The story of Ireland’s fight for its independence from England, from the close of World War I through 1922, illuminates the attitudes and insensitivities that made revolution a necessity for the Irish people.

Set in Ireland in 1919, just after the First World War, Troubles tells the tragic-comic story of Major Brendan Archer who has gone to visit Angela, a woman he believes may be his fiancée. Her home, from which he is unable to detach himself, is the dilapidated Majestic, a once grand Irish hotel, and all around is the gathering storm of the Irish War of Independence.

Major Brendan Archer, newly released from hospital where he has been recovering from the long-term emotional effects of his wartime experience, arrives at the ironically named Majestic Hotel on a bleak and rainy day to reintroduce himself to his fiancée Angela, daughter of the proprietor, and, if they then agree to marry, to return with her to a home in England.

The Major, however, is greeted by no one upon his arrival at the hotel desk, and he must find his own way to the Palm Court, "a vast, shadowy cavern in which…beds of oozing mould supported banana and rubber plants, hairy ferns, elephant grass and creepers that dangled from above like emerald intestines.” Despite the claustrophobic and depressing atmosphere, and the lack of an immediate betrothal, the Major remains at the hotel, off and on, for three years.

The state of disrepair is obvious to the Major when he arrives.  He is surprised to find rooms that haven’t been touched in years, rooms where cats are thriving, and eventually, trying to find a suitable room, he has inhabited a good number of the Majestic’s space. 

As he arrives, a bit disoriented, the Major is surprised not to have Angela waiting for him.  He meets her father, her brother Ripon, and many more inhabitants before encountering Angela as she sits taking tea.  She had written him so many letters, but he is surprised to find she is not at all how she was in the letters or indeed as she was when they first met.  Not that that meeting had been anything impressive:

Still, over the course of the years since that kiss, he felt confident that they were engaged.  One of the best features of Farrell’s writing, however, is how he creates ghosts in the narrative.

The Major rarely meets with Angela throughout the course of the entire book.  And there are other ghosts in the narrative.  First is Sarah Devlin, one of Angela’s friends and the woman with whom the Major will fall in love.

Where Angela is Anglo-Irish, Sarah is pure Irish and a Catholic:

Symbolism is also vivid in Farrell’s narrative. Perched on the coast of southeast Ireland facing England and Wales, the Majestic is a symbol of British rule in Ireland–the storms, tides, and destructive winds off the Irish Sea have scoured its façade and undermined its structure. Windows are broken, the roof leaks, and decorative gewgaws and balconies hang loosely, threatening to crash. 

The Imperial Bar is "boiling with cats.”  Injecting small news stories throughout the narrative, Farrell sets up global parallels to the rebellion in Ireland, widening his scope by illuminating that time in post-war British history when virtually all the colonies of the empire were simultaneously agitating for independence.

Newspaper stories about the British army’s firing on the populace in Amritsar, the laying down of arms by the Connaught Rangers in India in sympathy with the Irish people, a "native” uprising in South Africa, along with the Chicago Riots and the Bolshevist attacks in Kiev give wider scope to the Irish rebellion and its attendant violence. 

As violence comes to the Majestic, we see that Farrell has prepared us to recognize that violence is random, its events "inevitable, without malice, part of history.”
Troubles was the winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize earlier this year.

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