![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/DeadHouse.jpeg\")
<\/a>The southwestern-most corner of Ireland is the eeriest place I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\nWhen I first visited the area in 1973, the craggy topography and unusual vegetation, intensified by the howling winds, driving rains and threatening black clouds raging off the Atlantic, explained to me how the Irish can believe in the supernatural. As I drove down a deserted single-lane road lined with vegetation pressing both sides of my car, I expected the Banshee, a leprechaun or some other mystical fairy to attack.<\/p>\n
Billy O\u2019Callaghan sets his ghost story, The Dead House<\/em>, in West Cork, just across a narrow bay from the Iveragh Peninsula from which my ancestors emigrated in the late 18th<\/sup> century. In this 2017 Irish Book Award winner, he writes that the landscape has a \u201crare light and aura of ancient magic.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Simmons, retired for health reasons from a career as an artists\u2019 agent, narrates the story of Maggie Turner, an artist he represents. He discovered her while she was a student and helped her become successful in British art circles. A true friendship developed and, after her boyfriend seriously beat her, Michael provided a safe place to recover.<\/p>\n Already psychologically fragile, Maggie senses she must get away. She leaves England, eventually finding an abandoned cottage in the most isolated corner of West Cork, an area of landscapes and light perfect for her style of painting. But it is also a place that Michael and other friends fear will be too isolated for Maggie. They fear that the solation will unsettle her more than even city life. At least in London or Dublin she would have the support of friends.<\/p>\n Six weeks later, the cottage renovated to livable standards, Maggie hosts Michael and two female friends \u2013 one, Alison, is Michael\u2019s future wife \u2013 for a weekend housewarming. Amid the hiking, eating and whiskey drinking, a Ouija Board is produced and a supernatural string of events unfolds.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been said that the Irish speak English as beautifully as the French speak their language. And in O\u2019Callaghan\u2019s writing, those lovely Irish conversations make beautiful dialogue. His descriptions left me reaching for the yellow under-liner numerous times, uselessly, of course, because these were library books.<\/p>\n I did think, however, to bookmark his fine description of the mood after the Ouija Board experience:<\/p>\n There was something blocked about that whiskey-fueled aftermath. What had occurred lay around us like the taint of pepper in the air, a slow poison that once tasted cannot be easily forgotten.<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t read ghost stories. Have never read a Stephen King novel. Almost didn\u2019t read this one, except that I\u2019d just discovered O\u2019Callaghan; only The Dead House<\/em> and his spectacular The Boatman and Other Stories <\/em>were in the local library. Some authors are worth reading just for their sentences, even if their story is not your type. O\u2019Callaghan is that kind of author.<\/p>\n As a ghost story, others will have to judge The Dead House<\/em>. I see it more as an insight into that dark, eerie side of Ireland that often gets overshadowed by the merrymaking and Guinness. The book\u2019s cover notes say it is a \u201cdread-inducing psychological thriller.\u201d I\u2019ll just comment that the story creeped me out, which is what ghost stories are supposed to do, right?<\/p>\n Telling his story a decade after the climactic events, narrator Michael and his wife were still dealing with it, and at two points in the novel, Michael paraphrases William Faulkner\u2019s famous line that \u201cthe past is never dead; it\u2019s not even past,\u201d applying it to Irish history rather than American.<\/p>\n Maggie was unable to escape the past and, as the novel ends, Michael and Alison are finding that they can\u2019t either.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul O’Connor may have grown up in Connecticut, gone to college in Indiana and spent many productive decades in North Carolina, but there’s a lot of Ireland in him. He’s discovered a book by an Irish author that’s not exactly new – published in 2017 – and not usually what would be Paul’s cup of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1256,14],"tags":[1259,1257,1260,1258],"class_list":["post-2913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-literary-fiction","category-ghost-story","category-thriller-suspense","tag-billy-ocallaghan","tag-ghost-story","tag-irish-literature","tag-the-dead-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2915,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913\/revisions\/2915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}