September - Trinity by Leon Uris
Reviews of Trinity by Leon Uris
September's Selection for the Eclectic Book Club
Trinity by Leon Uris
Review by Rowland Croucher
“Each annual holidays I try to read a well-researched historical novel. Reading 'Trinity' - sometimes acclaimed as Uris' best book - was the highlight of a week in Bali (courtesy of a generous friend). (PS. There's really no reason to go to Bali unless you've never experienced a two-thirds world culture - or you can do a cheap stopover. You certainly wouldn't go there for the unhygienic beaches).
I should have read this blockbuster (890 pages) about the history of the Irish 'troubles' long ago. It's a powerful commentary on our inhumanity to others, as depicted in the fortunes (or, generally, misfortunes) of three Irish families, from the Famine of the 1840s to the Easter Rising of 1916.
Uris' scathing diatribes target the injustices of British imperialism, Roman Catholic medievalism, dehumanizing industrialism, and the religious hucksterism associated with both Catholic and Protestant fundamentalisms. What's he _for_? Political liberalism, I guess.
There's a speech on page 808 that summarizes the book's message: 'Let me tell you that Ulster Unionism is nothing more than Protestant materialism. Your epoch of greed has gone on for three hundred and ten infamous years of classic misrule and classic injustice. You have bled and raped Ireland. You have imposed abnormal taxation. You have manipulated to keep the Irish farmer the most impoverished in the Western world and the Irish laborer the most underpaid in Europe. You have destroyed the vitality of the land so as to expose it to cancerous famine. Why, you've driven more Irishmen out of their own country than populate it today. You and your entire parasitic band are in it for the pound sterling. I suggest you have been milking a big fat tit, sir. All of this has been done while nobly wrapping yourself in a Union Jack.'
Says one Irish revolutionary to another: 'You know, Seamus, nothing ever happens here in the future. It's always the past happening over and over again' (p.787). It's a recurring echo in the book of Eugene O'Neill's well-known line from 'A Moon for the Misbegotten': 'There is no present or future - only the past, happening over and over again - now!'
I won't spoil it for you by commenting further. If you don't want to be profoundly disturbed or if you don't want to de-sanitize your school history, read something else. But if you want a graphic narrative backdrop to the contemporary version of the 'Troubles' read it. And ask: how can such evils triumph while all sides invoke the same Deity?”
Review from Random House
“The "terrible beauty" that is Ireland comes alive in this mighty epic that re-creates that Emerald's Isle's fierce struggle for independence. Trinity is a saga of glories and defeats, triumphs and tragedies, lived by a young Catholic rebel and the beautiful and valiant Protestant girl who defied her heritage to join him. Leon Uris has painted a masterful portrait of a beleaguered people divided by religion and wealth--impoverished Catholic peasants pitted against a Protestant aristocracy wielding power over life and death.”
From the New York Times Book Review
"Leon Uris is a storyteller, in a direct line from those men who sat around fires in the days before history and made the tribe more human."
posted by RadioMensa | 8:02 PM
2 Comments:
I have wanted to start this with a list of just a few that I found really good. I like to include books that give you a sense of Irish culture, the Irish context.
1. Out of time: Irish republican prisoners Long Kesh 1972-2000. Laurence McKeon. BTP publications, c.2001. This has "in their own words" memoirs of various prisoners...and takes you up to and after the GFA.
2. 1921. Morgan Llywelyn. A Tom Doherty Asso. Book. c.2001. A fictionalized, but meticulously researched account of the “Irish War for Independence and the heartbreaking civil war that followed.”
This author is known for historical accuracy.
3. Grania, she-king of the Irish Seas. Morgan Llywelyn. Random House. 1986. Again a fictionalized account. I have a non-fiction one, Granuaille, that so closely parallels Morgan Llyweyln's it is absorbing to read them both to see just how much is really known about her, and the truth of many of her exploits.
One of her strong-holds still stands on Clare Island.
4. The Raid. Randy Lee Eickhoff. Tom Doherty. c.1997.
Dr. Eickhoff has taught himself the old Irish and has translated numerous manuscripts. His mother is Irish.
This is the translation of Táin Bó Cuailgne and is extremely entertaining and includes all the bawdiness, and “bold, brassy life’ which most translators leave out. Also provides glossary, terms, so if ever you wondered what the Gae Bolga is, Cuchulainn's javelin, and why it was so deadly or what was the warp-spasm the warrior experienced during battle, it's all in here. Wonderful sense of ancient Ireland. And critical to Ireland's sense of itself. One of the most famous of the stories in the Ulster Cycle. Ian would be shocked.
Susan
cont.
5. The Secret Army. J. Bowyer Bell. Poolbeg Press. rev ed. 1997. Detailed account of events from 1916-1990s.
Nice on hand for reference but hard to read all in one sitting! I bought a copy of this book from some men in Tralee. They were in a little corner shop and were selling various books. I purchased several items, no doubt they were republicans, since all the original signers of the Proclamation were pictured on the wall and pictures of the Hunger Strikers were hung around the edge of the shop. I didn’t know enough then
To ask which ‘branch’ of republicanism they represented.
6. The Long War. The IRA an d Sinn Féin, 1985 to today. Brendan O’Brien. Syracuse University Press, 1995. Highly readable account of ‘the long war”. Includes various maps and diagrams of arms and explosives finds south of the border (? How is that?)also lists of security force, and IRA deaths, extracts from the Green Book, IRA general army orders, etc. Lots of photos too.
7. Sun dancing, a vision of medieval Ireland. Geoffrey Moorhouse. Harcourt, Brace, 1997.
Life in a medieval Irish monastery and how Celtic spirituality influenced the world. Goes back 1400 years to re-create life on Skellig Michael, a rock off Irelands Kerry Coast. This may not sound too interesting,
But it is a really compelling read about life long before Viking marauders came. If you ever see Skellig
Michael it only adds to the astonishment that you feel when you read what they did there. Suggests how the minds of those isolated monks might have endured the harshness.
8. Trinity. Leon Uris. I don’t own this book so I have no publishing information on it, but any public library would have Leon Uris’s books. I read this a few years ago but what I liked was it gives you the ‘feel’ right away of what life was like for the average rural Irish farmer and the republican mindset “pre-Parnell.” I also liked this book because it lays the groundwork for The Committee. The story details the ‘taking over’ of Belfast and Derry by a few select businessmen and the results of their greed in human cost. Irish human cost.
Additional Great Famine Refernces:
Land and Sovereignty in Ireland at http://frontrow.bc.edu/program/kearney/
Teaching the Famine at http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/debates/famine.shtml
the Great Famine at http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/history/events/dates/famine.shtm
The Irish Potato Famine at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/irish_potato_famine.cfm
The Irish Famine at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/state/nations/famine_01.shtml
Views of the Famine at http://vassun.vassar.edu/%7Esttaylor/FAMINE/
The Ocean Plague: The Diary of a Cabin Passenger at http://www.people.virginia.edu/%7Eeas5e/Irish/Whyte.html
Research Resources for the Study of 19th-Century Ireland at http://www.qub.ac.uk/en/socs/research.htm
Irish Emigrant Ship at http://www.jeaniejohnston.com/home.asp?id=1
THE LONG VIEW at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/longview_20020402.shtml
Interpreting The Irish Famine, 1846-1850 at http://www.people.virginia.edu/~eas5e/Irish/Famine.html
The Great Irish Famine at http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/irish_pf.html
Hunger in History: Monuments to the Great Famine at http://frontrow.bc.edu/program/kelleher/
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