Life Sentences

O’Callaghan’s tender latest (after the collection The Boat Man) explores three generations of an Irish family forced to deal with hardship and loss. In 1920, Jer Martin, a WWI veteran, still suffers the trauma of trench warfare. After the death of his sister, Mamie, Jer goes on a bender and ends up sleeping it off in jail, where he nurses a grudge against Mamie’s worthless husband, Ned Spillane. A section set in 1911 has Jer’s mother, Nancy, who was born at the end of the potato famine, remembering an episode when she found work at age 19 in one of the big houses of Cork City. There, she was seduced by the estate’s handsome married gardener, Michael Egan, and went on to have two children by him. And in 1982, Jer’s dying, 64-year-old daughter, Nellie, living in a council house with her daughter and son-in-law, recalls the time Jer was forced to illegally bury her dead infant son in a cemetery, only to be caught in the act by the local priest. Inspired by stories from his own family history, O’Callaghan delivers a slim novel that is thick with memory and regret. The hard lives of the Martins leave readers with an indelible impression of Irish history. (Mar.)