Books: Irish Fury

THE FURYS—James Hanley—Macmillan ($2.50).

For seven years Mrs. Fury struggled desperately to keep her son Peter in college, where he was studying for the priesthood. A big. middle-aged Irish woman, proud, foolish, intense, domineering, Mrs. Fury had known poverty all her life, hut had never lost her spirit, controlled her magnificent temper, or grown resigned to the ways and morals of the squalid district of the English seaport where she lived. She had met her husband. Dennis, when she jumped from an excursion steamer to save a child, had been saved in turn by him. Strict and unforgiving, she had closed the door on her son Desmond when he took a lovely but mysterious wife who was thought to have been a bad woman. She quarreled with her only daughter, who resented the unconcealed and unashamed favoritism that Mrs. Fury showed for Peter. Mrs. Fury went hungry and never complained, humiliated herself begging money from her scornful children, even stole £12 that her gruff husband had painfully saved, all for Peter’s sake. Then Peter was expelled from college. On the same day that she heard the news. Mrs. Fury learned that another son had been hurt at sea. but she scarcely thought of her injured boy in her rage and panic, bewilderment and shame, at Peter’s shabby failure.

Slowly, with terrible doubt and distress, Mrs. Fury awakened to a realization of Peter’s worthlessness and irresponsibility. He had never wanted to be a priest. He had only studied out of fear of her. Old Dennis Fury said, “After all, he’s only a boy,” but Mrs. Fury could not forgive him, or stop loving and hating him. She sat up all night, staring vacantly at the shabby rooms, while her husband hovered nearby, helpless, pitying, irritated. In the depths of her anguish she tried to find release in work, scrubbed the crumbling house from top to bottom. She worked until her hands grew limp, until she almost fainted each time she leaned over the scrubbing bucket, until she dropped asleep like someone struck down by a blow, but she could find no peace. A general strike, deeper worries over money, nagging delays and disappointments piled heavier burdens upon her. demoralized the shaken Fury household. There remained one last pain that Peter could cause her to break her heart. She tried to keep him from her estranged son Desmond, fearing Desmond’s mockery. The strike threw them together, and Peter fell in love with his brother’s wife. The strike ended, but not Mrs. Fury’s agony. As Peter was being dragged off sullenly to sea she learned of his greatest deceit, beat him until she was pulled away. then, blinded by tears, struck madly at the empty air.

Slowly through the 549 pages of The Furys James Hanley reveals his characters, lets their actions speak for them, presents accelerating events through the eyes of one after another, introduces a mass of realistic detail. The first of three novels dealing with the wild Fury clan, The Furys begins with the sort of situation on which most novels end. is distinguished by its sustained intensity, its brilliant characterization of Mrs. Fury, its brisk, unadorned, effective prose style, its few powerful, panoramic scenes of violence and disorder during the strike. Although readers may be repelled by the detachment of James Hanley’s writing—so chill it sometimes seems close to scorn—may dislike the general meanness that marks his minor figures, they are likely to agree that The Furys is a bold and arresting effort, less squeamish, less sentimental, than most of the novels dealing with the hardships of lower-class life.

The Author. James Hanley was born in Dublin in 1901, went to sea at the age of 13, joined the Army during the War, has worked as a stoker, cook, butcher, clerk, postman, and has been a centre of critical controversy since he began to write. His grim short stories, Men in Darkness, and his novel, Boy, won praise from the late Colonel T. E. Lawrence and other English writers, censure from Author Hugh Waipole and critics who believe that fiction should be polite. Deeply influenced by Balzac and Turgenev, James Hanley has a special dislike for the romances of Joseph Conrad, writes that he is “mostly interested in the insignificant. The more insignificant a person is in this whirlpool of industrialized and civilized society, the more important he is for me.”