The field, or rather fields, of the title play a central role in this elegiac study of a father-daughter relationship in a remote part of Connemara. Kelly is an Irish father in the classic mould, as harsh and unforgiving as the land he obsessively tills, and a tad fond of the drink to boot; his daughter Helen, her life blighted like that of a tender plant by the early death of her mother, is doomed to live in his shadow until old age reverses the power structure in the household - or does it? O'Gaora takes his heroine to London, and into marriage, in search of her own space; but ultimately it's his limpid observation of the Irish landscape which strikes the most vivid chord in this novel. Beautiful but bleak, it reduces the human figures to mere dots on a windswept canvas.
"April 11th, 1662: Up early to my lute and a song. Then about 6 a-clock with Sir W. Pen by water to Deptford and among the ships now going to Portugall with men and horse, to see them dispatched. So to Greenwich; and had a fine pleasant walk to Woolwich, having in company Captain Minnes, with whom I was much pleased to hear him talk, in fine language but pretty well for all that. Among other things, he and the other Captains that were with us tell me that Negros drownded look white and lose their blackness - which I never heard before."
From The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Volume III, 1662, edited by R.C. Latham and W. Matthews, who add in a footnote to the passage above, "The removal of the epidermis by putrefaction makes the body paler, but not white."
