The Deposition of Father McGreevy. This item is unavailable.The Deposition of Father McGreevy

In a London pub in the 1950s, editor William Maginn is intrigued by a reference to the reputedly shameful demise of a remote mountain village in Kerry, Ireland, where he was born. Maginn returns to Kerry and uncovers an astonishing tale: both the account of the destruction of a place and a way of life which once preserved Ireland's ancient traditions, and the tragedy of an increasingly isolated village where the women mysteriously die-leaving the priest, Father McGreevy, to cope with insoluble problems. Looking back in time, the book traces how, as World War II rages through Europe, McGreevy struggles to preserve what remains of his parish, and struggles against the rough mountain elements, the grief and superstitions of his people, and the growing distrust in the town below. The Deposition of Father McGreevy is a remarkable story, and a gripping exploration of both the locus of misfortune and the nature of evil. Rich in the details of Irish lore and life, its narrative evokes both a time and a place with the accuracy of a keen, unsentimental eye, and renders its characters with heartfelt depth.

It is London in the late 1950s. William Maginn is a literary editor who believes he has left the Ireland of his childhood behind when one of his relatives and drinking partners tells him the mysterious story of "a dead village up in the mountains" in County Kerry, involving "a trial that shamed the town". Travelling back to Kerry, Maginn begins to trawl the court records, where he stumbles across the deposition of Father Hugh McGreevy, the unfortunate priest of the village who died. The majority of the rest of the terrible story is told in the words of the priest, who insists that "I kept a Christian community together in its extremity, and prevented it, through the grace of God as conveyed by his sacraments, from falling into barbarity". The story is an unabating one of misery, suffering and ignorance, as over the space of two winters the small rural village first loses all its women to sickness, and then descends into bestial and pagan acts, as Father Hugh tries in vain to keep his flock together, with the Second World War a distant "echo" on the wireless.

Short-listed for the Booker Prize, The Deposition of Father McGreevy is an elegant, 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". The moral may be simple, but as the Irish would say, it's the way that you tell it. --Jerry Brotton