YOUNGER THAN SPRINGTIME

The immensely prolific Fr. Greeley brings back the crazy O’Malley family (A Midwinter’s Tale, 1998) for a post-WW II romance about the perils of coming of age. Chucky O’Malley, who joined the army in 1946 for the GI Bill’s college benefits and became a sergeant in Germany, returns to Chicago in 1948 as a decorated veteran and enrolls at Notre Dame. Despite overseas encounters with beautiful FrÑuleins, he still has fond feelings for his childhood girlfriend, Rosemarie Clancy. She’s a kind of foster sister, though the recent photo he took of her in a two-piece bathing suit gets him in trouble at Notre Dame, as does reading Joyce’s Ulysses, which is on the Index. Will Chucky become a photographer? Father Raven has asked him to save Rosemarie. Her father is a mountainous, diabolical psychopath, a gambler and investor, a member of The Outfit; her mother’s a drunk, and Rosemarie, three years younger than Chucky, denies her own drinking problem. When a dozen bottles of beer are found under his bed at Notre Dame, Chucky is expelled and falls into steep hatred for the university and especially for his nemesis there, the intolerably intolerant Father Pius (“ ‘The university will be free from your evil soul!” Father Pius exulted”). Chucky goes on to get a job as an accountant and becomes deeply involved with the beautiful Cordelia, who eventually dumps him. Then, in Rome, he has some steamy affairs before returning home and enrolling alongside Rosemarie at the University of Chicago. Will he, can he, save her? It’s a question the author has the good sense not to answer. Greeley clearly likes to jump into a plot and row steadily, just to see what’s up for a whole batch of characters who will, of course, at last find themselves aswim in family warmth and Christmas carols, unwrapping middlebrow presents like Younger Than Springtime.