WEST OF IRELAND

An Irish family in Canada faces a stark generational choice.

Hoff’s impressive fiction debut centers on the O’Brien family in New Brunswick, Canada. Mr. O’Brien is garrulous and tries to be optimistic, holding court at The Donnybrook, the local pub, every day, and Mrs. O’Brien is sharp and forceful, haunted by the fact that all of her many children but one died very early (“Three boys and five girls buried one after the other in the churchyard, none living long enough to open their eyes to see, or their mouths to cry”). Tended by servants, the couple lives in a fine house with their only daughter, Mary-Kate, a high-spirited, bookish young woman who’s continuously being proffered by her father to all the eligible or semi-eligible men in the town of Tnúth. Mary-Kate is the book’s most complex dramatic creation, and the subject of her matrimonial future is a contentious one. Years ago, Mrs. O’Brien made a rash promise to her sister-in-law, Sister Mary-Frances, pledging one of her children to religious orders, and Sister Mary-Frances is determined to collect (“The long line of O’Briens was coming to an end,” we’re told, “and she wanted to make sure it finished with some dignity”). Hoff adds to these charged premises a third storyline that’s customarily a staple of comedy rather than drama: Mrs. O’Brien’s quarrelsome mother (referred to by her son-in-law as “Our Lady of Blessed Misery” and called by her daughter simply “Herself”), having just recently buried her husband, has decided to come and live with the O’Briens. Hoff animates this tale of over-the-top family dysfunction with wit, considerable writing skills (at one point we read “There was enough blue in the sky to cut out a pair of pants”), and deadpan humor (“I’m not ignoring you,” one character tells another, “I’m just pretending you’re not here”). And the very human pathos of the novel is always present but never heavy-handed, with even the most outlandish characters written to a fine shade of believability.

An eccentric, ultimately moving novel of an expat Irish family in turmoil.