Tarry Flynn
by Patrick Kavanagh
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'A man's mother can be a terrible burden sometimes'. For Terry Flynn - poet, farmer and lover-from-afar of beautiful young virgins - the responsibility of family, farm, poetic inspiration and his own unyielding lust is a heavy one. The only solution is to rise above it all - or escape over the nearest horizon.Tags
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Set in County Cavan during the 1930s, the eponymous character is a twentysomething farmer trapped on a small holding and dreaming of what the world beyond the boundaries of his poor rural parish is like. Patrick Kavanagh is best known for his poetry, and in his descriptive passages here he can find beauty in the most humble drill of potatoes. The dialogue is also pitch-perfect for its time and place.
But, and it's a big but, despite the vivid beauty of the prose, I finished this book feeling like I wanted a shower. We're clearly supposed to sympathise with Tarry as a flawed but sympathetic protagonist (and one who is in many ways an aspect of the author himself), and to root for him to break free of life on the farm. But I couldn't do show more that. Not only is Tarry a misogynist, but depending on how you interpret references to certain events which take place off-screen, he is at best a sexual harasser and at worst a rapist. Kavanagh seems to instinctively understand how masculinity can be a straitjacket for men, but not to care about what that means for women. Spending too much time in Tarry's head left me feeling like I'd been in contact with, well, a tar pit. show less
But, and it's a big but, despite the vivid beauty of the prose, I finished this book feeling like I wanted a shower. We're clearly supposed to sympathise with Tarry as a flawed but sympathetic protagonist (and one who is in many ways an aspect of the author himself), and to root for him to break free of life on the farm. But I couldn't do show more that. Not only is Tarry a misogynist, but depending on how you interpret references to certain events which take place off-screen, he is at best a sexual harasser and at worst a rapist. Kavanagh seems to instinctively understand how masculinity can be a straitjacket for men, but not to care about what that means for women. Spending too much time in Tarry's head left me feeling like I'd been in contact with, well, a tar pit. show less
A work of fiction by the Monaghan poet, but rooted in his own
upbringing. Tarry is stuck in a parish in Cavan, on a small farm
with his mother and three sisters. Its an extremely funny book,
as Tarry gets into endless squabbles with his neighbours and
annoys the parish priest at every opportunity. He's also trying
to impress the daughter of the local schoolteacher but
spends a lot of his time trying to avoid the pleasures available
from some of the other local caílin. At the same time, Tarry
finds beauty in the 'stony soil' and there's some wonderfully
evocative descriptions, as you'd expect from a master poet.
I loved the dialogue in this as well, full of witticisms and
country truths and wisdom. Was sad when I finished this,
could have done show more with another few hundred pages of the same.
Will be putting Kavanagh's other work, 'The green fool', on
my reading list. show less
upbringing. Tarry is stuck in a parish in Cavan, on a small farm
with his mother and three sisters. Its an extremely funny book,
as Tarry gets into endless squabbles with his neighbours and
annoys the parish priest at every opportunity. He's also trying
to impress the daughter of the local schoolteacher but
spends a lot of his time trying to avoid the pleasures available
from some of the other local caílin. At the same time, Tarry
finds beauty in the 'stony soil' and there's some wonderfully
evocative descriptions, as you'd expect from a master poet.
I loved the dialogue in this as well, full of witticisms and
country truths and wisdom. Was sad when I finished this,
could have done show more with another few hundred pages of the same.
Will be putting Kavanagh's other work, 'The green fool', on
my reading list. show less
I didn't enjoy this book. While it was evocative of rural life in 1930s Ireland, I found I couldn't develop any strong feelings for any of the characters.
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Novels set in the Irish Border Region
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Author Information
20+ Works 1,027 Members
"My life has in many ways been a tragedy and a failure," wrote Patrick Kavanagh toward his death. Born in Innishkeen, County Monaghan, Kavanagh ended his formal education after grammar school. He lived on a farm in his native parish until moving to Dublin in 1939, which he later described as one of the great mistakes of his life. There he show more supported himself primarily through journalism until awarded a sinecure of #400 a year for extramural lectures at University College, Dublin. After an illness in the mid-1950s, he grew resigned to obscurity and mellowed in his long literary war with both Irish repression and the Irish literary establishment. Besides his journalism, he also wrote novels of an autobiographical type. Sprung from Roman Catholic peasant stock, Kavanagh saw himself as voicing his own heritage against more anglicized (and more famous) writers. His first volume, Ploughman and Other Poems, established the rural themes that mark much of his verse. His best-known, and perhaps his greatest poem, The Great Hunger (1942), follows a potato farmer named Patrick Maguire through the famine of the 1840s and presents a blistering attack on the sexual and spiritual deprivation of rural Irish peasantry. Kavanagh later criticized the poem as lacking humor, and his subsequent work shows a more temperate acceptance of the ironic comedy of life, as in "Canal Bank Walk." (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Original publication date
- 1948
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- Members
- 205
- Popularity
- 158,871
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (4.04)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 3
