Janet McNeill lived most of her adult life in Northern Ireland and was a prolific writer of plays and children's books as well as 10 adult novels and a number of volumes of short stories. She wasn't on my radar until I came across an article called ' Ten great Northern Irish novels you may have missed.

Compared on the jacket to Barbara Pym, Anita Brookner and Elizabeth Taylor, the writing in this novel certainly reminded me of Barbara Pym's writing, particularly in terms of characterisation. I've not got to Taylor yet, but McNeill's writing quality is absolutely on a level with Pym's and Brookner's, and it's a shame that she's never received the same level of recognition (Virago, Persephone - sort it out).

The Maiden Dinosaur centres around the main character Sarah, a fifty-something year old spinster teacher and minor poet who shares her former family home (now divided into 4 apartments) with two of her childhood friends and the daughter and son-in-law of another friend. The plain, sensible, clever one, with no family of her own Sarah is the no-nonsense linchpin both they and their wider friendship group turn to as conveniences them, whilst Sarah has quietly devoted herself for over 40 years to Helen within the group, whose personal tragedies and vanities demand much of Sarah's willing attention.

As the shifting sands of life bring inevitable significant events within the lives of the group of friends, the novel explores themes of loss and new beginnings in a middle-age context over one summer in Belfast.

McNeill's writing in this novel doesn't evoke a sense of place in terms of Northern Ireland itself, but in a way I quite liked that and enjoyed the absence of the usual local colloquialisms. Belfast Zoo (or Bellevue Zoo as it used to be known) is mentioned quite often, as the novel is set in North Belfast where the zoo still to this day sits looking down over the city just below Cave Hill. There was a charming children's film called Zoo made in 2017 which is filmed at Belfast Zoo. It's based on the true story of a woman in a terraced back-street in Belfast who hid an elephant from the zoo in her tiny back yard to stop it being euthanised when the Belfast Blitz began (somehow that story could only be true from Northern Ireland).

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will definitely be looking out for other titles by McNeill which are still in print.

This type of novel won't appeal to everyone, but if you're a lover of Pym or Brookner I would recommend it (I believe it's titled The Belfast Friends in the US).

4.5 stars - A wonderful depiction of the claustrophobia that life as a middle-aged woman can become. ( )

Amended Review:

This is a short but rich and nuanced novel about a middle-aged Belfast spinster. Respected school teacher and locally known poet, fiftyish Sarah Vincent grew up in a well-to-do Presbyterian family. The family’s stately home (on the shores of Belfast Lough, not far from the Zoological Gardens) was divided into apartments after the death of Sarah’s father. Sarah now lives in one flat, and her girlhood friends, Helen and Addie, live in the others. For years, Sarah has regularly attended “tea parties” with her former school chums—among them: Mary, now a grandmother; the well-to-do Florence; and 40-year-old Joyce, the younger sister of Rose, who was the first of Sarah’s cohort to die (tragically, in her 20s, during childbirth). Rose’s is not the only sad story. Kitty, another unfortunate, is mentally ill and keeps to her bed. Kindhearted and used to obliging others, Sarah, the only unmarried woman in the bunch, makes regular visits to an unstable and aggressive woman whom everyone else seeks to avoid. Sarah is believed to have a special calming influence on Kitty. It’s convenient for the others to think so anyway.

Sarah has a lot of of things weighing on her. She is not nearly as free of responsibilities as the others think. First, there is the matter of the unfortunate, Helen, who has lived a very different life from Sarah. Once a wife and mother, Helen is professionally successful—she runs a thriving flower shop—but privately she is a mess. Mired in memories of personal tragedies, Helen is histrionic and seeks solace in the arms of a series of gentleman callers—one of them, Kitty’s husband. Helen’s beauty is fading fast, and it is the job of plain and steady Sarah to prop her up. On the one hand, Helen is scornful of her friend’s lack of sexual knowledge (Sarah’s senior girls seem better informed than their teacher); on the other hand, Helen depends on Sarah’s unique combination of unconditional positive regard and school-teacher bossiness. It’s a game of sorts, Sarah realizes, and she follows the unspoken rules . . . until one day she doesn’t.

None of Sarah’s friends is aware of the ways in which she is haunted. Chided constantly in childhood about her homely, large, and graceless body, she attempted early on to dissociate herself from her physical being, paying as little mind to her appearance as possible and focussing instead on developing her intellect. As a young person, Sarah also happened upon two distressing scenes of a sexual nature (one of them involving a family member). No one ever bothered to discuss either of these experiences with her. The events were subsequently buried until Sarah had a breakdown in adolescence. Her mother, an invalid for many years, died soon after. Sarah may now be middle aged, but part of her remains a child imprisoned in the past. At times, she still hears, sees, and addresses her dead parents. (Freud would have had a heyday with this woman.)

MacNeill’s novel offers a glimpse into a certain middle-class segment of mid-twentieth-century Belfast society, when women’s roles and sexual mores were beginning to change. The book is also a sensitive and restrained psychological study of sexual repression. The novel was originally published in 1964 and appears to be set in the early 1960s. There are a few references to the new freedoms for women— specifically, the birth control pill, which was first introduced as a contraceptive in 1960. I found McNeill’s mention of “The Troubles” in the text to be quite confusing—as I’ve always understood the term to apply to the Northern Ireland of the late 1960s and early 1970s . I didn’t know (until I did some online research) that the Belfast Riots of 1920-1922 are called “The First Troubles”. In the novel, to avoid being shot at, McNeill’s characters had, when young, been forced to lie down in the trams that took them to and from school during this period.

The Maiden Dinosaur is a brisk and compelling character-driven novel, which manages to accomplish a lot in relatively few pages. There’s much to ponder here (including the ways in which literature can hoodwink young, impressionable girls into dangerous romanticization of sexuality and relations between the sexes.)This is a book that begs to be read, re-read, and discussed with friends. ( )

The Maiden Dinosaur takes us to Belfast in the 1960’s, and to Thronehill House, standing within sound of the animals in Belfast zoo; it was once Sarah Vincent’s family home – now divided into flats. Sarah herself lives in one of the flats, surrounded continually by the ghosts of her childhood. Sarah Vincent is fifty, a grammar school teacher and local poet. In the other flats live; Addie and Gerald, Kimberley and Justin and their new baby, and Helen – one of Sarah’s greatest friends from school days. Inside her flat Helen guards her ageing beauty jealously, mourns her daughter killed many years earlier and entertains her latest male companion, wondering whether this one will be the last. All around Sarah are the echoes of the past; the voices of her long dead parents fill the rooms which now are inhabited by other people.

“Mama, thirty-four years dead, stirred on the sofa in the drawing-room. Sarah heard the light insistent cough, the tinkling cow-bell lifted and laid again. Mama had various voices. Sometimes she spoke as childhood’s ear remembered, sometimes through the school girl caricature with which Sarah had fought maternal domination, rarely as the adult who demanded terrified pity.”

The novel is firmly rooted in the middle-class middle aged world of a group of women whose lives have been connected to Sarah Vincent’s since their schooldays. As the novel opens there is a tea-party for a group of Sarah’s friends, a monthly tradition, these women come together to talk, gossip and reminisce. Addie is one of these, Helen rarely attends.

“‘Oh dear, am I late?’ on the brink of identification she rebelled against it.
‘I think an order mark would be in order, Sarah Vincent,’ Addie said in plummy-voiced imitation of Miss Hodgkiss, vintage Lower Fifth, 1922; Miss Hodgkiss, long-nosed, austere and pale except for the red triangle of skin which lay, winter or summer, in the opening of her blouse.
Their laughter reached out like tentacles, wrapped itself round her and drew her in”

They are all products of their upbringing, and Janet McNeill observes them with humour, highlighting their slight absurdities and their frailties. One of their number a slightly younger woman, the younger sister of their friend Rose; who died in childbirth, Joyce is married to her sister’s husband and announces her pregnancy at the age of forty-one. Sarah, of course the maiden dinosaur of the title – has nursed an adoration of Helen for most of her life. It is part of McNeill’s skill which enables her to seamlessly switch the point of view of her narration, so we hear Sarah’s thoughts, as well as those of a young girl, one of Sarah’s pupils, and to those of George, Helen’s frequent visitor, dividing his time between her and caring for a sick wife. In her depiction of these characters McNeill shows a gradual wearing a way of those old-fashioned standards within the society which these women grew up in.

“Addie clasped her hands. “I think I’d better go home. I’m sorry Sarah, it was awfully sweet of you to ask me to and I do appreciate it, but I am physically incapable of addressing a perfect stranger as Charles. It’s not me personally, it’s my generation, like butter-knives and calling the lavatory the toilet and eating in the kitchen.”

A couple of humorous episodes stand out. Sarah asked to take part in a television programme about her poetry takes Addie with her. Addie is not sure what she can possibly bring to the occasion, but when the interviewer suggests that their comfortable upbringing must surely have been a barrier against creating really good poetry, Addie puts the interviewer very firmly in his place. Sarah, not a thin woman, nor one used to making any real effort with her appearance – goes to a dress shop with a view to buying something. It’s a dispiriting, humiliating experience which practically every woman could sympathise with.

As they have done for many years, Sarah and Helen go away for their annual holiday, the same hotel, waited on by the same staff; they visit their favourite, old familiar places. There are subtle differences though, which both women become aware of, everything comes to a head though, as they await a visit from George. Sarah must discover how life still has new possibilities in store for her – things she has been so certain of for so long are shaken.

I enjoyed The Maiden Dinosaur very much, although I think I have preferred her other novels to this one, but really they are all very definitely worth seeking out. ( )