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But Come Ye Back: A Novel in Stories
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From Publishers Weekly
In this gentle, understated novel in stories, Lordan (And Both Shall Row; August Heat) follows an American couple who retire to Galway after a workaday existence in Ohio. Irish-born Mary fulfills the immigrant's dream of returning to Ireland after raising two boys, and her accommodating Irish but American-born husband, Lyle, gruffly tolerates the late-life move. While Mary blooms in her old home, Lyle, a retired accountant, approaches the transition as just another hurdle. He openly dislikes Ireland and Irish people, and resists the local vernacular: a "prom" will forever refer to a high school dance and not a bayside walkway. Slowly, however, he adjusts and even revels in his foreigner status. The couple must do more than simply adjust to a strange culture and climate; Mary and Lyle must also rework their relationship and each is tempted by a new love interest. Lyle is drawn to an attractive American tourist, and Mary spends time with a lonely Irish widower. Then Mary unexpectedly falls ill, and Lyle must decide on which side of the Atlantic his heart belongs. Lordan's muted prose and fluting Irishisms ("Right, so," "Grand") are pleasant if rather self-conscious, and her characters are human, breathing people, forthrightly crafted. The novel-in-stories structure produces some inconsistencies and redundancies, but this is a quietly engaging effort.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From
It's a brave writer who uses a phrase from the great sentimental ballad "Danny Boy" as a title. Lordan (And Both Shall Row, 1998) assiduously avoids the bathos implied in that title, opting instead for a meticulously drawn portrait of Mary Curtin and Lyle Sullivan's long marriage--its "pettiness and comfortable meanesses and easy generosities." Through flashbacks and shifting narrative perspectives, we see a young, desperately lonely Lyle, after three dates and one brief kiss, fly off to Ireland to ask for Mary's hand in marriage. Some 30 years and two sons later, having retired in Ireland, the couple has lapsed into a comfortable routine, trying to avoid well-worn arguments as Lyle fends off Mary's nonstop chatter and Mary chafes under Lyle's silences. Lyle becomes enamored of an elegant young tourist, while Mary finds comfort in the banter of a lonely Irishman. But a health crisis provides Lyle with a sudden, keening appreciation for Mary's ability "to keep going, to show how that was done without you really noticing." A delicate, understated, yet deeply affecting series of stories. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
11/01/2007
The mark of a good book for me is when I begin to have feelings for the characters, and I hate to see the book come to an end.
This is true for But Come Ye Back, and it touched some nerves with me.
My own mother was born in Ireland, came to the U.S., worked as a nanny and met my Irish, but American born father, who was another Lyle. That said, I found some humor and sadness in reading this book. It is a wonderfully written love story, without the actual word "love" being spoken. It is heartwarming, and I am sure many people will relate to the characters.
22/04/2006
I was brought to this book by a rave review by Ron Charles in The Christian Science Monitor. On the surface, I was a little skeptical about even starting it. The author describes her book as a " novel in stories." And that it is. The general plot outline is about a retired American couple who return to the wife's native Ireland to finish their lives together. This did not seem to bode very well and I was just little reluctant to start the book. But once I got into the first and second of these stories, I could not stop. What Beth Lordan has done is to people her novel with characters so believable and so compelling that I begn to believe that I was now living next door to them. The fourth story, entitled "Digging" is worth the price of the book in and of itself. A glorious and moving story of real people which left me thinking about Kent Haruf's "Plainsong". Highly recommended.
30/01/2004
Irish-born Mary Curtin and American Lyle Sullivan met on Lyle's home soil when Mary was working as an au pair, and they spent most of their marital decades in Ohio. Surprising both themselves and their two grown sons, when retirement looms, the couple decides to move to Galway. Mary, long homesick for the small dailiness of Irish life, finds the move as invigorating as the sea air in her new hometown, while Lyle adjusts more slowly and clumsily.
The real clumsiness, however, is between them. Lyle, it seems, has been a too-reserved and angry husband, given to odd mannerisms that suggest obsessive-compulsive disorder. Mary, meanwhile, fell into the rut of so many 1960s American housewives of not having a life of her own. When she's back on familiar ground, she begins to wonder if the sacrifices she made for Lyle were worth it. Both husband and wife find themselves drawn to other people, and if those encounters do not result in classic affairs, the consequences for the marriage are no less classic: in the Sullivans' case, extramarital attraction makes their hearts grow fonder --- for each other.
The stories that form this novel are remarkable for many reasons, but I was chiefly struck -- take a cultural oddity/tradition and make it a metaphor --- yet here it's remarkably fresh, as if Lordan had invented the steps herself.
However, just as they begin to dance to the same rhythm, Mary and Lyle are thrown -- the earlier stories in BUT COME YE BACK have their own kind of beauty, including the stunning "The Man With the Lapdog," which won the 2000 O. Henry Award. However, they don't have the same naked honesty that shines through in "But Come Ye Back," the final "chapter" of the book. Here, we discover the power of Lyle's love for Mary and are shown a remarkable faith for long-term relationships, not just marriage but also relationships between other family members --- father and children, sister- and brother-in-law, the newly affianced.
In this story/novella/whatever it is, Lyle's grief is stark in its unraveling, his sons' interactions all too true in their small kindnesses and idiosyncrasies. While the first six stories had me nodding my head and stopping to think, "But Come Ye Back" had me forgetting to breathe.
--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick
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