The Light of Evening

Book Review

Edna O'Brien

The Light of Evening is Edna O'Brien's nineteenth novel, and its heart can be derived from the dedication – “For my mother and my motherland.” This is a story about mothers and daughters, and of mother Ireland.

Dilly lives in the country home of Rusheen with her husband Cornelius. Her children are grown and married, and Dilly and Cornelius are living out their old age while struggling to keep their land. She has been stoically suffering with the shingles, but now has finally decided to make the trip to Dublin to see a specialist there.

While she is being admitted to the hospital and through her first night there, in a sleeping pill induced fog, Dilly's mind wanders over areas of her life that mean the most to her or are troubling her – her beloved daughter Eleanora, her begrudging willing of Rusheen to her greedy son Terrence, the tragic, unrequited love of Gabriel in her youth in America. In the twilight of her years, these are the things that Dilly chooses to celebrate, mourn, confront, and remember.

As her hospital stay continues, it appears that the shingles may not be the only thing that Dilly is suffering from. The nurses hint at ovarian cancer, but obfuscate the matter, perhaps shielding Dilly from the harsh truth.

The next part of the novel flashes back to Dilly's childhood. We meet the young Dilly, desperate to start a new life in America . Her parents scrimp and save to buy her a passage on a ship bound for Ellis Island , a journey full of hardship and disease, realities that Dilly is loathe to share with her parents. She arrives in New York to discover further hardships. The city is teeming with poor people, overcrowding, and innumerable dangers. Her cousin Mary Kate, with whom she will be staying, is not in the respectable, stable circumstances that her family in Ireland led Dilly's parents to believe. Life is hard, and the so-called Promised Land is not full of as much promise as Dilly had hoped. Dilly finds a job as a cleaner in the home of wealthy Irish immigrants, Mr. and Mrs. McCormack, and soon befriends their cook Solveig. Together the girls pore over, and puzzle at, the fashion and beauty advertisements in the newspapers. Dilly's circumstances seem to be improving until Mrs. McCormack accuses Dilly of stealing one of her rings. Dilly is unfairly and peremptorily sacked.

On an outing to Coney Island with her cousin Mary Kate and two girlfriends, Kitty and Noreen, Dilly meets Gabriel. She is immediately captivated by him, and although it is clear that Kitty fancies him, Dilly is able to spend stolen moments alone with him wading in the water. They talk about Ireland and the towns she has grown up around, and after the encounter, Dilly is convinced that Gabriel did not find her at all memorable, even though that scene in the water would forever be emblazoned on her heart. One night, Dilly is at a dance at the home of Ma Sullivan, and encounters Gabriel there. He remembers her, and they begin to court, mostly through letters as Gabriel travels out west, and through subsequent visits to Ma Sullivan's when Gabriel is in New York.

One day, her girlfriends show Dilly an anonymous note saying that Dilly will never see Gabriel again. It is insinuated that Rita, a former flame, is behind the note, and Dilly is devastated. She allows herself to be persuaded into returning home to Ireland , broken and brokenhearted. She meets Cornelius at a dance, marries him, and becomes the mistress of the farm Rusheen. Perhaps the farm draws her in more than Cornelius does.

The third part of the novel returns to the present day, to Dilly in the hospital in Dublin . She has struck up a friendship with Sister Consolata, and they share tales of their lives with one another. Dilly elaborates to the sister about how her son, Terrence, and his wife bullied her into willing Rusheen to them, instead of to her favored daughter Eleanora. Dilly does not particularly approve of the life her daughter has chosen to lead in England , living with a man Dilly believes is not worthy of her, writing books that scandalize her hometown. And yet Dilly suspects that her beloved daughter is more worthy of the land and the farm than her son.

The fourth section of the novel contains Eleanora's story – how she met and married her husband, the birth of her first child, her mother's disappointment with her and her marriage, her husband's abusive insults about her and her writing.

In the next section, we are back at the hospital with Dilly, who is desperate for a visit from Eleanora. When her daughter finally comes to the hospital, she can only stay a short while, ostensibly because she must return to a conference in Denmark . In reality, Eleanora must leave for a tryst with a married man. In her haste to leave the hospital, she leaves behind her journal.

A nurse brings Eleanora's journal to Dilly, and in the next section of the novel, Dilly reads through her daughter's most intimate thoughts and feelings, about her husband, her mother, and her life. Dilly had wanted to take Eleanora back to Rusheen to see it again, and to visit the solicitor's office, to change her will and leave Rusheen to her daughter. Unfortunately, Dilly doesn't make it, and dies in the hospital. After her death, Eleanora finds stacks of her mother's letters to her over the years. They paint the picture of a devoted and loving mother, appreciative of her daughter's success and generosity, and full of concern for her welfare.

This is a beautifully written and sensitive novel that delves into the precarious relationship between mothers and daughters, homelands and new frontiers, and the past and the present. Edna O'Brien's writing is lush and laden with emotion. It is a towering achievement, and a worthy companion to her masterpiece Wild Decembers.

There is a photograph of my mother as a young woman in a white dress, standing by her mother who is seated out-of-doors on a kitchen chair, in front of a plantation of evergreen trees. Her mother is staring with a grave expression, her gnarled fingers clasped in prayer. Despite the virgin marvel of the white dress and the obligingness of her stance, my mother has hear the mating calls of the world beyond and has seen a picture of a white ship far out at sea. Her eyes are shockingly soft and beautiful.

The photograph would have been taken of a Sunday and for a special reason, perhaps on account of a daughter's looming departure. A stillness reigns. One can feel the sultriness, the sun beating down on the tops of the drowsing trees and over the nondescript fields, on and on to the bluish swathe of mountain. Later as the day cools and they have gone in, the cry of the corncrake will carry across those same fields and over the lake to the blue-hazed mountain, such a lonely evening sound to it, like the lonely evening sound of the mothers, saying it is not our fault that we weep so, it is nature's fault that makes us first full, then empty.

Such is the wrath of the mothers, such is the cry of the mothers, such is the lamentation of the mothers, on and on until the last day, the last bluish tinge, the pismires, the gloaming, and the dying dust.