Troubles (Empire Trilogy)

This book was a drama copiously sprinkled with humor. I enjoyed the descriptions of the eccentric characters and their odd behaviors. The book was slow moving at first and almost put it down but am glad I kept reading. The Majestic mirrors the dying British Empire post World War One. And the characters are echos of the various strata of society in denial of the decline.I enjoyed the writing so much that my next three books are the Empire Series Trilogy (by the same author) starting with the Siege of Krishnapur.

TROUBLES is a distinctive, and mildly disconcerting, novel. It is set in the fictional town of Kilnalough, in the County of Wexford, on the southeast coast of Ireland. The time span of the novel is 1919-1921, the years of the Irish War of Independence. "Troubles", of course, is the misleadingly bland term often applied to the ethno-religious-nationalistic conflict that bedeviled Ireland for the entire twentieth century. That conflict, "a war without battles or trenches," looms over the novel.There are two main characters. The first is Major Brendan Archer, a Brit who is a Great War veteran, having survived four years of trench warfare. While in France "The Major" (as he is referred to in the novel) periodically received letters from a young woman, signed "Your loving fiancée, Angela." Her father owns the Majestic, a large, formerly grand and elegant, coastal resort hotel in Kilnalough. So once the Major has been restored to some level of normalcy, he goes to Ireland and the Majestic to visit Angela (to whom he does not believe he ever proposed) and clarify their relationship. Angela, however, is dying from leukemia. The Major, who has neither family nor home to speak of, stays on at the Majestic, becoming friends with Angela's father, Edward Spencer, and falling in love like a puppy with Sarah, who had been Angela's best friend. And thus, the Major becomes a first-hand witness to the Troubles that gradually envelop, and then oust, the Protestant Anglo-Irish of Kilnalough.The other principal character, to my mind, is the Majestic. "It had once been a fashionable place. It had once been considered an honour to be granted accommodation there during the summer season." Over three hundred rooms; in front, a life-size statue of Queen Victoria on horseback; a grand reception foyer; dining rooms and ballroom, bars and smoking room; tennis courts and squash court; a glass-enclosed Palm Court. But the days of grandiosity and elegance are gone, and the Majestic is barely hanging on. Its residents are mostly old ladies who have nowhere else to go; while walking down the corridors of the uppermost floor, people step through floorboards weakened by rot; the vegetation of the Palm Court, fed by some sort of underground sewer leak, is riotously overtaking everything; scores of cats infest the hotel; and pigs are now stabled in the squash court. The Majestic is the British Empire, circa 1920.Life bumps along. From time to time there is yet another flare-up of the Troubles, with its irrationality and violence. For the Protestant Anglo-Irish and the Majestic, the course of the novel is a downward spiral. On the whole, it is a melancholic novel. Curiously, though, it never becomes tragic, because there are so many very funny scenes and because so many happenings are farcical, macabre, or just plain absurd.Written in 1970, TROUBLES was the first of what became an "Empire Trilogy". I earlier read its successors -- "The Siege of Krishnapur" and "The Singapore Grip". The three novels treat different episodes in the decline of the British Empire, and they display some similarities. But the tone of TROUBLES is markedly different than that of the two later novels, which, in my opinion, are better than TROUBLES. While it has many brilliant scenes, there are some that don't work and a few that are even distasteful. Certain traits of many of the characters are exaggerated, thereby rendering them unrealistic, even ludicrous. To me, the Major, in his fecklessness and his pining for Sarah, is a rather pathetic figure. (He surfaces again, nearly twenty years older, in "The Singapore Grip", by which time he has more character.) Finally, the novel is too long and rambling; "The Siege of Krishnapur" is much more compact and focused, and "The Singapore Grip", while even longer, has more action and more characters to sustain this reader's interest.

Troubles is well written and contains a number of interesting characters, but I found the storyline to be rather tedious. It describes final decline and fall of a wealthy family in post-WWI Ireland, as seen through the eyes of a disaffected young veteran staying at their decaying grand hotel (an obvious metaphor for the breakdown of Irish society in the face of rising militant separatism). The darkly humorous depictions of the eccentric upper class, indolent servants, and elderly hotel residents reminded me of John Updike or Evelyn Waugh in his more restrained moments, but the story drags slowly and relentlessly toward an inevitable conclusion as the characters go blithely about their business in the face of impending societal change. One unusual device used by Farrell is to start each chapter with news articles from the English press describing the increasing violence of the civil conflict in northern Ireland and India, to describe the "off-stage" events that would have (or should have) influenced the characters point of view and motivations. This provided some helpful context, as I was not familiar with the history of that period, but it became intrusive after a while and I couldn't tell if the articles were genuine or fictionalized.Overall, Troubles was enjoyable to read due to the quirky characters and dry humor but was much less engaging than Farrell's "The Siege of Krishnapur".

The Majestic Hotel was crumbling and so was the British empire. Inside a mix of ecentrics annoyed and disturbed each other. After the war the major goes to Ireland to see his pen pal fiancee and the story unfolds. The book is ingenious, well written to say the least. Good humour, but some monotonous and sad parts. The author is very descriptive detailing interpersonal relationships and and every character's emotional posture.

A great read.

If you like Irish writers you’ll love this book. The framing of the Troubles within the books narrative is a masterstroke.

Bellissimo romanzo che racconta i tragici eventi dei contrasti anglo-irlandesi durante e dopo la I guerra mondiale, attraverso gli occhi di un reduce dalla guerra inglese che si trova a soggiornare in un grandioso albergo sulla costa irlandese di fronte al Galles. L'albergo è in rovina ma ha un suo fascino, così come il suo proprietario, la sua famiglia e gli ospiti, per lo più anziani. Libro malinconico e divertente al tempo stesso. Non ho ancora letto la fine.

Like the author. Enjoyed the book.