The setting: a small Irish village in the middle of nowhere: a stark, dreadful winter in which all the younger women die, leaving their menfolk and children to battle on. Their priest narrates much of the story. He's an unlikeable, inflexible man. He tells a tale of poverty and hardship, old-fashioned faith, superstition, suspicion. There's the village idiot and sheepshagger. This is the story of the death of a village and a way of life, and of lives transformed and ruined in two dreadful years.

For all he's a nasty, small-minded old man, Father McGreevy is sympathetically portrayed. The picture of small town life, spiteful and unforgiving, is eloquently drawn. It's a chilling narrative, and an engrossing one ( )

Up to p.300 now. Another meandering Irish tale I've not been able to put down..reading till 5am when I should have been sleeping. It's written in a typical Irish fable style (in that) that goes on and on and on, with a plethora of details and sidetracks to waylay you and delay the point and can almost send you mad in frustration but for the regular appearances of black comedy occasioned by the peculiar Irish ironic turn of phrase. It's a storytelling style my old Irish born Uncle was good at and he could delay the point of a story for weeks rambling on and on although every thing he said was fascinating in itself, he had for instance at least a hundred stories about apples & could weave them together in the most astonishing ways with many different meanings. In any event I have more to say but will when I get to the end of it.

It is the story of the decline and demise of a little mountain village during WW2, Ireland, the priest who's powerless to stop it, and the magazine editor who finds himself digging into the village's secrets years later.It's an unrelenting story of the disintegration of an Irish way of life as institutional religion, nationalism and the darker forces of human nature conspire to destroy a people and a place that O'Doherty evokes with great pathos. Musing on the Father's deposition, Maginn ponders "I'm not sure what it tells us beyond the fact that there are some good people, some bad people, and a lot of people who are one or the other depending on the circumstances". It's another Irish lament of hard times but this time aside from the weather, it's really lamenting progress.

There are some excellent annotated notes throughout on historical sources for further Irish history/Gaelic language reading.
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I will be quite honest and up front by telling you that this book is weird. The subject matter is definitely most bizarre, and if you are uptight (how's that for the roots of my 70s upbringing?) about strange sexual practices don't bother to open the book.

"The Deposition of Father McGreevy" takes place in County Kerry. Although it opens in the present, with a writer who gets wind of this bizarre story, the flashback goes to the beginning of World War II. Overall, what we are examining in this particular story is symbolic; the village under study here, up in the hills is a symbol of other once peaceful, agricultural villages that meet their decline in the face of the importance of towns & cities. Sadly, along with the decline of the village went the loss of tradition, folklore, original native beliefs, etc.

Father McGreevy's story, and indeed that of the village, is told through his deposition to the courts at a trial of which have no information until the end of the story. What we know is that the priest has lived in this village and served the people for 30 years, and that the bishop of his area has decided it is time to close up the church in the village in the hills & for Father McGreevy to become an assistant to a canon down in the town. The townspeople have a dislike and distrust of the hill/village people; at the beginning of his story McGreevy describes an incredibly harsh winter that affected the village and afflicted the women with some bizarre type of disease that killed them all off. By all, I meant 5; that's how small the village was. Down below, in the town, no one cared enough to send up supplies or to even go up and ascertain the condition of the villagers; so it is not until late spring that the town gets wind of what happened. A) the townspeople feel guilty as this situation makes them look bad; B) the incident leaves the townspeople suspicious and even more so when Father McGreevy adamantly refuses to let the health officials do autopsies to find out how the women died.

During the deposition, the reader finds out about some pretty bizarre stuff that happens in the village during the 2nd harsh winter up on the mountain; I won't give it away in case anyone wants to read this. However, the incidents are related by a villager who has decided to marry above him and live in the town, turning his back on his history & people; he sets into motion events which highlight the suspicious nature of the town regarding the villagers & no one is spared.

Personally, I can't see why this book was shortlisted for the Booker; it's like I always say -- just because a book ends up on some shortlist for an award or for that matter, wins the award itself, it doesn't mean that the book is good. This book was a little slow to get into, and kind of dragged along. The writing was good, I'll give it that much. ( )