Family Drama

I continue to really enjoy this series -- Fingal now at war, learning his new duties. Dierdre onshore and the wedding still in the future. I really appreciate the depiction of life on the Warspite -- I had a headmaster who served as a gunner in WWII and suffered both hearing loss and lame leg because of it. This book gave me a new perspective on what his experience might have been like. Pretty awe-inspiring. One of the things about this series that I find completely fascinating is hearing more about the sexual realities of the various times that it's set in -- as a modern person, it's hard to imagine -- how did people deal with lack of contraception? How far did the "proper" folks go? Very interesting to see how that plays out, and I thought the sojourn in Alexandria with the swinging set was an interesting addition, if very uncomfortable to listen to. ( )

More of the life and adventures of Dr. Fingal O'Reilly in Ballybucklebo. This one alternates between the contemporay timeline in which his housekeeper Kinky has returned from her honeymoon and his past service in the Royal Navy during WWII. Very entertaining.

This has spoilers for those who have not read the other books in this series. Please start with book #1 before reading this series or you will be completely lost by all of the characters.

I have been reading Patrick Taylor for a while. With the ninth book in his An Irish Country series I was looking forward to visiting back with Doctors Laverty and O'Reilly and the fictional village of Ballybucklebo. The last book I read in the series was "Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor". I skipped "The Wily O'Reilly" which was a collection of columns that Taylor wrote about Fingal O'Reilly and published before.

With this newest offering we have the book focusing on Final dating and becoming engaged to his first wife Deirdre. We go back and forth between past and present with Fingal now happily married to Kitty but also thinking about some of the things that occurred to him while serving on a warship during WWII.

I didn't mind the past and present structure in the last full length book or the one before that. It made sense and it helped to see how Kitty and Fingal first met. And it actually worked quite nicely with the overall present day plot.

However this time I see no idea why the book was structured this way. Honestly a novella or just a full length novel depicting Fingal and his early days on the warship, engaged, married, and eventually widowed (not a spoiler, we know from book #1 he was a widower) and just be done with it. Breaking this up into this book and now based on the afterword there will be one more book showing his eventual marriage to Deirdre that I am just going to pass on.

The present day plot is not much better. We have Fingal thinking about how he can persuade Colin Brown's (a reader favorite that has been in all of the books) father to let him sit for a test to see about him continuing with his education. And we have Fingal feeling jealous and upset about someone from Kitty's past. That's it. That is the entire present day plot.

We don't really have anything on the first part besides O'Reilly have one conversation and then not doing anything about it for several weeks apparently and even when this is resolved he did not one thing besides bringing the conversation about.

The second party I thought was just unreal to include. We have a character who got married being upset that his now wife after they broke things off may have someone else that she cared for her in her past. That's it. She's not in love with this person, not going to see them, but this became a thing that actually took up several chapters in the present day side.

Readers are cheated of the chance to see Barry Laverty propose, move on from being hurt by the first woman readers will remember and able to be happy for him. Barry lives with Fingal and Kitty and you barely see him in this book. Neither is the new partner Jennifer Bradley shown besides one key scene. The same thing happened with the character of Kinky. She is barely in this which is a surprise since fans of the series knows that she is preparing for marriage.

I think that unless this book switches back to the third person and includes the points of view of either Barry or Jennifer I am going to just put this series away and move on from it. ( )

It has been a while since my last visit to Ballybucklebo, and I frequently found myself wondering how Barry and Sue's romance was going, how Fingal and Kitty were settling into married life, and how the other residents of the village were doing. I finally pulled this book off the shelf and dove in. Like the book Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor, this book bounces back and forth between the past and Fingal's current life. While the transitions aren't seamless, for the most part, they aren't jarring either.

The story opened with the village preparing to celebrate the marriage of Kinky and Archie, and the many people who want to make it a memorable day. Fingal's skills as a peacemaker and negotiator became vital when battle lines were drawn between two groups over the proper way to decorate the church. I loved his common sense approach to bringing compromise to the combatants. The upcoming marriage made a good segue into the next chapter, which was a flashback to Fingal as he prepared to propose to his first wife, Dierdre. There is a romantic heart inside the sometimes gruff doctor, and I felt his frustration as his "right moment" got wrecked. But his Dierdre is not high maintenance, and I loved seeing her handle it all with ease and grace.

For the modern side of the story, I always enjoy the adventures of Fingal, Barry, and the people of the village. It opened on a high note, with the wedding of Kinky and Archie. It was a beautiful ceremony, but as frequently happens in this village, there was a touch of excitement. Young Colin Brown brought an uninvited guest with him to the ceremony, a guest whose presence was not appreciated by the ladies. I had to laugh at the chaos and cheered as Kinky herself used humor and practicality to return peace to the day. Colin played an ongoing role in this book, as Fingal and Barry's girl, the schoolteacher, tried to find a way to show Colin's father that there was a wider world of opportunities available for Colin. Help with that came from a very unexpected source, leaving Fingal shaking his head in disbelief. The life of a country GP is never dull, and Fingal faced everything from German measles to gout to a medical mystery that was solved by reaching back into his wartime memories. He even brought Kitty along on one case, as the doctor and the midwife used their skills to bring a new life into the village. It's not all sunshine and roses for Fingal though when a blast from Kitty's past unsettled him. I ached a bit for Fingal, as he knew he was unreasonable, but he couldn't help it. I liked that he was smart enough to talk to his brother, who helped him through it. I was a little disappointed in not seeing Barry actually propose to Sue after all this time, but I look forward to seeing more of them in the future.

The flashback part of the book was fascinating for me. Just as Fingal was settling into his work in Ballybucklebo, World War Two broke out, and he was called up. As a naval reservist, he was assigned to become a medical officer on HMS Warspite. Within hours of arriving on the ship, Fingal found himself delivering his first anesthetic for the senior surgeon doing an emergency appendectomy. Fingal was nervous, bordering on terrified as he began his duties, as he had no experience treating war wounds and there were more than a thousand men on that ship alone. But he learned quickly and did well. I enjoyed his insights into what went on around him, from witnessing the firing of the big guns to his feelings on the wasted lives. His descriptions of the battles were vividly portrayed, leading me to discover that the Warspite was a real ship and the actions described really happened. His times with Dierdre were few and far between, but their love was a source of strength for both of them. I did have a few bad moments while Fingal was in Egypt and the loneliness and a flirtatious Navy wife created some unexpected temptation. I loved seeing Fingal get to spend time with the ship's navigator, his friend Tom Laverty, who would eventually become Barry's father.

I'm looking forward to the next book and getting to see more of the time that Fingal and Dierdre spent together, as well as the progression of life in the village of Ballybucklebo. ( )