Colm Toibin Tóibín

The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction - Reviews

The Penguin Anthology of Irish fiction

23 November 2001

The Penguin Book of Irish fiction edited by Colm Toibin is anthology of Irish fiction which begins with Jonathan Swift (b.1667)and ends with Emma Donoghue (b.1969) and contains approximately 100 writers, rendering it the most comprehensive collection available. The material is arranged chronologically by the birth of the writer and has generous extracts from key Irish writers — for example the full text of Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth; over 70 pages of Joyce including the full text of The Dead, and extracts from A Portrait of the Artist (the wonderful Christmas dinner scene), Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake; gothic literature is well represented by Charles Maturin, Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu — Irish Protestant supernatural fiction, as Toibin terms it; humorous classics such as The Crock of Gold by James Stephens, The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien amongst others; and there is an excellent selection of contemporary writers far, far too numerous to mention.

Paul Muldoon once commented 'Anyone who makes an anthology must be mad' - and Colm Toibin is associated with many! Recently with Carmen Callil, one of the founders of Virago Press he edited:

The Modern Library:200 of the best novels since 1950, and in 1993 he edited an excellent anthology Soho Square- New Writing from Ireland -:in which he chose a tempting selection of works in progress from contemporary Irish writers, both established and new. In his introduction to Soho Square he refers to the writers he has chosen and their Irishness:

They have nothing in common except a beginning under the same sky, the same uncertain weather. And there is no conscience of our race, no responsibilities, no nation singing in unison.

In this new anthology he has written a thirty-two page scholarly and engaging introduction- Irish writers now have much in common it seems- and he addresses Irish literature throughout the four centuries, suggesting recurrent tropes, themes and types- there are some fascinating theories here-

For instance that there are key areas of concern in Irish fiction- the fire, women murdered by men, and fathers and sons. For the latter he cites (and includes) Night in Tunisia by Neil Jordan as an example- indeed he is so impressed with this collection of short stories by Jordan he states:

Two books which appeared in the 1970s changed the face of Irish fiction John Banville's Birchwood and Neil Jordan's Night in Tunisia. There is plenty of food for thought and lively debate here- Has John McGahern 'produced the most impressive body of work of any Irish writer in the second half of the century'? Are there really only two novels in the entire canon which have happy families?(Roddy Doyle's The Snapper and Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, according to Toibin) This anthology provides stimulating questions and an entertaining array of answers.

There are of course omissions, but by its very nature an anthology requires these-perhaps his choices of contemporary fiction might ruffle a few feathers- however in terms of omissions from this period his own fiction, all excluded, must surely rank high on the list. BooksIrish were pleased to see Mary Dorcey included, - the story he chose was A Country Dance from her excellent collection A Noise from the Woodshed (1988) - indeed there are four pieces of fiction in this anthology centred around a dance. Another significant inclusion is The Morning after the Big Fire by Maeve Brennan who was a staff writer with the New Yorker for thirty years but who's work was out of print until quite recently- This story is taken from her collection The Springs of Affection (1998) it is heartening to see this fine writer go from obscurity to being included in the canon in the such a short space of time, but sad that such recognition should come after her death.