Galway Bay

Galway Bay

By Mary Pat Kelly (550 pages)

Published by Grand Central

Bookish rating: 4

Galway Bay qualifies, I think, as an “epic.” Spanning about 60 years, we follow Honora Kelly, from the “before times” in Ireland during the 1840s, through the Great Starvation, across the Atlantic, and during her life in Chicago.

Kelly covers a lot of ground in 550 pages. She sets up a sparkling Irish ideal, with (a few too many) fairy or ancient stories, pipe music, green hills, and the blue Galway Bay. Then “blight” on the potato crop three times in four years combined with evil landlords and an effed up government blocking aid cause around 1 million Irish peasants die. Although difficult to read, especially as Honora narrates as a mother with starving children, the years of blight are the most compelling of Kelly’s novel.

Galway Bay is good historical fiction. Honora has a unique and believable voice, the story is steeped in thick historical context, and the writing is very good. Although not written in dialect (thank goodness—dialect always reads as forced to me), Kelly effectively conveys that lively Irish lilt in in the dialogue as well as the rest of the writing. Irish words are sprinkled throughout, blessedly with a glossary at the back of the book. Although lending a nice Irish element, the syntax (I know, how boring) is really where Kelly pulls off a believable Irish tone for the book. The language sometimes veers a little too sentimental and preachy in Honora’s internal pondering, but it’s not terrible. Just a tad distracting and a little cheesy.

Kelly falls prey to a glitch I often see in historical fiction, especially epic-type fiction: the compulsion to include every possible historical event as personally affecting the heroine. The Great Starvation and Civil War I get. But loads of Irish politics, Irish-American politics, the Chicago fire, every influential Irish person, and on and on stretched credibility. The final 150 pages or so felt like a speedy, packed , bulleted list of Important Irish-American Moments in History, and I found myself anxious to get to the last page.

Galway Bay is a long but rewarding read for those interested in Irish, Irish-American, and Chicago history. Recommended, if you’ve got the time.