It's taken me a little time to orient myself in Joseph O'Connor's Ghost Light, a novel I picked up at the last minute before it was due back at the library, thinking I could squeeze it in quickly only to discover that this is a story that is not to be rushed. So now each day I spend with it costs me, as the fines on it are adding up. I think in the end this is going to be a read worth each penny (well more like quarter) that gets tacked on to my account.
The story is based on a love affair between Irish playwright John Millington Synge and actress Molly Allgood who is some fifteen years his junior. I don't know much about Synge and will now be looking at his plays (particularly his famous Playboy of the Western World which caused riots when it premiered), but Synge and Allgood were of two social classes and their romance was frowned upon both by Synge's good friend W.B. Yeats and his mother with whom he lived. Their affair was very passionate and tumultuous with Allgood wanting marriage and Synge putting her off through a combination of a belief that marriage was unnecessary and knowledge that his mother would stop funding him if such a thing occurred. Instead they would take themselves off to Wicklow where they could be together without the world knowing.
Molly is a fiery character willing to stand up to the older playwright who is considered a genius by his friends. What's made this story so disorienting is the manner in which O'Connor tells it. He moves about in time and place and with varying narrators. The story begins in 1952 in London where a much older and down at heel Molly Allgood reflects back on her life. Well, at least I think it's Molly. I've been a little confused as there is mention of a talented sister who took the world by storm and died in America. On top of that O'Connor uses the second person in these sections--it's very jarring to hear "you" in your mind--"You are sixty-five now, perhaps the age of that house, perhaps even a little older--what a thought." This sort of narration makes me stop in my tracks and reread trying to discover who is telling who what and exactly when in time.
Eventually the story moves back in time to Dublin in the early 1900s where the romance between Synge and Allgood is described in a much smoother third person. After a while I found myself reading along with the rhythm of the story and not noticing the tense changes and change in perspective so much. What I do notice is the beautiful lyricism of the language, which also makes me slow down, but in a good way. O'Connor writes very eloquently and it suits the story he is telling. He's also very adept at the colloquialisms of the time and place which makes it all feel very authentic.
I have a teaser to share, to give you a taste of what I'm reading. This is an older Molly speaking, rather reminiscing. She's thinking about her days in the theatre and how it is impossible for her to find work now that she is elderly.
"It's not easy for an actress once she has passed a certain age to secure a role commensurate with her training. The parts are too few. It is that simple and inescapable. Not in Shakespeare, not in Ibsen, not in Shaw, nor in Chekhov. She wonders, recrossing Queensway, if any of the blockheads had mothers. Did they never glance up from their inks and parchments, their grubby little fingerprints besmirching the margins, seagulls of their own inadequacy flitting in the rafters, and notice there was an elderly woman moving about in the room, probably preparing their lunch? An old male actor will always find something: a laird, a kindly king, the decrepit twit of the village, a blacksmith with an announcement, a butler in Wilde, the priest brought by night to marry ill-starred lovers whose families would keep them apart. But for a woman, once she has offended by outliving the age of childbirth, the roles disappear as honeybees in winter. A jealous auld hag. An irrepressible washerwoman. Some bitch to be bested in a pantomime."
That's Molly. It's the sections set in the 50s that I think I enjoy best, even with them being written in second person. She has such a biting tongue but is so perceptive. Yet these passages are filled with melancholia, too, which is sad as Molly as an old woman is so different than Molly as a young woman with her life and work all ahead of her.
I'm still reading. As a matter of fact I as soon as this is up and posted I'm off to try and finish. It's been a little challenging but well worth the effort. If the first two thirds of the book are anything to judge by, this is truly an exquisite story.