I loved this novel. Full disclosure: I love novels with ghosts, handsome Irishmen, Irish wit and whimsy, J.M. Synge's play "The Playboy of the Western World," and, well, Ireland. (Not necessarily in that order.) Kidd balances the wit and whimsy with enough darkness, and awareness of Ireland's demons (I like that too) to stop this modern-day fairy tale becoming too precious, or trivializing a painful subject.
I happened to be reading this just as news broke in Ireland that the remains of 800-odd babies and infants had been discovered in a cess-pit beneath a former home for unwed mothers in Galway. Take whatever comfort you can from the thought that "Himself" suggests what might have happened if one of those babies had survived, and returned to the village of his birth, to avenge the appalling treatment of his teenage mother.
Right so.
I happened to be reading this just as news broke in Ireland that the remains of 800-odd babies and infants had been discovered in a cess-pit beneath a former home for unwed mothers in Galway. Take whatever comfort you can from the thought that "Himself" suggests what might have happened if one of those babies had survived, and returned to the village of his birth, to avenge the appalling treatment of his teenage mother.
Right so.
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