Michael Farrell (1899-1962) gave up studying for a medical degree, worked as a marine superintendent in the Belgian Congo, and eventually became a journalist, working for Sean O’Faolain’s Bell magazine and for Radio Éireann as a compere, producer and film reviewer.
This was his only novel and he worked on it from the 1930s until shortly before his death. It was enormously long and he seemed unable to edit it. O’Faolain noted that he was “very sensitive and discouraged” about it and also that he was “avid to see it printed but terrified to let it go”. Even after it had been accepted by an English publisher and with American publishers also expressing an interest, he still held on to the manuscript, intending to revise it. His close friend, the poet Monk Gibbon, edited the book for posthumous publication and it sold extensively.
Farrell was involved to some extent in the struggle for Irish independence, spending six months in Mountjoy and the story, which is semi-autobiographical, is set during the first two decades of the 20th century. The protagonist, Martin Reilly, is an orphan who is raised by his extended family and attends a Catholic boarding school, from which he emerges an atheist. Falling in love, he is caught up in the fight for freedom after the 1916 Rising, takes an active part in the War of Independence and is imprisoned, where he discovers his mixed Catholic-Protestant, Irish-British parentage.
‘Moving insights’
I am greatly interested and have done much research in that particular period of Irish history and Farrell’s novel is historically accurate. More importantly, it is “eminently readable … with memorable characters and sensitive and moving insights”, in the words of one commentator. However, it requires perseverance because it is slow-moving to begin with, but the reader’s persistence will be well rewarded.
It is a generous interpretation of Anglo-Irish relations at the time, the cross-class love relationship is tenderly drawn and, despite experiencing things that would disillusion most men, Martin Reilly is ultimately seeking “at long last the old hammer of reality that might yet ring music from the anvil of a man”.
