Description:
How does one tell the story of a complicated place like Ireland? If you're a writer such as James Michener, you might start with a description of the geological forces that formed the island, move forward through the plant and animal life that developed there, and then wind your way through several millennia and a couple thousand pages of fictionalized history before ending in the present. If you're Robert Welch, however, you compress both the events and the ethos of the past four centuries into a mere 200 pages--and succeed in capturing the essence of Ireland better than any tome 10 times the length could hope to do. Groundwork is a most impressive novel--the kind that pulls off a trick of astounding difficulty without breaking a sweat. In this tale of two families in County Munster, Welch ricochets between centuries, mixes it up with 22 major characters and evokes the tragedy of Anglo-Irish relations and the even greater tragedy of the Irish people's relations with each other in a masterful, highly readable style. Ireland's bardic tradition is alive and well in Robert Welch, and Groundwork is a sterling example of the art.
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