The Land of Spices Book

Just like you found $100 in your sock drawer - this is how I feel having finished The Land of Spices. I had heard of Kate O'Brien and seem to remember looking past her books when in college and thinking her as 'almost famous, tired reading and very much dead'. Two weeks ago I was flipping through the Limerick Compendium Journal and read one of her short stories about a Reverent Mother (from England) who presided over her boarding school experience. The story was so good I went and ordered one of her better known books. I was also compelled to pick something that had been banned by the Irish censorship board when it was published (1942). Censorship in Ireland is a thorny subject, particularly in a newly found state where the Catholic Church clung to every facet of practical, cultural and spiritual life. Undoubtedly O'Brien would have been anathema to the church at the time. She had questionable morals (supposedly a lesbian), well educated, upper middle class, independent and strong connections with (Godless) England! The book would have fallen foul for a number of reasons!
Interestingly, as a style, the book actually reads more like a series of stories. The beginning doesn't have much of a sequence but as Anna (one of two primary characters) gets older her and Helen's (Mother Superior) stories gel. The brilliance in Helen's story is the one pivotal moment that she witnesses her father kiss another man! It reminded me of many of McEwan's works, whereby he has mastered the art of life changes based on one tiny moment/snap decisions etc. Helen joins the Compagne de la Sainte Famille severing a bucolic relationship she had with her father and from there rises through the ranks across Europe, eventually ending up in Ireland in 1900! She's English, by birth, brilliant and politically astute. Convent life is stifling, brutally snobbish, bitchy and smothered by priests and bishops, all clearly disapproving of this outsider's meddling in Irish education (the convent caters towards upper middle class Irish Catholic girls, educating them in a French style). Undoubtedly she questions her decisions and as she gets older understands her father (and perhaps the decision, be it a good one or bad one, better)
Anna is five when she comes to the boarding school. She is more complex because she's quiet, detached and, mostly friendless. She's also brilliant but has a somewhat tragic family life! She has a close relationship with her brother, who's own character is complex (and tragic).
The Reverent Mother and student build an interesting relationship over the years. Helen doesn't really communicate much with Anna (after her initial bonding) but observes from a distance. Anna admitted at one point that she didn't really like the older woman's influence (and doesn't quite understand it) though clearly both rely on each other for survival which culminates at the end of the novel. At that point both appreciate the other's involvement in their respective lives.
It's impossibly difficult to summarize the story's brilliance in one review. On one level it's not a complex story. It even gets religiously dogmatic at times. (Long) letters are written in French and its parochialism can be suffocating. The stunning mastery is that it's amazingly modern. For a story that was set 100 years ago it could fit comfortably into a modern theme. Survival is the same now as in 1900. The tragedy of the church's (ie patriarchal) meddling makes you want to scream (which clearly was one of the reasons for it being banned), as is the hopelessness of many of the situations people found themselves in. Socially, Ireland would have been a generation behind the Continent at the time. For an upper middle class educated and well traveled Catholic society, Ireland was probably hell! Locked into surroundings of superstition, religious infused existence, political no-man's land (Ireland wasn't yet independent), cognizant of a Europe staring down at the prospect of a pending war and an inability to define oneself, culturally the story intermingles themes of marital misery, alcoholism, genteel poverty and irrefutable sexism.
I recommend anybody to read this if they're looking for a more complex understanding of a facet of Irish society that gets little, if any, study in popular literature.jjpi