Overview
This is the story of Anne O'Brien, bestselling writer of Irish historical romances on the run from her husband, who she believes is cheating on her, back in Ireland. She is on her way to Pennsylvania to take up her annual teaching stint in the English Department of Sweetmount, a small liberal arts college, where she hopes she will find happiness with Professor Charles Matthews. But she keeps on bumping into an elderly gentleman in a cream-colored suit, who wants to tell her about a murder and who bears an alarming resemblance to her dead grandfather, Marcus Quilligan O'Neil. In this lively, funny and well-written novel, though, nothing is what it seems. The old man, for example, may be an apparition. But if he is not the ghost of Marcus, why does he appear only to Anne and why is he pestering her into writing his biography? And is Professor Matthews really a predatory sexual brute, shunned by his colleagues and guilty of a violent rape? What has Anne let herself in for? Although reared in Ireland, she is the daughter of Irish immigrants in America, and her struggle to come to terms with the two worlds becomes an odyssey through the secrets of the past. At the old man's insistence she starts to research a possible miscarriage of justice that took place during a Mafia trial in New York at the beginning of the century. Marcus, it seems, born in America after his family had fled the Famine, took various jobs, some extremely dubious, in order to pay his way through tuition at Yale Law School. Once graduated, he moved to New York, practiced criminal law and became part of the Tammany Hall machine. Although he was rewarded for his loyalty to Woodrow Wilson with an ambassadorship to the Dominican Republic, his soul is troubled, unable to rest because an innocent man may have been executed in a case Marcus handled back in 1913. Anne O'Brien's research, in turn, leads her into that violent metropolitan melting pot in which the new Americans - and the new Irish - were creEditorials
Publishers Weekly -
Just as Anne O'Brien's plane is about to land at New York's Kennedy airport, she spots a manwhom she later realizes is her grandfatheracross the aisle, wearing a white suit with a red rose. Problem is, Marcus Quilligan O'Neill, Esq., has been dead for more than 60 years. Apparently Marcus has begun to haunt Anne, a writer and academic, convinced that she should pen his biography. As Anne researches the old man's life, Callaghan (Mothers) shows what happens to a sophisticated, contemporary woman when she lets her stress level overtake her reasonor is Marcus, in fact, a ghost? When Anne discovers that an innocent man may have been executed in a case Marcus handled back in 1913, her investigations take a serious turn. Callaghan skillfully intertwines the fascinating world of Tammany Hall politics and pre-Prohibition corruption with the life of present-day Ivy League academia, which proves more treacherous than it seems. Anne's lover may be a sociopath, her affable roommate turns out to be on the run from the mob and things come to a head when some of the wisecracking hoods from her grandfather's past materialize in the present, ready to "plug" her if she "squeals" in the biography. In this comic romp, O'Callaghan fuses intriguing historical detail onto a psychological thriller that features more than one superbly wrought character. Eccentric and thoroughly enjoyable, this novel offers intelligent, witty entertainment. (Nov.)Library Journal
Flying to New York City from Ireland, Anne O'Brien is frightened by the appearance of an old man, who watches her intently. When she arrives at Sweetmount College for her annual stint as visiting writer, he reappears. No one else ever sees him. The stranger taunts Anne, demanding she write his biography, yet he is unwilling to let her reveal the secrets of his shady underworld past. Unfortunately, Callaghan (Kitty O'Shea, Routledge, 1989) dilutes this drama with too many subplots. There is Anne's affair with a professor accused of sexual offense, her relationships with graduate students, and her struggle to understand the politically correct nature of the American college campus. While seamlessly weaving the various strands, Callaghan never explores any aspect fully, giving the novel a superficial feel. Her sentences are short, her conversations colloquial yet flat, and though the story is entertaining, the characters are not real enough to make readers care deeply. Not recomended.Yvette Weller Olson, City Univ. Lib., SeattleKirkus Reviews
In Callaghan's latest (Mothers, 1984, etc.), the real turns surreal as an emotionally distraught Irish novelist and teacher, stalked by the ghost of her long-dead Irish-American grandfather, investigates an old crime only to get into more contemporary trouble.Anne O'Brien, a bestselling writer of Irish historical romances, is on her way to take up a teaching assignment at a Pennsylvania college when a man resembling her grandfather, Marcus Quilligan O'Neil, appears. At first she thinks that she's imagined him, for no one else can see him. Could he be a product of her drinking or her distress, both induced by her fear that her husband Fergal is dating a younger woman? Then the old man appears at a cousin's house and also pops up again at the college. He is, indeed, it turns out, Marcus's ghost, and he pesters Anne to write his biography. She's reluctant to undertake the project but finds herself researching his life, in part because her dying mother had told her that Marcus had never been a proper father. Suspecting sexual abuse, Anne begins her sleuthing. The inquiry is also an opportunity to give a brief reprise of the Irish experience in the New World as the writer describes how Marcus, born in America after his family had fled the famine, took various jobs, some unsavory, to earn enough money to pay for tuition at Yale Law. Once graduated, he moved to New York, practiced criminal law, became part of the Tammany Hall machine, and was rewarded for his loyalty by Woodrow Wilson with an ambassadorship to the Dominican Republic. In present time, an affair with a sexually abusive colleague, the irritations of academic political correctness, the attempted suicide of a gifted student, and Marcus's ghostly visitations nearly destroy Anne, but husband Fergal's fidelity, newly assured, and a new book idea end her ordeal.
A witty and appealingly wry protagonist overwhelmed by a story that has more plots and subplots than an afternoon soap.