times, not always, like set speeches intended to provide audience with summaries of Irish nationalism and British imperialism in the 20s, but that may be only because I've read much of this history elsewhere, and so it sounded a bit canned. For readers unfamiliar with the period, however, this dialogue may prove helpful, (and keep in mind that Farrell wrote this novel some 50 years after the events, when most American readers would not have such knowledge). Near the end of the novel, one character, when all seems to be falling apart, observes, "All this fuss, it's all fuss about nothing. We're here for awhile and then we're gone. People are insubstantial. They never last at all." While this morose thought may sum up one of Farrell's themes, rest assured that his characters are anything but "insubstantial" and that this superb novel should last a long time, even longer than it takes the Majestic Hotel to fall apart.

This novel predates Farrell's Booker Prize-winning novel The Siege of Krishnapur by several years, but it's nearly as good. Set during "the Troubles" in Ireland in the early 1920s, it tells the story of a failing resort hotel, run by a dotty Anglo-Irish family, as seen through the eyes of a veteran of World War I, a shell-shocked British major. Most of violence of the Irish Rebellion takes place offstage, as the family scheme and intrigue against each other, and as the Major hopelessly woos an ironic Irish girl. Troubles is one of those rare books with a successful central metaphor: the hotel itself--leaking, nearly empty, infested with cats--standing in for the decaying Anglo-Irish ascendancy, as forces the Anglo-Irish barely understand creep in from outside to destroy their way of life. Nabokov was a big influence on Farrell, and the prose is elegant and clear-eyed and compassionate all at once. The book is funny, slyly satirical, suspenseful, and even a bit rueful for the loss of this silly way of life. Troubles is a wonderful book.

Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole."

"A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford". Derek Mahon.

Irish poet Derek Mahon dedicated the haunting poem quoted above to J.G. Farrell, author of "Troubles". It is a marvelous poem that pays tribute to an absolutely marvelous book; one of the finest books I have read in recent memory.

Farrell, born in Liverpool in 1935 is best-remembered for three books. "Troubles", "The Siege of Krishnapur" (which won Farrell the U.K.'s 1973 Booker Prize), and "The Singapore Grip". Shortly after publication of "The Singapore Grip" Farrell moved to Ireland. He died a few months later when, apparently while fishing, he was swept out to sea and drowned, at age 44. Each of these three books, known collectively as the "Empire Trilogy, is set during a time of crisis in what was once the British Empire. "The Siege of Krishnapur" is set in India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and "The Singapore Grip" is set in Singapore at the beginning of World War II at the time of the Japanese attack and occupation of Singapore.

"Troubles" takes place in the Irish countryside in 1920, at the height of the turbulence that resulted in the creation of the Irish Republic and the eventual partition of Ireland. The protagonist, the English Major Brendan Archer, is a survivor of the Great War. Upon his demobilization Archer decides to travel from his home in London to Ireland in order to finalize his relationship with Angela Spencer, a young lady he met and perhaps became engaged to, while on leave during the war. Angela's father runs what was once a grand hotel, The Majestic, and Archer finds himself immediately swept up in the collapse of what was once a thriving Anglo-Irish community in Ireland. The Majestic is a mess; it is rotting from within in much the same way that English dominion in Ireland is rotting from without. "Troubles" looks both at the isolated, and fairly bizarre world of the inhabitants of the Majestic while the Irish rebellion creeps closer and closer to intruding on their world.

"Troubles" is an admirable and sometimes uncomfortable mixture of drama and comedy. Some have compared the comedic elements of "Troubles" to the best of Evelyn Waugh and the comparison is certainly apt. I'd only add that Farrell's dark humor is tinted with an element of semi-tragic slapstick such that, given its hotel setting, I could not help but be reminded of John Cleese's "Fawlty Towers". Yet, at the same time, there is an ineffable sadness that permeates the story. Major Archer, whose wartime experiences are only hinted at, is portrayed as a well-intentioned but singularly ineffectual protagonist. He sees the physical rot that surrounds him but is powerless to stop it. He falls in love but his pining and puppy dog-like attempts at courting are rebuffed with so much condescension that I could only wonder why he continued to bother.

I echo the two previous reviewers who have warned readers to save John Banville's brief, but powerful, Introduction to "Troubles" until after they have read the book. Banville reveals a critical spoiler that once read is impossible to forget. By the time I was halfway through the book I was sure that my advance knowledge of a critical event at the conclusion would detract from the pleasure I would have had if I hadn't seen it coming. I urge readers to save the Introduction until after they have actually read the book.

J.G. Farrell's "Troubles" is a wonderful book and I can say nothing more but urge anyone interested in `discovering' a wonderful writer to start with this book. I also suggest that once you've read the book you look up Mahon's poem (cited above) that was dedicated to Farrell. In many respects that poem serves as both a great tribute and a wonderfully crafted review of a book and the meaning one can glean from it. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

Set in early 1920s Ireland during the beginning of the time of "the Troubles", this novel is part of J.G. Farrell's Empire Trilogy - all of which sought to show the folly of the British imperial philosophy. The novel focuses on the growing tensions between the "dirty Shinners" (Sinn Fein) and the proud but dotty and ineffective British loyalists. We observe the insanity build in both the characters and the country through the prism of a dispassionate WWI veteran, Major Brendan Archer.

The action takes place in the Majestic, a once-proud but now decaying hotel located in the fictional coastal town of Kilnalough. Its run by an eccentric red-faced English expatriate who has let the hotel slide after the death of his wife - ceding the upper floors of the hotel to a band of rapidly multiplying cats (who live off the rats) and eventually turning the squash court into a home for 12 piglets (later brutally slaughtered by Sinn Fein). When the servants' wing loses its roof, it forces the servants to move into the area of the hotel housing the guests - this mixture of the "quality" with the workers is an outrage to the "quality," but they are unable to stop it from happening.

The hotel serves as an apt metaphor for the decline of British influence and the tension that results when cultures and social philosophies collide. It is an extremely funny (in places), but ultimately tragic novel of a difficult period in both British and Irish history. It's a good, but not great, historical novel which was a little too dark for my tastes.

I've now read all three of Farrell's trilogy on the fall of British colonialism. What is fascinating to me is the recurrent images in the three books of big houses falling into disrepair (for different reasons), dogs, and John Bull Brits who cannot understand why the races they "oversee" do not appreciate the "benefits of civilization" that the Brits have "bestowed" on them. Also, each book's point of view is told from the Brits' vantage (or the Anglo-Irish, in the Troubles), with little POV from the oppressed peoples. The latter are a mute force that the Brits can barely comprehend.

Each book is different in its circumstances, of course. Yet the three together form an poignant description of a lost world. And each magnificently uses strange, eccentric characters and black humor to make its points without being didactic or boring.

Of the three, Troubles is my least favorite, in part because I thought the metaphor of the decaying house got beat to death in this one. Also, there is generally less action than in Singapore Grip and Siege of Krishnapur. Yet choosing among the three is a bit like arguing about which was Picasso's greatest painting. Farrell's sure hand is there as he presents his characters with an ironic but sympathetic touch, and makes his points without being preachy.

One of the greatest pleasures for a reader is to discover a writer who has written enough books to promise a feast of reading for many days to come. I have just discovered the books of J.G. Farrell an Anglo-Irish writer whose trilogy of books about the waning British empire has a small but ardent following of passionate devotees. I now number myself among this group of J.G. Farrell fans, for I have seldom found a writer with a greater facility for interweaving tragic action with comic relief.

I just finished reading Farrell's Troubles, a turbulent, touching, and often slyly funny novel about the residents of an Anglo-Irish upper class hotel surrounded on all sides by a seething mass of Irish rebels, intent on wresting Ireland from the British. The main characters include Edward Spencer, the stubborn, arrogant, and mostly insane proprietor of the Majestic Hotel and Major Brendon Archer, newly returned from the horrific trenches of the Great War, hoping to find a bride and some rest in Ireland but instead finding only chaos and comic confusion.

Archer's elusive bride-to-be Angela dies in mysterious circumstances early in the novel, but is soon replaced in his affections by the acerbic and beautiful Sarah Devlin. The Major's desperate love for Sarah reminds me of nothing so much as the hopeless love of Pip for Estella in Great Expectations. Sarah, like Estella suffers in the end for her determined disregard of a loving suitor, choosing instead a violent man who abuses her.

While love between men and women rises and falls with the turbulent tides, the village of Kilnalough in which the Majestic sits like an engorged boa constrictor, surges and skirls with ever increasing violence. Meanwhile a group of impoverished but gentile old ladies, residents of the Majestic and keepers of the flame, act as a kind of tottering Greek chorus, commenting dolefully on every action both private and public that seems to presage the ruin of the Anglo-Irish empire.

Wonderful, fast moving action laced with comic fumblings between the mad and nearly mad residents, not to mention the green-eyed threat of hundreds of feral cats who call the upper stories of the rotting Majestic their home, combine to make Troubles a can't-put-it-down-except-to-eat-and-sleep-kind-of-book. And once you finish it, there still await The Siege of Krishnapor and Singapore Grip, Farrell's other two novels in his astounding trilogy.

Historical fiction is written to encapsulate a time that perhaps has been forgotten or distorted through a fog of fading memories. JG Farrell has used the art of fiction and the brilliance of his imagination to bring us through the fog and into the dining hall of the Majestic, an oversized 300-room collapsing and pathetic monster of a hotel that is an obvious metaphor for the British Empire itself in the early 1920s. Farrell carefully constructs a unique pocket of society in Ireland, which is living within the fantastically dying hotel. This society consists of old men and women who are relics of a golden age; Edward Spencer, the hotel's blustering British owner and manic-depressive loyal British subject; and the vaguely depressed Major Brendan Archer, a shell-shocked English WW I veteran through whose sensitive, dazed, overwhelmed, properly British, and love-struck eyes the action is seen. The Major has come to the Majestic after the war to marry (or not) Edward's daughter, Angela, with whom he's been conducting a long and somewhat strained correspondence through the war years. This hilarious and absurd imitation of a romance becomes almost surreal, as the Major can barely even locate Angela within the labyrinthine maze of decaying hotel rooms no less carry on any kind of coherent conversation with her about marriage. As time moves forward in this sprawling work, situations and circumstances for the hotel residents and the Major become more and more pronouncedly frustrating, ridiculous, and dangerous, but obliquely seen from the hotel's crumbling window frames is the outside world, and it is a sobering sight. Take this scene, for instance, which takes place by an abandoned potato field near the Majestic: "By a gate leading into one of these fields a man wearing a ragged coat stood, motionless as a rock, his eyes on the ground. As they passed he did not even raise his eyes. What was the fellow doing standing motionless in an empty field, staring at the ground? the Major wondered." The "Irish Times" manages to float into the Majestic every day and brings with it a world up in arms, where murder is frequent, violence is the norm, and the British Empire is holding on for dear life to its treasures around the globe.

Yet this novel is not entirely political. Human beings live within its covers, complete with their loves, their follies, their prejudices, and their madnesses. It's a rich, imaginative, and funny work, even as its atmosphere is morbid and gothic. Although I think "The Siege of Krishnapur," written three years after this, is an even more engaging and brilliant work, taking in a broad sweep of history, that does not detract from this monumental novel, which I highly recommend.

By the way, I completely agree with the reviewer who strongly suggested that John Banville's introduction not be read first. Banville seems to have no hesitancy in spoiling the plot for the reader by revealing crucial details upfront, but his comments are well worth reading. They should be moved to the back of the book, however, and be renamed "Afterword." Fortunately for me, I read them after reading the novel and not before.

The book's central character is an Englishman, Major Brendan Archer, back from the horrifying and haunting battlefields of the First World War. He is too limp for words, never getting round to discussing his supposed war-time engagement with Angela Spencer, which was the purpose for which he had come to the fictional village of Kilnalough (on one page situated somewhere in Co. Wicklow, on another in Co. Wexford) in July 1919. When Angela takes to her bed, he cannot bring himself to ask her father what is the matter with her until it was too late - let alone finding out which room in the rambling old hotel is hers and going to see her. Intending to leave after at most a couple of days, he stays in the hotel, where there is not a single likeable person, either in the hotel or in the village, and where, indeed, all the inhabitants are caricatures, even if they are entertainingly described. In the first part of the book the Major finds everything comically Irish, and the author himself gives us some farcical scenes which play up to every Oirish stereotype. This is of course a contrast to the far from comical tensions between the Unionists on the one hand and the Home Rulers and Sinn Fein in the other. Already there is bloodshed.

The dilapidated Hotel Majestic, under the Protestant ownership of Angela's choleric and increasingly eccentric father Edward, is intended to stand for the decaying British Empire; but this is no genteel and gradual decay: here again the descriptions of its mouldering state and its unspeakable food are laid on with a trowel, the most extreme example of which is a decomposing sheep's head in a chamber pot which the Major finds in a cupboard in his bedroom: neither Edward nor Angela evinced any surprise when he mentioned it the next morning.

Having got away from Kilnalough for some ten months, the Major is drawn back there in May 1920. No reason is given for this, since he knows that the one person he had found attractive there, the aggressively sharp-tongued Sarah Devlin, was then away in France (though she will eventually return). The quaintness of the preceding part now recedes for a while. The violence has become worse (and not only in Ireland - news items from other parts of the Empire show that there are Troubles there, too). For a time unruly Black and Tans are lodged in a wing of the Majestic Hotel.

The Major is as ineffectual as ever, in ways I must not describe, but which leave him tormented and melancholic. Though he seems to be vaguely in charge in Edward's absence, until nearly the end of the book he doesn't have anything to do, and spends a good deal of his time playing whist with the half dozen or so old ladies who are among the permanent residents in the cat-infested hotel. The only young residents are Edward's tearaway twin daughters, Faith and Charity, expelled from school, and up to every kind of malarkey.

Later on, you have to suspend your disbelief for an extended passage, well written though it is, in which the local gentry and men from the Black-and-Tans are invited to join the residents in a ball staged in partially patched-up hotel. (The patch-up took a mere month. And where did the money come from?) The scenes of the ball and its aftermath are both farcical and ghoulish.

Within a month the hotel is back in its decrepit state and worse - a mirror of the steady deterioration of Edward's mental state and of the security situation outside. And so the story reaches its denouement.

The book is certainly very readable. Farrell conveys well both the arrogant attitude and the rising fears of the Protestant Establishment in Southern Ireland. He has superb descriptive powers of place and of people, and he keeps a large cast under good control. Oddly, the central character of the Major seemed to me rather colourless: I was as exasperated by him as I was sorry for him. I also found the mix of narrative and quasi-surrealism disconcerting, as I did the mix of over-the-top farce and pathos; and the authorial voice at the beginning struck me as a little too condescending to the Irish. So I cannot quite share the enthusiasm of those readers who have voted it the winner of "the Lost Booker".

At the end of the first World War, the major heads to Kilnalough with the half hearted intention of marrying Angela, whom he briefly met in Brighton and corrosponded with during the war. She lives in a huge, once magnificent hotel-The Majestic- with her Father(a dyed in the wool Unionist) her wayward brother and twin sisters.
The hotel is falling into disrepair and his colonized with cats and ols ladies. Outside, the troubles begin as the Irish fight for independence....
This is a great book, exploring change, decay and the impermanence on all levels-in particular the collapse and ending of empires (and in particular the British) following World War One, a war that started in order to uphold empires, but which ultimately killed them.
On one level this is just a great story well told with humour and pathos about an eccentric family in an eccentric Irish Town living and running a decaying disaster of an hotel. On another, the Majestic acts as a symbol of the Empire at its end; the futile attempts to maintain it and its ultimate collapse. The characters represent all attitudes towards the Empire-the strong pro and anti of the Unionists and Republicans to the general indifference and apathy of the Major which was felt by many about empires after the stupid waste of the Great War.
A lot of Irish literature about the troubles (which often seems to be the only topic of Irish writing) tends to bore due to repetitiveness and one dimensionalism or (as with Brendan Behan) portrays the IRA as some sort of romantic organization when the truth is brutally different, Farrell avoids these traps, even hints at the precariousness of revolutions. They may start out as ideals for freedom and justice, but thuggery and terrorism favour the evil-hence Stalin, hence Pol Pot hence Mugabe. Unless you're lucky enough to have a Gandhi or Luthor King opposing the violence and thuggery of the oppressor, you're likely to simply replace evil for evil.
A warm, humourous, poignant and enjoyable book that scores on every level.