An Irish Eye
Books / Hardcover
ISBN: 0670875910 / Publisher: Viking Adult, September 1997
Thirteen-year-old narrator Dervla O'Shannon describes growing up in a foundling home, her courtship by an old soldier and her outrageous letters about it, Corporal Stack's shocking injury, and her captivity (with the elderly Stack) at a ruined Anglo-Irish estate
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Dervia O'Shannon, the thirteen-year-old who tells this tale, finds herself at the dawn of true womanhood when the children of Saint Martha's Home for Foundling Girls embark on a series of festive visits to Saint Clement's Home for Old Soldiers. There Dervia meets Corporal Stack, a wry malcontent and veteran of the First World War old enough to be Dervia's grandfather. What follows is a hilarious account of courtship involving Dervia's outrageously untrue letters to her Foundling Mother (Dervia is a born liar, says Corporal Stack), the shocking injury that befalls Corporal Stack, and the pair's captivity in the near ruin of Great Manor, an Anglo-Irish estate inhabited only by the "young mistress" (a girl very like Dervia herself), her drunken brother, and a host of desolate babies.An Irish Eye is part myth, part tall tale, and part children's story intended only for adults - a rare achievement in its rendition of Dervia's "Irish" voice.
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