Without My Cloak

Still, Considine or not, you were born among us and you haven't escaped any more than the rest of us our terrible family affection, our cowardly inability to do without each other. Why, our whole strength is simply in our instinct to be large and populous and united. (p. 244)

The Considine family is large, prosperous and very influential. Their presence in the Irish town of Mellick dates back to a horse thief who arrived in 1789. Nearly a century later, the family has left that legacy behind. Honest John, son of the horse thief, started a business dealing in hay, straw, and forage and built it into a thriving international concern. His children are grown; his four sons have found "appropriate" careers, and his four daughters are all in show more marriages carefully orchestrated to preserve or enhance social standing. Honest John appointed his youngest son Anthony to take over the family business, and went so far as to express a desire that his grandson Denis, then 4 years old, succeed his father Anthony when he comes of age.

I like to use little sticky page flags to mark especially well-written passages, but there were so many in this book that I stopped doing so after the first 100 pages. The entire novel was beautifully written, and very moving in so many places. Take, for example, this passage describing the love between Anthony and his wife, Molly:
Whether Molly guessed the motive of his efforts at asceticism he could not say, but he imagined that she did. Whatever she was thinking she was very tender with his lapses from monasticism. But he and she rarely spoke of these things and never with precision. She knew that he deplored for her the discomfort of incessant childbearing and would do much to lessen it, but saw no help within the social and religious code they both upheld. He knew that childbirth frightened her, wilted and crushed her and gave her in her babies only very slender compensation, for she was by nature far more wife than mother. But it was a problem which they could never thrash out, and it was heightened by the fact that they were both on the crest of life, and if not loving each other very perfectly at all times and in all the regions of love, yet doomed to find a terrible delight, again and again, each in the other's body. (p. 76-77)

Anthony's sister Caroline, on the other hand, is in a lackluster marriage and powerless to escape; O'Brien brings intense emotional depth to those passages as well. And then there's brother Eddy -- as a man, he freed himself from family & societal pressures by serving as the business' London representative. In describing his London lifestyle, O'Brien alludes to Eddy's homosexuality, and drives the point home through another sister's endless squawking about how Eddy really should get married (even as Eddy ages into his 50s)! And finally there's young Denis, who comes of age in Mellick feeling very ambivalent about his career with the firm. Denis prefers gardens and design, but the bond with his father is so strong, he is unable to express his wishes. This all comes to a head, of course. Denis rebels, embarrassing his family and bringing considerable pain on himself. I found the dénouement a bit too tidy, but that's a relatively minor weakness in an otherwise wonderful book. show less

Though the sprawling, Victorian family saga is familiar enough, Kate O’Brien’s award-winning 1931 historical novel differs from many in its setting amongst the Irish-Catholic middle classes. The early stages of this tale offer a vivid portrait of the Considine family and its strange, interconnected, interdependent way of life: always clashing, always exasperating one another, yet unable to function apart; or rather, it never occurs to them to try. The family is founded in 1789 in the western Irish town of Mellick by Anthony Considine, on the run after stealing a thoroughbred mare. It is Anthony’s son, “Honest John” Considine, who establishes the family’s fortune via the forage business; and by the time he passes control to show more his own son, Anthony, the Considines have both wealth and respectability. The death of Honest John is a crushing blow to the family's collective existence, and one which compels change, as Anthony takes control of a newly-incorporated Considines and must deal with his brothers and brothers-in-law as members of his board of directors; all of them none the wiser about business, yet suddenly rapacious, as Considines soars to new heights of success under Anthony’s guidance.

Here the story begins to focus upon two of the Considine marriages. That of Anthony and Molly, though happy, is a meeting of the body rather than the mind, with Anthony’s desire for his wife battling with his guilt and fear over the consequences; until the worst comes to pass, and Molly dies giving birth to their ninth child. In parallel, the marriage of Caroline and Jim Lanigan seems everything it should be; but after ten years of surface perfection it is privately shattered by a single hysterical cry from Caroline that her husband must never touch her again – and after ten years more, publically declared a farce when Caroline bolts for London and the affectionate sympathy of her bachelor brother, Eddy. Her rebellion is as short-lived as it is achingly futile; the Considines close ranks; and after resuming her position, Caroline fades to the fringes of the story, growing suddenly older, and ever more bitter and judgemental. It is Anthony – shocked, furious, and utterly uncomprehending – who leads the charge to drag Caroline back to her husband; and indeed, by this stage Without My Cloak is far more the story of Anthony’s deficiencies than of his triumphs. This is a man capable of seeing people only through his own limited vision, even those closest to him. It is made ominously clear early on that even Molly is beyond his understanding; it never so much as occurs to him that she may have interests and desires unconnected with himself. And after Molly's death, this failure of empathy, along with all of Anthony’s love, transfers itself to their eldest child, Denis.

As the story of Without My Cloak becomes that of Denis, the novel takes on a different tone. The boy’s love of nature sets him well apart from his utilitarian family, and as the narrative moves more deeply into his consciousness it becomes studded with passages marking his dawning awareness of the beauties that surround his father’s wincingly ugly house – the pinnacle of the Victorian architect’s art, as we are wryly informed. Left much to his own devices by Anthony in spite of the disapproval of the family, Denis develops a passion for designing gardens, which his father indulges, though he barely understands it. It does not occur to Anthony that his son’s fascination for plants and flowers and the enrichment of the world could pose a serious threat to his own plans for Denis’ future at Considines; but Denis himself is aware from an early age that unless he can find the courage, or the cruelty, to break away, he is destined for a life of stifling unhappiness. As he grows older, his father’s love ceases to be for Denis his refuge and security, becoming instead a terrible force that threatens to smother and suppress him. Unable, at the critical moment and in front of the inevitable family gathering, to speak the words that he knows will shatter his father’s dreams, he surrenders his own hopes and takes his place in the business. Having capitulated, Denis seeks solace in the beauties of the countryside surrounding Mellick – finding instead a passion greater than he has yet known, in the lovely but illegitimate Christina Roche… show less

Lovely, engrossing read- very much , as another reviewer commented, with a Forsyte Sage feel.
The Considine family are wealthy Irish Catholics in the mid Victorian era. A large family with a host of characters- an unhappy wife, a priest, a doctor...and company boss Anthony and his adored son, Denis.
The first half sets the scene; the second half focuses on Denis. Groomed for the family business, yet yearning for independence; alternately loving and hating his besotted father; and all the time watched and criticised by his aunts and uncles...

The title comes from Shakespeare's 34th Sonnet:
"Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding they bravery in show more their rotten smoke?"

I couldnt put it down. show less

Immense tapestry of a book, centering around one Irish family in the second half of the 19th century. The leisurely pace and detail may present a challenge to modern readers, but O'Brien's in-depth examination of her characters is worth the read.

This was an adequate family drama that explored the confining nature of living in the Considine family as a good Irish Catholic. From time to time some individual rises up against the mandates of the family system but that can never be maintained. The opinions of women particularly do not matter during the big Considine family dramatics. When female characters discover the inevitable truth that they cannot live as they desire within their marriages but they also do not know how to break away, they survive by developing headaches and alcoholism. Additionally, though the men in the family are seen as having loving relationships with their children, the women seem to care about the children less- instead, tolerating them. Overall this was show more an engaging book but it had some odd components. For example, Christina's choices warranted further explanation or demonstration and the preoccupation of most characters with physical appearance eventually became annoying. It was tremendously disappointing that the system always tugged the characters back into their assigned places. It is suggested that a truer love might allow individuals to survive even when pulled back into this system, but we don't see a successful long-term example of this. To survive, the Considine family, in its conservative and patriarchal form, must be the most important mediator of individual choices. Being in such a family in real life now would be intolerable, but perhaps it is to be expected for the time period. show less

It took me FOREVER to get through this. I found it very slow goving - kind of an Irish Forsyte Saga but with a more modernist style. The last 50 pages of the novel though are astounding - both beautifully written and incredibly moving and subtle.

Kate O'Brien's first novel, Without My Cloak, is the sprawling saga of the Considine family, an Irish tribe made rich by the success in the forage trade of its founder, Honest John. The second generation of its sons, daughters, and in laws, flowers in the 1860's and 70's, and includes a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, an old maid, a neurotic beauty, and an heir with a flare for the business. The family portrait, through skillfully drawn, more or less meanders in its narrative for two hundred pages, with the possible exception of the half-hearted rebellion of Caroline - the second generation daughter who is SO bored with her marriage.

The spark and saviour of Without My Cloak is Denis, Honest John's grandson, heir apparent to the family show more business. Denis would rather design gardens than count beans or profits. His maturation is a struggle, in ambivalent Hamlet fashion, to break free of the expectations of Anthony, his beloved Dad, pal and genius of the family forage trade.

One afternoon, sitting under a tree, like Newton pondering the verities, Denis espies Christina, an orphan peasant beauty, cutting through a field. She becomes the apple - of his eye - and at long last, the saga combusts, and an orchard of dead Considine wood blazes until the end of the novel...crackling, smoking,and spitting out a few unexpected embers.

If Kate O'Brien had lived but a few more years she would have relished Blondie's pop hit, "O Denis!" (pronounced - a la francais - "O Don-nee"). At one point, as I was reading, I could not help hearing Debbie Harry's voice...."Oh Denis! Denis! I'm in love with you, Denis! Denis!,.Oh Denis, I'm in love with you...lalala"

In reading this novel, remember: patience has its rewards (which, for me, included a soundtrack). show less