A generalization about the Irish (from a William Hazlitt essay quoted in the epigraph) provides the title of this urbane, often droll first novel by a celebrated Irish playwright (Da), but there's nothing particularly wild about these modern-day Dubliners or the activities—sometimes farcical, sometimes melancholy—they engage in. The narrator is T.J. Quill, a film critic living with his wife, Greta, sleeping with Josie Hand, the flamboyant wife of a rich and often cuckolded nonentity, and fretting about his new role as the archivist for Sean O'Fearna (the given name of American-born director John Ford). There's not much drama in the Ford story line or in the love affair with the Italian-born Josie. It's not even clear why Josie is attracted to the diffident and passive Quill, but her narrative function is to serve as a liberated, un-self-consciously lusty counterpart to Irish women like Greta (plagued by guilt and emotionally constrained). Leonard also depicts Dublin's literary/theatrical community—Quill's milieu—and its eccentric cast of characters, many of whom are deftly etched, from Quill's seemingly self-effacing best friend and film critic Shay Lambe and the colorful man-about-town and producer J.J. "Thorn" Thornton to the brash, American-born widow of the great O'Fearna. Leonard writes fluidly and creates clever dialogue, though his slice of contemporary Irish life at first seems aimless, if atmospheric. But the haphazard plot gradually grows into a complex social comedy in which betrayal—marital and otherwise—spreads in wider and wider circles and becomes a morality tale befitting the times, culminating in an ironic denouement that is fitting in every way. (July)
