Holy pictures: A novel

by Clare Boylan

For fourteen-year old Nan and her younger sister Mary, the trials of convent life blend uneasily with their innocent yet peculiar home life, where the maid regales them with tales of a lurid past. But harsh reality is looming, a reality that in 1920s Dublin, is very shocking - and very adult. By the author of ROOM FOR A SINGLE LADY.

Genres: Irish Literature, Historical Fiction, Ireland

Hardcover

First published June 1, 2002

Reviews

[Rahul Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clare Boylan is that author I go to when I want to read something I wish I could write. Her novels exude the literary finesse I aspire to in terms of its broader ideas and plotting of characters and their stories. At the same time, they are filled with dramatic moments that have me head over heels with laughter. This 1983-novel was her debut work. Having read her later works, I can see how smart she was early on and how well she grew as a writer. Set in 1920s Ireland, we follow a family in utter mayhem. There is Nan, a girl who is coming of age as a teenager, with her younger sister Mary. Both go to a strict convent school and are fond of making jokes and yet sticking to the disciplinary requirements. At home, there is mother, who likes smoking a cigarette and living in her own dreamy world of imagining life as a richer woman. The father runs a factory but is impulsive in the way he has to deal with a household full of women. And then there is Nellie, the help who loves entertaining the girls with bizarre stories she's heard, or read. Up in the attic is the Indian room, the mysterious place where things of her father from his days in India in the early 1900s remain. While this novel is centred around Nan, we follow the entire cast of characters frolicking their time as they deal with desires, poverty, recklessness and maddening religious divisions in Ireland. I picked this book to put away a very emotionally heavy read like Morrison. I wanted a Christmas-oriented novel set in Ireland with Boylan's hilarity. I am glad I made the right choice because it delivered. The book starts and ends with Christmas but the rest of the novel was a ride. I laughed my way through it. However, at many instances it also became emotionally dense with girls and women undergoing imperious turbulences in their lives. The portrayal of the Indian women and narrative viz coloured characters seemed pejorative but I suppose that is how the 1920s Ireland was. If that was the case then Boylan did a fantastic job. Boylan writes the best stories of women and girls. There is no contradicting that. The humour laced in her writing simply makes the reading experience worth it. It's sad many readers today do not know of her. I heartily recommend Boylan. Goodreads has only 3 reviews of this book, mine is the 4th:She needs to be read widely!

[Jo Daneman · Rating 5 out of 5]

First novel by the late Clare Boylan written in 1983. Like many first novels, almost over-ambitious but still, a very worthy book and it's sad that Mrs Boylan passed away at a relatively young 58 years old of ovarian cancer.

The novel is set in the 1920's. Things are changing rapidly in Ireland. Nan's father owns a corset factory, but corsets are becoming outdated and his business is foundering. At one point, he comes home and announces they are changing their last name, with no explanation. But the reason for this sudden odd decision is revealed later in the novel.

Nan and her younger sister Mary struggle against parents who are domineering and neglectful. Meanwhile their financial situation continues to deteriorate and a strange event, the arrival of Mrs Mumtaz reveals that Nan's father was married while serving in India and thus is a bigamist. As the family fortunes continue to ebb, Nan is thrust into a situation for which she has no education or experience. She is sent on an evening out with an older gentleman. She assumes he is her mother's new beau but it turns out her mother has other ideas. Nan's naiveite and poor preparation for life do not bode well for her future.

[U. Cronin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delicate study of that point where childhood transitions into adolescence. Gorgeously written and full of vivid characters, the reader is drawn into the dream-like world of pubescent Nan, her younger sister Mary and their put-upon, passive mother. The dreary, puritanical, stark atmosphere of 1920s Ireland is superbly captured. The story of how Church, State and the male gender suppressed and quashed women's lives to the extent that even women saw their own bodies as dirty and repugnant disgusts and shocks, as we see the female characters, young and old attempt to live their lives around the restrictions and prohibitions. A great place to start if you want to know why the likes of mother and baby homes and Magdalene Laundries came to exist — and how they were tolerated by the population in general.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clare Boylan does a great job of helping us see life from the perspective of young teen Nan and her younger sister Mary in a family story of confusion and dysfunction. Set in a friendly neighborhood in Ireland, the sisters are buffeted like leaves on a tree by the trade winds of their parents. Sweet, funny and sad, I liked her story telling very much.