This Cold Country
A Novel
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3.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Notable Book: “The lush but languishing Irish landscape of the 1940s is the perfect setting for this wartime love story . . . rich and satisfying.” —Library Journal
Only a few days after Daisy Creed precipitously marries Patrick Nugent, scion of an Anglo-Irish family, Patrick rejoins his regiment in France. Having never met her in-laws, Daisy sets sail for her new home, Dunmaine, County Waterford. The family’s affairs echo its estate: grand and forbidding on the outside, decaying and corrupt within. Patrick’s vain, spoiled sister, Corisande, soon flees to her lover, leaving Daisy alone with Patrick’s feeble brother, Mickey, and grandmother Maud, who has taken to her bed. In her determination to save Dunmaine and secure her place as its mistress, Daisy unwittingly becomes an accomplice in a dangerous political plot, as fraught as the rules of social class and the history of Ireland itself.
With grace and wit, the acclaimed author of The Dower House portrays a lost way of life and the war that rendered it obsolete, in “a tour de force . . . a deft, subtle, caring and honest novel that pursues and presents a vision of truths within a tiny tribal culture” (The Baltimore Sun).
“Draws on a range of comic traditions . . . [Daisy] has the kind of common sense and cleverness that are instantly ingratiating.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A talented writer . . . elegant prose and careful characterizations.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Davis-Goff, author of The Dower House, a New York Times Notable Book, and Walled Gardens, a memoir, plumbs her Irish roots once more in this tale about a young English woman adjusting to new social, political and class demands when she moves to Ireland during World War II. A volunteer in England's Land Army, Daisy Creed works on a farm in Wales. Given the rare wartime occasion to meet an eligible bachelor, she quickly marries Patrick Nugent, a distant Anglo-Irish cousin of her employer. In a matter of days, Patrick is called on duty and Daisy joins Patrick's family in Ireland. Gothic touches abound; the Nugents are eccentrics, their home full of mysteries and reminders of better days. Daisy's new family includes Corisande, a spoiled beauty growing bitter as she approaches middle age without a suitor; her mild-mannered brother, Mickey, who silently puts up with all in exchange for solitude; a grandmother who may or may not be in a coma. All are residents of Dunmaine, the family's overgrown, undermanaged estate. Through Daisy's dogged questioning, Davis-Goff gets at the reasons and implications behind Ireland's WWII neutrality. Daisy's queries are answered mainly by Mickey: "As soon as there were two religions, it was all over for Ireland. Up until then the conquerors and colonists became enthusiastically Irish in about five minutes." These conversational, encyclopedic passages fill in blanks for readers who don't know their Irish history, but water down the already thin story. Davis-Goff is a talented writer, however, and there is much to appreciate here in the way of elegant prose and careful characterizations. 4-city author tour.
