Book Thoughts: The Light of Evening

Yesterday I finished Edna O'Brien's The Light of Evening, the last book in our local library's book club series on Ireland. O'Brien is a bit of a trailblazer for Irish authors, and is often credited with paving the way for many of today's current Irish novelists. However, O'Brien is still writing, with The Light of Evening published in 2006, and other novels published since.

The book itself centers on relationships, and in particular, mother-daughter relationships. The pivotal character is a women named Dilly, and it is her relationships with her mother, Bridget, and her daughter, Eleanora, that provide the emotional center of the novel. Dilly leaves Ireland when she is about 20 or so for New York; eventually however, she decides to return to Ireland after finding America, and its immigrant life in the 1920s, not to be the promise she was hoping for. Later, her daugher, Eleanora, leaves home and becomes a writer in London; however, she never returns home. There is obviously much more to the novel than that, but I think that captures the underlying conflict that permeates the novel. On one level, it can be interpreted as a child who, by deciding not to follow the same decision as the parent, repudiates the parent's decision. I think it plays out similar to a child deciding that they do not want to follow in the family business, whatever that business may be.

But O'Brien's exploration of the mother-daughter relationship (and by extension, the generic parent-child relationship), is much deeper, and I think its impossible to read this book, as a grown child, and not gain some appreciation for a parent's perspective. I would be very interested in reading this book again whenever I have kids, to see how it hits then. In any event, an underlying point that O'Brien seems to be making is that at the core of every genuine parent-child relationship is a simple truth that inherently puts strain on that relationship. For the parent, that child is the most important thing in the parent's life; generally, for the child, the parent will never be the most important thing. O'Brien seems to suggest that the parent's ability to let go, and the child's ability to understand and recognize this inherent difference, is vital to moving the relationship forward.

Its a very thought-provoking book, one that will make you examine the structure of your relationship with your parents, and any children. While is took me awhile to get into the language and writing style used by O'Brien (very Joycian), it seems to grow on you, whereby halfway through the novel her prose seems to be very poetic, very musical. The novel provides an excellent description of immigrant tenement life in New York city in the 1920s, including the journey over and the coexisting joy and despair of immigrants coming through Ellis Island. It also provides great insight into small village culture in western Ireland. I find it rare that a book can combine authentic glimpses of history and struggle, as well as give insight and thought into the emotional underpinnings of relationships. O'Brien's novel accomplishes that, I think, and thus it was a highly enjoyable read.