Saturday, August 20, 2016

A Mad and Wonderful Thing by Mark Mulholland

A Mad and Wonderful Thing by Mark Mulholland

When traveling I enjoy stopping into a local bookstore and looking around.  I found A Mad and Wonderful Thing in the Irish fiction section while shopping in a mall in Derry, Northern Ireland.   Captivated by the title first and the topic of "The Troubles" second,  I bought it even knowing that a book would be a rather heavy souvenir to cart home.

The story grabbed me on the first page.  The prose is beautiful, emotional and scenic, all things critical to tell the story of love and war.  You might say that Johnny Donnelly is a mixed up boy on the verge of manhood.  On the other hand, you might say he's got it all together and his life choices are smooth and calculated.  And then enters Cora Flannery, a beautiful girl wearing red boots with green laces, who steals his heart.

I didn't know much about the conflict in Ireland so visiting the country taught me a lot.  I learned about potatoes, clogging and gingers, as the redheads are called.  Politics however, as we well know here in the States, shine a whole different light on the inner workings of a society. War forces people to do things and think in a way that is often difficult to understand.  I wished for Johnny to rise above the fray but in the end was left unsatisfied.  I have to accept that because the strategy of war is something I will never personally be able to understand.

A Mad and Wonderful Thing was exactly that, mad and wonderful. I loved Johnny Donnelly and Cora Flannery but I hated the life they were forced to live in the midst of war.


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