The Fox's Walk

Rating:
Summary: Interesting characters, but dull writing
Review: "The Fox's Walk" is a slow, reflective tale, filled more with observance and description than events. The events that do occur mostly happen elsewhere and are reported. Alice Moore is 8 years old and staying at the Ballydavid estate with her maternal grandmother. Her mother married below her station to a man from New Zealand who treats her brusquely and results in the mother's apparent nervous breakdown. This effects Alice being left with Grandmother, her Aunt Katie, and her Uncle William, who repeatedly drops by for tea.

Not too unlike "Alice in Wonderland," this Alice is constantly trying to understand what is going on around her. The Irish maid Bridie, the teacher Miss Kingley and the stable manager O'Neill have the more Catholic opinion, while playmate Clodagh & family and Alice's family represent the more Protestant viewpoint. As this is interpreted by Alice, it is a strange mix of stately decorum and revolutionary chaos, seemingly from a distance, but closing in. All of this is kept in abeyance until the ending arrives like a lightning bolt.

The subplots swirl about Alice who grasps as much as she can. Uncle Sainthill is killed in the war, sending her family into depression. Uncle Hubert is stationed in the East and may or may not have a fiance, the flirtatious Rosamund Gwynne. Houseguest Sonia appears to have assumed an identity as a countess and was Mara in London, although Alice is never quite clear. Added to this are fox hunts, croquet and the sinking of Lusitania.

Author Annabel Davis-Goff gives lots of description to the society of manners as it existed in pre-independent Ireland from 1912-1916. The strength of the novel is its exquisite sense of place, combined with the manners of the social structure as seen through the eyes of a child. The novel reads as a slow-paced methodical march towards Irish independence. It is a tale lovingly told, worth the trip! Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Lightning Bolt Ending
Review: "The Fox's Walk" is a slow, reflective tale, filled more with observance and description than events. The events that do occur mostly happen elsewhere and are reported. Alice Moore is 8 years old and staying at the Ballydavid estate with her maternal grandmother. Her mother married below her station to a man from New Zealand who treats her brusquely and results in the mother's apparent nervous breakdown. This effects Alice being left with Grandmother, her Aunt Katie, and her Uncle William, who repeatedly drops by for tea.

Not too unlike "Alice in Wonderland," this Alice is constantly trying to understand what is going on around her. The Irish maid Bridie, the teacher Miss Kingley and the stable manager O'Neill have the more Catholic opinion, while playmate Clodagh & family and Alice's family represent the more Protestant viewpoint. As this is interpreted by Alice, it is a strange mix of stately decorum and revolutionary chaos, seemingly from a distance, but closing in. All of this is kept in abeyance until the ending arrives like a lightning bolt.

The subplots swirl about Alice who grasps as much as she can. Uncle Sainthill is killed in the war, sending her family into depression. Uncle Hubert is stationed in the East and may or may not have a fiance, the flirtatious Rosamund Gwynne. Houseguest Sonia appears to have assumed an identity as a countess and was Mara in London, although Alice is never quite clear. Added to this are fox hunts, croquet and the sinking of Lusitania.

Author Annabel Davis-Goff gives lots of description to the society of manners as it existed in pre-independent Ireland from 1912-1916. The strength of the novel is its exquisite sense of place, combined with the manners of the social structure as seen through the eyes of a child. The novel reads as a slow-paced methodical march towards Irish independence. It is a tale lovingly told, worth the trip! Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: "The best we can hope for is gradual loss."
Review: Annabel Davis-Goff chooses a unique point of view for this novel set in Ireland during World War I, a time in which The Troubles, Ireland's grassroots rebellion against England, are also taking place. Her speaker, Alice Moore, is eight years old when she journeys from England to Ireland and spends a year living with her grandmother and great aunt at Ballydavid, an Anglo-Irish estate near Waterford. Bright and unusually perceptive, she experiences, first-hand, their refined and mannered Edwardian life, while also observing and commenting on the events taking place as the Irish rebellion begins in distant Dublin. Her family, like so many others, knows that changes are coming, but they behave as though "the world as [they] knew it would continue if enough of [them] pretended nothing irreparable had taken place."

Describing the life of the Anglo-Irish with sympathy, understanding, and no apologies, the author is as polite, polished, and distanced from the action as Alice's family is. When the rebellion begins, its impact is enhanced by the innocence of Alice, through whose eyes the ironies are observed. The plot may seem to lack excitement, at first, as Alice and her family, concerned with domestic conflicts and personal tragedies, pay little heed to the incipient revolution, but this quietude is misleading. When the family hosts a large, tennis party at the end of the summer of 1916, only a few weeks after the leaders of the Easter Rising have faced the firing squad, all facets of society-gentry, servants, British soldiers stationed in Ireland, local residents, and revolutionaries-come together in one tumultuous afternoon which changes the lives of all participants.

Clever and subtle in its structure, this is a novel in which the most significant action-the end of this way of life-takes place offstage, after the novel has concluded. The author, having recreated this genteel, lost lifestyle in all its details-even including the strictures which govern the eating of a tea sandwich and the difference between dresses of full mourning and "half-mourning,"-brings the family just to the moment of its own climactic awakening and no further. Wisely, she lets the reader fill in the blanks, guided at the end by Alice, many years later, reminiscing about her early life and "the course of history [that] swept away the very foundations of the way we lived." Restrained and understated, this story of the Irish rebellion may be unique in its quiet acceptance of the rightness of change. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: A fabulous and also rather sad recreation of a bygone era
Review: Annabel Davis-Goff has written an absolutely gorgeous novel describing the intricacies and delicacies of a bygone era. Narrated in the first person, almost sixty years after the events depicted, Alice Moore recounts her life as an eight year old at Ballydavid, her ancestral home in Ireland. David-Goff expertly infuses Alice's narrative with minutiae of a quietly peaceful domestic life with the background of the 1916 Easter uprising and the wider turmoil of the Great War. The result is a story that is intimate and personal, yet sweeping and broadly historical in tone. Much is made of the Irish Nationalist heroes, particularly Roger Casement who is actively working for the cause for Irish Independence. We never meet Casement, but his life and struggles, as with the other figures of the time, are seen through Alice's intelligent, thoughtful eyes. Although life seems to continue as usual at Ballydavid, the Troubles, and the War in Europe are not far away, and reminders are always constant.

Fox's Walk is really a tale of reminiscence and loss. The great Anglo-Irish families of Ireland stuck in their stuffy Edwardian mentalities are gradually disappearing as the world changes, and embraces twentieth century modernism. And Alice's Grandmother and Aunt Kate with their rigid, austere, morally strict and socially conscious ways are as much a part of the disappearing world as the house itself. This was a time when children should be seen and not heard and when manners, good grammar and the right party invitations were of utmost importance. Davis-Goff recreates this world in such beautifully descriptive, and "clipped" prose: the tennis party, the fox hunt, the luncheons, and the dinner preparations of a privileged existence are all brought vividly to life. The author captures the simple mood of a scene - the blustery rain showers coming off the ocean; the starched blouses and dour clothes of Grandmother and Aunt Kate; the descriptions of Ballydavid - the old and slightly shabby house and farm; the blooming hedgerows surrounding the estate; the mists that descend over the house in Autumn, and tea with cucumber sandwiches, a light sponge cake and barley water tea.

Although the plot in Fox's Walk is secondary, the real strength of the novel is this enormous capacity that Goff has for recreating the particulars of time and place. There's also an overwhelming sense of melancholy pervading this book, as Alice looks back with so much sadness at a life she obviously loved. Towards the end of the story she comments on a particular moment, which marks the beginning of loss, "an hour or two on a sunny afternoon of pure happiness of a kind we would never again find." The Fox's Walk is quite a profound piece of literature - tender, delicate and astutely observed - it is a terrific read.

Michael

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and subtle
Review: I enjoyed this book about the decline of Anglo-Irish society in Ireland during World War I although there was little dialogue and the author has a fondness for long run-on sentences using semicolons and dashes. These long sentences sometimes made the original thought hard to follow. I liked the main character, a little girl named Alice (narrating as a grown-up) who's left in the care of her genteel grandmother and great-aunt. Unsure of why she's been left, lonely, isolated, and given to sleep-walking, she still has a strong, observant character and develops a love for her new home. She worries about her future. It's made known that little Alice eventually marries a wild and rebellious local boy. I liked how that part of the story foreshadows Ireland's eventual revolution. After reading this book, I'd like to go on and read a history book about Ireland.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting characters, but dull writing
Review: I hate to give this book only 2 stars, because I thought the characters were so interesting. In particular, the little girl who is the main character was very intruiging. I really wanted to find out what was going to happen to her next as the book unfolded. Unfortunately, I had to slog through some pretty dull stuff! I appreciated the author's attempt to describe a very important time in Irish history, but the chapters on the historical stuff were not intertwined well with the rest of the plot. It was as if you got a taste of a good story, then all the sudden you had to tramp through a chapter of "Irish History 101." Very clunky.

Can't recommend buying this book. If you are still curious to read it, I suggest checking it out at the library. (If this were a movie, I'd say "wait for the video.")

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and subtle
Review: This is a book that demands a little time. The narrator's voice, recalling an arid, lonely childhood during World War I, seems at first more plaintive than engaging, her circumstances more pitiable than interesting. But wait. Alice Moore is a curious, winsome child with awakening sensibilities. She soon draws you into a world so small and self-assured and complete its inhabitants cannot see the precipitous brink before them.

After a factual exposition of the case of Roger Casement, a protestant who tried to raise an army to drive the British from Ireland (these asides into the wider world occur throughout the narrative), Alice's story opens in 1912 Ballydavid, Ireland, at the estate of Alice's maternal grandmother, a woman of deep Anglo-Irish principles and conventions. "The entertaining of children was not, either in my family or in society at large, given the importance that it now has," Alice recalls, 50 years later. Hours of boredom and starched discomfort were punctuated by meals and sleep, with the occasional excitement of adult visitors. Alice would strive for invisibility, so as to hear their conversation.

After an interlude at their home in London, Alice and her mother return to Ballydavid the summer after the war begins. Her father, a frugal, unpretentious New Zealander, has never been completely accepted by her mother's family and seldom stayed long at Ballydavid. "When Mother was with her family, she was in the position of silently defending him from their silent criticisms, these unspoken thoughts batting around the room like shuttlecocks, inhibiting and coloring even the occasional remarks of day to day family life."

Much communication remains unspoken, from what is served at tea for visitors (or if tea is served), to articles of dress, deportment, and table manners. Much more communication is between the lines, the sort of bland, pointed remarks the British excel at, in novels, at least. And as the war drags on and signs of Irish unrest increase, culminating in the 1916 Easter Rising, more subjects become off limits.

But by then Alice has begun to note the contradictions in the world. Her mother, almost unhinged by a favorite brother's death in the war, has left Alice behind on her return to London. This abandonment in a grieving house of rigid, but largely unknown (to Alice) rules, leaves her desperate for love and stimulation. She is captivated by the unusual and the kind - the colorful Jewish wife of a neighbor, a down-on-her-luck refugee posing as a psychic countess, the noisy, brash son of a prominent Catholic, the kindly, superstitious servants.

Out of loneliness, Alice learns to love Ireland and question the order of her grandmother's life. A quiet pond in the midst of a raging storm, its surface cannot stay unruffled forever. And when that calm is shattered, Alice has a dilemma.

Davis-Goff ("The Dower House," "This Cold Country") creates this world in exquisite, telling detail. A captivating novel of manners and change, written with subtlety, wit, and deep understanding.