The Banyan Tree

Nolan, Christopher

ISBN 10: 1559705116 / ISBN 13: 9781559705110

Published by Arcade Publishing, 2000

About this Item

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00082956006

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Banyan Tree

Publisher: Arcade Publishing

Publication Date: 2000

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis:

A richly textured tale of rural Ireland chronicles the life and times of eightysomethingyearold Minnie O'Brien as she struggles to preserve the farm left to her by her husband as she awaits the return of her prodigal younger son. A first novel. By the author of Under the Eye of the Clock. 1,000,000 first printing.

Review:

The renowned winner of the 1987 Whitbread Award, Christopher Nolan, has fashioned an extraordinary epic set in rural Ireland, spanning three generations of the O'Briens who own a small dairy farm in Westmeath. Minnie O'Brien stubbornly clings on to life, her five fields and her "long-agos" which take root like a banyan tree and feed her lonely old age. Her husband Peter is long dead and her three children scattered in a typical Irish diaspora--Brendan is a priest in Africa, Sheila, a nurse in London and Frankie, a sheep-shearer in Australia and odd-jobber around the globe. Will Frankie return in time to save the farm from the avaricious grasping of the next door neighbour, Jude Fortune and will Minnie discover the betrayal Peter has kept hidden from her?

In many ways, The Banyan Tree is a conventional tale of births, weddings and death set against the land and the lure of emigration. What makes it unusual however is Nolan's flexible, fickle and often fantastical use of the English language. Not only does he use colloquialisms to locate the characters very specifically, but he invents verbs from adjectives, making them come sparklingly alive. The butter churn is a "druidic dark drum" that comes "Sundaying into life".Minnie's memories are noisy things that clutter her mind like "local attaboys" at the races. On the day after her wedding, "morning songed the reading of the streets" as Minnie experienced her "vulved awareness" and "funky heart". Some of Nolan's alliterations and hyphenated words bring the whimsical beauty of Gerald Manley Hopkins to the novel, but occasionally his inventions collapse into the absurd.

When he describes a pony drinking for example, he writes, "slurping her grizzled credentials, she effected a long draught". Although these circumlocutions can trip up the meaning, the narrative works up to a moving climax that will have any offspring far from home reaching for the phone or a plane ticket. --Cherry Smyth