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Maeve Brennan Homesick at the New Yorker An Irish Writer in Exile

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Roddy Doyle had a sophisticated writer in his family tree, contrary to what many readers familiar with his blue-collar look at Ireland would believe. Maeve Brennan was related to Doyle's parents, and is now the subject of a new biography by Angela Bourke entitled "Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker; An Irish Writer in Exile." There are a number of troubling questions raised by the title of this book. First off, the last thing the world needs is yet another look at yet another literary person who passed through the hallowed halls of The New Yorker. Then there's the title's length, an indication, sometimes, that a publisher is desperate to make sure potential readers know the many important angles of a given book. Finally, some may even ask: Maeve Brennan? Who is Maeve Brennan? And if you have to ask that, you may wonder why you should want read a biography of her. Believe it or not, however, Bourke's book is a good one. She sets out to tell not merely a straight biography of one writer but instead a cultural history of this writer's life and times. Again, this can be a warning signal, suggesting the biographer's subject alone is simply not compelling enough. But Bourke has selected her topic well. Brennan's parents were deeply involved in the political and cultural struggles of their time (the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century). The Brennans and their circle wrote plays, ran for office and - when it was needed later on - aided in the armed struggle for Irish independence. Maeve Brennan herself was born in 1917 and absorbed many of these cultural influences. Early on she was a promising writer and performer, and eventually relocated to New York City, where she landed work at fashion magazines and began mingling with a high-class crowd. Bourke, (author of The Burning of Bridget Cleary and a lecturer at University College, Dublin), does a fine job recreating Brennan's time in New York and her ambiguous relationship with Ireland, which she clearly loved, yet chose to live away from. Brennan dazzled everyone who met her, and earned a reputation as one of the finest short story writers around by the time she was publishing regularly in The New Yorker. Bourke's final angle here, though, is as powerful as it is shocking. Brennan would eventually suffer from mental problems that left her more or less homeless. Her work was largely forgotten until Houghton Mifflin reissued The Springs of Affection in 1997, four years after Brennan died. Bourke exaggerates when she calls Brennan an icon of the 20th Century, but the story of the Brennan family does shed a revealing light on the broader aspects of Irish history over the past century. ($25 / 352 pages / Counterpoint).

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