The short stories Maeve Brennan wrote for the New Yorker in the 1950s and 60s, having moved to the United States from Dublin in her teens, helped cement its reputation as an esteemed publisher of that format. The decades hence amount to a bittersweet tale where her career was lost to an alcohol-soaked mental decline and she became a wholly obscure name – though reappraised after her death in 1993, and a posthumous recipient of ‘cult writer’ status.
The Springs Of Affection, first published in the late 90s, collects stories set in the city of Brennan’s upbringing. One, The Day We Got Our Own Back, relates a real-life event from 1922: the parents of Brennan, then five years old, were both committed Irish Republicans to the extent of her father Robert being in hiding from the state, and their family home subject to raids. The recollection combines an adult’s outlining of the political context and the blessed naivete afforded by youth.
A great ability of Brennan’s is to convey a perspective whose essence is irrational, even cruel, in a tone that captures the character’s belief in their own righteousness. Hubert and Rose are a married couple whose interaction is typified by the husband’s simmering fury at his wife’s timid demeanour. He is callous and surely misogynistic, but more compelling for being no mere two-dimensional brute. Likewise, the final set of stories in The Springs Of Affection concern the Bagot family and those around them: Mrs Bagot’s sister-in-law Min is a ghastly snob, but with a degree of self-belief that can carry one along.
The Springs Of Affection, Maeve Brennan (Peninsula)
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words NOEL GARDNER