The Heather Blazing (1992)

I feel like if I knew anything at all about Ireland's political history, this would have been more enjoyable. It's very melancholy, and kind of boring. Reminded me of Cider With Rosie, except a little more happens. But just a little. ( )

“Heather Burning”, published in 1992, is the second of Colm Tóibín’s novels. And even though it is one of his earliest works, it has all of the marks that distinguish him as one of the best of our contemporary writers.

Each of Tóibín’s novels creates a person of flesh and blood—a person whom we see in the breadth of their souls and minds. Not all of them are always likeable, but they are always real and understandable in their complexities:

• Katherine Proctor, in “The South”, who, abandoning her family and Ireland, struggles for her independence and identity in the harsh environment of post civil war Spain;
• Richard Garay, in “The Story of the Night”, who, during the time of Argentina’s Generals, finds eventual stability, comfort and acceptance as a gay man with AIDS;
• Helen O’Doherty, in “Blackwater Lightship”, who reconnects with her family and her brother, as that family comes to grips with his dying;
• Henry James, in “The Master”, on the verge of some of his most effective and creative literary creations;
• Eilis Lacey, in “Brooklyn”, who, as part of the European migration to the United States in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, commits under duress to a new future in a foreign land.

Here are real people who struggle with their lives and their relationships and who are rooted in real times and in real places—characters who deal with life’s critical issues including exile, solitude, apartness, loss and death and who, by the end, come to some type of resolution to their turmoil or acceptance of their circumstances.

Eamon Redmond, in “The Heather Burning”, is the second of Tóibín’s creations. Tóibín traces Eamon’s life from his youth through the death of his wife, Carmel, sometime in the 1970s. That life, linked in some measure to the Irish Republican Party of Fianna Fil, plays out along the southeastern Irish coast.
Eamon , a judge in Ireland’s high court, is a private person. There is a part of him that projects a coolness, a disengagement, a barrier that even those close to him fail to penetrate. He seems overly analytical, strongly practical, intensely inner-focused at times. But he is deeply attached to the land of his youth, whose slow coastal erosion emerges as a metaphor for his own aging. And he is also, we learn, deeply attached to his wife, whose death he can barely accept. It is out of that last struggle that regeneration seems possible through the emerging ties to his new grandson.
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Eamon Redmond, the narrator of The Heather Blazing, is a middle-aged Irish judge nearing retirement. The novel opens as he and his wife return to their County Wexford family home from Dublin where Eamon works on a ruling in the controversial case of an pregnant unmarried teacher who was fired from her position at a Catholic school. Most of the novel is composed of Eamon's reminiscences of his earlier life in Enniscothy (Toibin's home town): his grandfather's and uncle's deaths, his schooldays, his father's launching of a museum and his later stroke, his first sexual experiences and falling in love with his wife, his political activities and early days as a government prosecutor, etc. These memories are interwoven with present-day episodes involving his wife Carmel and his adult children, Maeve and Donal.

One repeated refrain is Carmel's complaint that Eamon seems "distant" and her unsuccessful efforts to break through his reserve. The closest he comes is early in their marriage, when he admits that, his mother having died when he was a baby, he grew up to be self-sufficient, believing that if he ever had to ask anyone for something, they would likely refuse. "No one ever wanted me," he tearfully confesses. Yet decades later, as Carmel struggles to speak after a stroke, she tells him, "We need to talk. You are always so distant. You never tell me anything. You don't love me. You don't love the children." I have to admit that I was a bit mystified by her complaint, having been privy to a lot of Eamon's thoughts, feelings, and concerns, and having seen him caring tenderly for his ailing wife, grieving after her death, and reaching out to his children in his loneliness. There are, after all, a lot of ways to express love besides talking about one's feelings, and Eamon seemed to me a good man who was devoted to his family.

This is not a book with a powerhouse plot and lots of action: it's a quiet revelation of and meditation on a life. The afterward reveals, as I suspected all along, that much of it was based on episodes from Toibin's own life, although he insists that Eamon is a totally fictitious character. Toibin's writing is moving and insightful, his love of Ireland and small town Irish culture apparent. A lovely book overall. ( )

The best description I can find for Colm Toibin's "The Heather Blazing" is that it's a quiet novel. The novel tells the story of Eamon Redmond, a somewhat cold Irish judge who spends some gloomy days recollecting his past. Being set in Ireland, the book includes a bit of politics as well as a pretty typical domestic life. There really isn't a ton happening plot wise here.

I found the book to be an easy read and the characters were interesting enough to keep my attention. That said, I didn't find it especially compelling either... (it's one of those books that I'm afraid a year or two from now, I'll have absolutely no recollection about except that the title is familiar.)

So, overall for me, this was just an average book for me... I honestly didn't really love it or hate it. ( )

The Heather Blazing is Tóibín's second novel and set in his home country, Ireland. The main character is Eamon Redmond, a judge in the Irish High Court. As Eamon spends his days preparing for complicated court cases in a small village on the Irish shore, he begins to remember his childhood and the death of his father. At the same time, he also recalls his relationship with his wife and daughter.

The Heather Blazing is a very slow-paced novel, full of gloomy memories, Irish politics and the rainy seaside village that provides the setting for both Eamon's childhood memories and his present days. The novel seems fairly simple: not much happens - an old man is just remembering his childhood. But somehow the atmosphere of Eamon's childhood summers and the relationship with his father are closely related to the summers of his adult life and the relationship between him and his wife. Once you notice the similarities between the two, the novel's structure actually becomes quite complicated.

This was a very strange novel and I found it extremely difficult to somehow dig under the surface of the story. :) Not the "easiest" novel by Tóibín to read. The tone of the novel and the setting reminded me of The Blackwater Lightship, but the characters and the tension in the novel were not as interesting in my opinion. So a bit of a disappointment...

Original review ( )