The House in Clewe Street

by Mary Josephine Lavin

This absorbing family saga, first published in 1945, reveals the poignancies of an Irish Catholic upbringing, and is a testimony to Mary Lavin's considerable power as a storyteller. Theodore Coniffe, austere property owner in Castlerampart, looks forward to the birth of an heir when his third and youngest daughter, Lily, marries. A son is born, but the father, Cornelius Galloway, is a spendthrift who dies young, leaving the child to the care of Lily and her sisters, Theresa and Sara. Their love for Gabriel is limited by religious propriety and his youth is both protected and restrained. At the age of twenty-one Gabriel runs away to Dublin with Onny, a kitchen maid. Here they tumble into bohemian life. But Gabriel is ill-suited to this makeshift freedom and finds the values of Clewe Street impossible to evade.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature

472 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Mary Josephine Lavin (10 June 1912 – 25 March 1996) was a noted Irish short story writer and novelist. She is regarded as a pioneering female author in the traditionally male-dominated world of Irish letters. Her subject matter often dealt explicitly with feminist issues and concerns at a time when the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and its abuses (e.g. the Magdalene Laundries) impinged extensively on Irish society.

Mary Lavin was born in East Walpole, Massachusetts in 1912, the only child of Tom and Nora Lavin, an immigrant Irish couple. She attended primary school in East Walpole until the age of ten, when her mother decided to go back to Ireland. Initially, Mary and Nora lived with Nora's family in Athenry in County Galway. Afterwards, they bought a house in Dublin, and Mary's father, too, came back from America to join them.

Mary attended Loreto College, a convent school in Dublin, before going on to study English and French at University College Dublin (UCD). She taught French at Loreto College for a while. As a postgraduate student, she published her first short story, 'Miss Holland', which appeared in the Dublin Magazine in 1938. Tom Lavin then approached Lord Dunsany, the well-known Irish writer, on behalf of his daughter and asked him to read some of Mary's unpublished work. Suitably impressed, Lord Dunsany became Mary's literary mentor.

In 1943, Mary Lavin published her first book. Tales from Bective Bridge, a volume of ten short stories about life in rural Ireland, was a critical success and went on to win the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. That same year, Lavin married William Walsh, a Dublin lawyer. Over the next decade, the couple had three daughters and moved to "abbey farm" which they purchased in County Meath which included the land around Bective Abbey. Lavin's literary career flourished; she published several novels and collections of short stories during this period. Her first novel The House in Clewe Street was serialised in the Atlantic Monthly before its publication in book form in 1945.

In 1954, William Walsh died. Lavin, her reputation as a major writer already well-established, was left to confront her responsibilities alone. She raised her three daughters and kept the family farm going at the same time. She also managed to keep her literary career on track, continuing to publish short stories and winning several awards for her work, including the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1961, Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1961, and an honorary doctorate from UCD in 1968. Some of her stories written during this period, dealing with the topic of widowhood, are acknowledged to be among her finest.

Lavin remarried in 1969. Michael Scott was an old friend from Mary's student days in University College. He had been a Jesuit priest in Australia, but had obtained release from his vows from Rome and returned to Ireland. The two remained together until Scott's death in 1991.

In 1992, Lavin, by now retired, was elected Saoi by the members of Aosdána for achieving 'singular and sustained distinction' in literature. Aosdána is an affiliation of creative artists in Ireland, and the title of Saoi one of the highest honours in Irish culture.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book, deserves to be better known. Just a simple family story but told so sympathetically and with such excellent characterisation, the protagonists really come alive.

[Deb]

I am going through the bookcase that contains my collection of Virago Classics, which I purchased in the 70s and 80s. I'm saddened to find that so many are out of print again. I'm glad that I took advantage of that small window of time to buy and read a few hundred books that have gone out of print again and will be read, perhaps, "Never No More."

[Rebecca Buchanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Undoubtedly slow to get going, The House in Clewe Street (1945) is the kind of book you should approach the same as planting tulip bulbs in the autumn and waiting for them to bloom in the spring. For believe me, this book does bloom in colourful profusion, even if you might not think anything much is happening at the outset. Encompassing a period of many years, Mary Lavin possesses a literary power to rival any of her contemporaries, with vivid and complex characters and highly relatable family relationships which intrigue and raise important questions of generational differences regarding religion, education and marriage. Despite Lavin being regarded as one of the most brilliant Irish writers of her time, it baffles me that this novel is not more widely known, for it deserves to be appreciated as the classic novel it is. Not merely enjoyable to those interested in Irish social history, all lovers of well written and emotionally charged fiction will surely become immersed in Lavin’s three-dimensional characters such as the ferocious spinster Theresa who raises her orphaned nephew, Gabriel, with a discipline that is destined to be rebelled against. The House in Clewe Street is an understated masterpiece. Sit back and relax into Lavin’s beautifully written drama, offering a glimpse into the lives of an affluent Catholic family in a small Irish town at the turn of the century.

[Thinkingwhatsneeded · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is too slow for me. However, it is interesting to be absorbed in a conservative culture setting back then. Some scenes show some pure innocent from a character, which I find to be really sweet and cute, and funny.