The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin

...and that truth is, as the `troubles' of Ireland are frequently called, `a terrible beauty'. These stories by Maeve Brennan, all but one of which originally appeared in The New Yorker, are of that level of truth. The author was born in Ireland and came to America at the age of seventeen with her family - when they returned, she stayed...and she remembered. Sharing these stories - some perhaps autobiographical, perhaps not - with us is a gift we should treasure, for they reveal not only deep, moving moments about the characters they portray, but about ourselves.The stories collected here are divided into three groups - the `perhaps' autobiographical tales (told from the first person); and two groups that center on the marriages and lives of two couples, the Derdons and the Bagots. There is a sadness that permeates most of these stories - although there are moments of humor contained in them, to be sure - that sings in that peculiarly Irish way of sorrow that is too deep to voice otherwise. The marriages of the Derdons and the Bagots are soaked in the dampness of resignation - a resignation to lives that must be accepted in lieu of anything that gives more satisfaction or happiness or joy. It is a resignation that is heartbreaking. I think we have probably all been touched by its cold hands at one time or another - when we are lucky, we can shake off their grasp. If we give ourselves up to it, the weight will grow and grow throughout the length of our lives. Perhaps in seeing what that weight has done to the lives of the people depicted here, we can find the strength and will to shrug off that weight.Brennan's prose is marvelous - it captures everything vital in the lives of these characters, right down to the faded, damp-stained wallpaper in their homes. Their hopes - which are invariably just as faded, if not more - and dreams, their joys and sorrows, are all depicted so vividly that we feel them at the deepest level. That's an amazing accomplishment in writing - these stories should be more widely read for that reason alone.William Maxwell, Maeve Brennan's friend and editor at The New Yorker, contributes one of the most illuminating and touching introductions I've ever read - it's incredibly useful to the reader's appreciation of both the author and her work. I would suggest reading it a couple of times before entering into the stories themselves, and again when you've finished them.This collection is a treasure - I stumbled on it by chance, another unexpected discovery. `Luck of the Irish'...? Perhaps.

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.

Even the stories that are rather sad and unhappy are so well written that they speak profoundly. One of the stories that I particularly liked was "The Barrel of Rumors." Curious about the life of the Poor Clare nuns her mother helps with donations of food, Maeve can never bring herself to ask them about what she wants to know. And, of course, no one she does ask can really answer her questions. Her Uncle Matt, though, can throw in just a very light touch of humor about what she wants to know. Charming.

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!!!

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.