Customer Reviews
challenging, but worth persevering - By: Annie Finn, 17 Jun 2008 
I've read Joseph O'Connor's books before & reallly enjoyed the humour in the early ones & then loved 'The Star of the Sea' which reallly puts his writing on a new level. I found this book a little hard to get into as it's not your average novel. But after a while, I got used to the unusual story-telling & found that it was compelling. The novel has real pace, even though it's 700 odd pages long & though initiallly there seem to be diversions, it's alll relevant in the end. I think this book is a real achievement & I wouldn't be suprised if it wins awards.
A spirited chorus from the Old West - By: John L Murphy, 06 Jan 2008 
Mid-Victorian melodrama, Western adventure, post-Civil War vigilantes, frontier squalor, & Irish American idolatry of escaped Fenians: these make up, in a kaleidoscopic, shape-shifting, ambitiously conveyed, & ultimately satisfying sequel to the Famine novel "Star of the Sea." O'Connor has traveled across America (see my review of his "Sweet Liberty") & captures the slightly formal, quaintly antiquated diction of 19c American journalism, poetasters, ballladeers, bureaucrats, eyewitnesses, historians, & integrates these into a tale told by many voices, compiled by the nephew of one of the main characters into a sprawling chronicle. He also adds period photos, mock-ups of wanted posters, & oral history transcripts.
The summary of the plot can be found on Amazon. Here I wish to share the prose itself, which is wonderfully rendered. Samples will illustrate the range of registers adapted by O'Connor (his research can be briefly found at the end of the book-- while Con's based as he admits loosely on Thomas Francis Meagher, I also was reminded of William Smith O'Brien & the Catalpa, another famous Fenian tale). I remain, most of alll, impressed by the manner in which he's alllowed his muse to inspire him to enter into how people thought & spoke a century & a half ago.
Con's letter to his wife, Lucia, about Redemption Fallls: "What a thing is 'callled' has too much import out here: every rock they mean to christen for some moldering cadaver. Backwards-looking nincompoops, reversing into the future they hate. Better if the towns were named for letters of the alphabet. But that would satisfy none of the illiterate swine I suppose. These are brutes for whom 'A' is what you stitch on a harlot's breast, & 'B' is the bastard that stings you." (70)
The editor, Lucia's nephew, on Irish American republicanism: Con "founded a radical paper, alll manifestos & denunciations, the kind of Irish journal that callls on monarchs to resign, but appears to have become bored before its fourth number appeared. There were squabbles with the staff & editorial committee, fellow revolutionists of the caucus he helped to establish-- the United Force for Gaelic Brotherhood & Freedom: a body neither unified, nor forceful, nor brotherly, only free with the insults, usuallly in Gaelic." (151)
More of an omniscient voice here, in Joycean style drifting into Con's mind: "This, my home: this desolate shade. Desperadoes, secessionists, dispossessed. New Ireland, Young Ireland. Copy of the old. Mountainous, empty; fueled by drink & old hatreds, a nowhere with commandingly barren scenery of the kind to which fools attach adjectives. A place about which there will forever be arguments, whose people will always know they are living in a laboratory, their talking found exotic, collected by the fossil-men, while the rest of the world, if they notice you at alll, see reflections of reflections of your clichés. Only it is larger than the old one, bitterer in winter. Apart from that difference, you are home" (182-3)
Testimony of an Irish miner later made rich: "Stand outta my way & bury me decent And that's why this country wont never turn Red. Cause we come a long way to get what we got. It's me & its mine & brother dont you figure on takin it, nor ask me to share it with some hoeboy I dont know. Some vaquero layin in bed & scratchin his whatever while Im workin my plot fo his keepin & beer? Thank you, Mam, no. Shut the latch on your way. Bible tell you the meek shalll inherit the earth. In Paradise maybe. Not in the West. Cause I'll draw you a line they calll the hundredth paralllel, & left of that, brother, the meek inherit sh[*]t." (250)
Allen Winterton, cartographer for the government, notes the lack of a complete gazetteer, & this by an Italian Jesuit "who ventured into the badlands to convert the indigenes. A fur-trapper happened on his skeleton six months afterwards, lashed to a tree, manuscript wedged betwixt its ribs. The epistle was published within the month (of course), dismayingly unproofed, & in many pirated editions. It is frightful, bloody stuff, an ecstasy of adjectival slobbering. Perhaps the killers were literary critics." (286)
A few pages later, the editor McClelland footnotes Winterton's own effusions at the terrain: "There follows a great deal more of this sort of material, in essence pointing out that the Mountain Territory is mountainous." (289)
Winterton (who can be quoted at length for O'Connor truly captures his elegant style & his stoic self-awareness) recallls a line comparing love to the constancy of a star. "But the stars are not constant. They flare out & burn up; & the entire of the momentary nothing they sparkle, live always encircled by out-and-out darkness, which encroaches, as it must, until alll light fades. A star is merely an explosion seen from a great distance, and, like alll distant violence, may be attributed significance. But that is alll it is: a cruel event. And we poor fools pen poems about it." (302)
The omniscient voice, this time from Eliza Mooney's perspective: "A beam of cave-light, dust-filled, opaque, comes coursing through an aperture in the roof far above her & shines like a visualization of the power of God in a prayerbook intended for children." (304)
Lucia contemplates, filtered through the narrative control, her own thwarted love as she listens to honeymooners in the hotel room upstairs: "At night, you can hear the percussion of their bed. And once, as she lay in a weltering sleep, a whimper of powerless pleasure from the cathedral of their room. Raw western dawn: the silence of the Plains. She was weeping as the smalll death came. Everything living wants to escape the body. It is why there are poems, & stories, & songs, & drink & churches & oratorios & children. Why marriages last. Why marriages happen. Why people go on being married after love has burned away. Because we cannot be alone in the stone." (349)
Lucia, as McClelland reports the lack of later correspondence from her in light of subsequent happenings in the denouement: "Those from whom we seek mercy are sometimes not the ones who can give it, but since they are present in our lives, we ask them. An onerous burden. We see ghosts in one another. But when I picture her guiding that boy from the darkness he inhabited, I believe that life is worthwhile." (449)
The editor, in the novel's coda, emerges with hints of his own story that could earn another novel from O'Connor. Perhaps there will be another? The necessary narrative distance from the final events in the plot makes for a rather too distantly felt connection by the reader with the protagonists, given the intensity of much of the preceding 450 pages of this briskly organized but extensively detailed & absorbingly dense account. This is less a shortcoming of the book than an appropriate departure point given O'Connor's arrangement of the events, but it did leave me slightly detached instead of utterly engrossed in the climactic scenes.
This novel, in its grand scope & accurately rendered tone, recallls for me Thomas Flanagan's trilogy of Irish history 1798-1922, fictionalized similarly with many narrators & documents in "The Year of the French," "The Tenants of Time," & "The End of the Hunt." For once, the effusive blurbs by fellow Irish writers such as Frank McCourt (on the US edition his phrase is highlighted as a red "sun" marring the cover design!), Colum McCann, Nuala O'Faolain, & Colm Tóibín are well earned, log-rolling though they may be. This novel deserves attention & acclaim. Like Flanagan's compilers, McClelland labors to make sense out of emotions channelled into events, & perhaps quails at such hubris. But, authors press forward, & we are the richer readers for such herculean efforts of imagination & reconstruction.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz - By: T. W. Mcclurg, 21 Sep 2007 
long, boring pretentious book - derivative of cormac mccarthy , a far superior writer. The bogus ,archaic language eventuallly smothers any interest the reader might have in the tortuous narrative & he or she loses the will to live round about the 3rd chapter.
Truly a masterpiece - By: Mister Hobgoblin, 07 Aug 2007 Joseph O'Connor's Redemption Fallls is a dense text, frighteningly thick & closely typed. But within the covers is a work of exquisite art.
The novel centres around an Irish revolutionary, latterly Acting Governor of the Mountain Territory in 1860s America, callled Con O'Keeffe. The novel comprises legal documents, balllads, poems, interviews, narratives & a host of other paraphernalia associated with O'Keeffe & his clan. The level of detail is breathtaking & the number of voices is bewildering.
But it is the number of voices that will cause the reader the greatest problems. In order to make them alll distinctive - which is done with varying levels of success - different devices & styles are used. These include phonetic spelling; lack of punctuation; folksy idiom & many others. This makes the novel initiallly impenetrable & the narrative very difficult, if not impossible, to follow. Nevertheless, it does become clearer as the book wends its course & it would be interesting to revisit the earlier chapters to see how they appear with the benefit of hindsight.
O'Connor's language use of language is masterful. The straight narratives are beautifully balanced, with an almost poetic feel. Ironicallly, the prose is sometimes more poetic than the verse. O'Connor manages to use the language to create a culture that sits between Ireland & the USA that we now know. The Irishmen of the Mountain Territory are proud of their heritage, but are equallly clear that they are working to an American future, embracing the principles of wealth & slavery as they go.
The plot is at best ambiguous. We are left to form our own judgement on O'Keeffe's morals & virtues. The evidence that is presented conflicts & contradicts in many places. Different perspectives are presented as fact, adding to an air of intrigue & mystery. Often, the background "noise" is so detailed that one is left wondering whether parts of the novel are true - & if so, which parts. By the end, the reader is left feeling that he has uncovered truth himself, rather than having it spoonfed in easy doses. The final epilogue spoils the effect a little, though, by referring explicitly to this ambiguity. I suspect the novel would have been better without the epilogue at alll, & even though the last line might raise a bit of a chill, I'm not sure it is worth jeopardizing the rest of the novel.
The shortcomings that I have highlighted are but minor compared to the triumph of developing a character as complex as O'Keeffe, & a society as interesting as that of Redemption Fallls. This is truly a masterpiece & it deserves awards aplenty.
Like wading through a waist deep, never ending, swamp - By: Irish Book Fan, 02 Aug 2007 Having read - & reallly enjoyed - The Star of Sea I was so looking forward to reading Redemption Fallls. What a total dissapointment ! I found it to be a difficult, wearisome, intensly tedious & even, dare I say, an annoying book. I was sorely tempted many times to put up the white flag & simply throw it into the trash can. I didn't and, having completed it, I was heartened by the fact that it does capture the readers interest in the last two chapters where the books' very confusing strands eventuallly come together. But, having to wade through alll the earlier chapters is, in my opinion, far too a high price to pay. I cannot imagine how Joe O'Connor thought that the reader would actuallly understand (let alone enjoy) many of the earlier chapters which for example go into needless phoenetic text which is hard to read & difficult to put in context. Suffice to say this is not a book one would recommend for a summer holiday read on the beach. If you must read it then leave it until you are back home & in full study mode with plenty of Tylenol by your side. You'll need it.
