Book Review

Leon Uris, Corgi Books, 1985.

Each annual holidays I try to read a well-researched
historical novel. Reading ‘Trinity’ – sometimes acclaimed as Uris’
best book – was the highlight of a week in Bali (courtesy of a
generous friend). (PS. There’s really no reason to go to Bali
unless you’ve never experienced a two-thirds world culture – or
you can do a cheap stopover. You certainly wouldn’t go there for
the unhygienic beaches).

I should have read this blockbuster (890 pages) about
the history of the Irish ‘troubles’ long ago. It’s a powerful
commentary on our inhumanity to others, as depicted in the fortunes
(or, generally, misfortunes) of three Irish families, from the
Famine of the 1840s to the Easter Rising of 1916.

Uris’ scathing diatribes target the injustices of
British imperialism, Roman Catholic medievalism, dehumanizing
industrialism, and the religious hucksterism associated with both
Catholic and Protestant fundamentalisms. What’s he _for_? Political
liberalism, I guess.

There’s a speech on page 808 that summarizes the
book’s message: ‘Let me tell you that Ulster Unionism is nothing
more than Protestant materialism. Your epoch of greed has gone
on for three hundred and ten infamous years of classic misrule
and classic injustice. You have bled and raped Ireland. You have
imposed abnormal taxation. You have manipulated to keep the Irish
farmer the most impoverished in the Western world and the Irish
laborer the most underpaid in Europe. You have destroyed the vitality
of the land so as to expose it to cancerous famine. Why, you’ve
driven more Irishmen out of their own country than populate it
today. You and your entire parasitic band are in it for the pound
sterling. I suggest you have been milking a big fat tit, sir.
All of this has been done while nobly wrapping yourself in a Union
Jack.’

Says one Irish revolutionary to another: ‘You know,
Seamus, nothing ever happens here in the future. It’s always the
past happening over and over again’ (p.787). It’s a recurring
echo in the book of Eugene O’Neill’s well-known line from ‘A Moon
for the Misbegotten’: ‘There is no present or future – only the
past, happening over and over again – now!’

I won’t spoil it for you by commenting further. If
you don’t want to be profoundly disturbed or if you don’t want
to de-sanitize your school history, read something else. But if
you want a graphic narrative backdrop to the contemporary version
of the ‘Troubles’ read it. And ask: how can such evils triumph
while all sides invoke the same Deity?

I’m posting this to a few religious newsgroups. I’d
be interested in other reactions. Historians: did Uris do his
research thoroughly? Irish Protestants: how did you respond? Roman
Catholics: how do you relate to the syncretism of Catholicism
with Irish superstitions?

Rowland Croucher