Groundwork

Welch, a poet and editor of The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, knows his history and packs an awful lot of it into one brief novel. The story takes place over the course of four centuries and incorporates four families, two continents and a number of historical figures. In nonlinear, episodic chapters headed by a character's name and a year, it chronicles the Irish Condon and O'Dwyer clans from Elizabethan times into the 1960s, focusing on some 20 individuals. Through the words of the British Lord Deputy, Mountjoy, we glimpse the terrible, final defeat of Gaelic Ireland at the hands of Elizabeth I. The 17th-century outlaw-bard Geoffrey Keating provides us with insights from his historical treatise, A Groundwork of Knowledge Concerning Ireland (hence the title). The Condons bring us briskly through the Great Famine, and the wealthier Herbert and Holmes families provide the Anglo-Irish perspective. A kindly Jewish immigrant to Cork city is also featured. The profusion of players is somewhat overwhelming, and readers will need to refer often to the dramatis personae list at the book's beginning. Nevertheless, even if Welch has taken on too much, his sentences are beautifully crafted (especially his renditions of 17th-century prose), his dialogue is lively and accurate and his characters are compelling. He presents us with a somewhat perplexing book, but one that shows more than enough talent to make readers ready for the next one. (Apr.) FYI: Welch's second volume of poetry, Secret Societies, is also due out in April. (Dedalus, [Dufour, dist.], $13.95 paper 88p ISBN 1-901233-02-2; cloth $21 -03-0).