The Visitor

From Barnes & Noble

The Dublin-born writer Maeve Brennan is now regarded as one of Ireland's -- if not all of literature's -- greatest short story writers. The 1997 publication of The Springs of Affection and 2000's The Rose Garden collected together for the first time what were believed to be all of Brennan's stories. But now, quite unexpectedly, her oeuvre is immeasurably deepened by one last book -- a novella written in the 1940s -- unpublished until now. The Visitor is a haunting tale about the price one pays for leaving home. This ferocious novel, writes Nuala O'Faolin, has "the intensity of Emily Dickinson caged in the Dublin of Joyce's The Dead.

Bookforum

Quietly devastating.

Irish America

It adds another impressive chapter to Maeve Brennan's literary legacy.

Los Angeles Times

The Visitor magnifies Brennan's entire, considerable oeuvre.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

The Visitor is about cities and parents and homelessness and homesickness all at once. It magnifies Brennan's entire, considerable oeuvre.

New York Times Book Review

Fascinating.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This previously unpublished novella by the late Brennan (The Rose Garden), a staff writer for the New Yorker for over 30 years, was recently discovered in a university archive. Written in the 1940s, it concerns 22-year-old Anastasia King's return to her paternal grandmother's home in Dublin, where she spent the first 16 quiet years of her life. Anastasia's mother--fragile, emotionally troubled Mary--disgraced herself by running away from her husband, John, and especially his judgmental, domineering mother, and escaping to Paris, "looking for someone she remembered from when she was at school there.... It was just an idea she had." Anastasia followed her mother to France, and, when her father came to bring them back, the teenager refused to leave Mary and return to Dublin. Six years later, Mary has died and Anastasia, now alone, returns to her grandmother's house, expecting to be embraced. Grandmother King's reaction is cold; she soon informs Anastasia that she is welcome for a visit, but that she forfeited her birthright when she chose her unstable mother over her father, who died shortly after he returned from Paris by herself. Housekeeper Katherine attempts to soften Grandmother's steely reserve, and an old family friend, Norah Kilbride, elicits Anastasia's help in a deathbed promise. This early work by the respected writer never flinches from its exploration of the destructive power of family pride and anger. Brennan's restrained but touching evocation of a young woman whose heart has been wrung dry and who thereafter is condemned to permanent exile is permeated with outrage and sorrow. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Michael Porter

The Visitor is a fascinating glimpse at a writer developing themes and tonalities that would surface in subtler yet more powerful forms in her later and better work.
—New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Riding a wave of rediscovery, longtime New Yorker writer Brennan (The Rose Garden, 1999, etc.) has been no more highly touted than now, seven years after her death at age 76. This novella, though, dating from the '40s and found in a university archive, will not add measurably to her reputation.