In addition, we are provided with a passionate re-telling of the atrocities visited on the Irish by the Anglo and Irish-Anglo ruling class. This hyper-literate narrative inside a narrative inside a narrative unfolds as a simple tale at first, then becomes more complex as this deft tale-spinner pulls the scope out one notch at a time. One of the most devastating and politically incorrect and possibly quite true themes that continually comes through (flying in the face of the pieties of the modern Republic) is that there is such an enormous disparity between native Catholics and settler Protestants, both of whom passionately love the land, that there is practically no hope whatsoever of the two tribes or even species - it goes way beyond simple things such as religious differences - ever being able to comprehend one another.“The most eloquent man in the world”? It’s entirely possible. This is wonderfully well done and constitutes a fresh and rather variegated look at a period which most of us in Ireland only know from textbooks. Other voices interject from time to time to indicate that Charles for all his confidence in his own eloquence and grasp of the situation surrounding him often doesn't quite understand how others see him nor what is really taking place in the country. Charles acts as a witness to the way in which the land was restored to the dispossessed and embittered native population and comes in contact, often quite innocently, with major figures of the period such as Parnell, Oscar Wilde, Yeats and Shaw. There is a design behind the loosely linked series of stories through which the principal narrator Charles O'Brien sets out his own life story from the 1860s through to the early 20th century. This would seem to be the method he employs, but to be more precise, behind the apparent simplicity and anecdotal nature of the tales he tells lies a very sharply-honed novelist's mind. Frank Delaney is a shanachie, following on in the old tradition of the storytellers of Ireland.
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