As music and splendour

Katie O'Brien's last novel, As Music and Splendour, has been republished. Review by Eamon Maher

Penguin Ireland has performed a great service in bringing out a new edition of Kate O'Brien's last novel, published in 1958. O'Brien was a fine stylist, with a particular aptitude for portraying strong female characters. In addition, she was also a committed – if questioning – Catholic, a fact that didn't protect her from coming to the attention of the Censorship Board which banned two of her novels, Mary Lavelle (1936) and The Land of Spices (1941), the latter for one passing reference to homosexuality. The Ante-Room (1934) was included by Declan Kiberd in his Irish Classics, an honour that is well-deserved. As Music and Splendour is a poignant description of the coming of age of two young Irish women, Rose Lennane and Claire Halvey, whose singing talents are sufficiently recognised in their country of birth for them to be sent for training to Paris and then on to Rome. Rose achieves fame and adulation in the illustrious La Scala, whereas Clare's ascetic temperament means that she is best employed as a singer of sacred music. Rose does not waste much time shedding the restraints of a strict Catholic upbringing and embarks on a passionate love affair with a French tenor, René, only to abandon him for an Italian aristocrat, Antonio. When the latter announces that he is to enter into a strategic marriage to the woman chosen for him by his uncle, Rose knows that there can be no further contact between them: "With her plain Catholic scruples she would trouble no one. She had not troubled René with them, nor would she begin now with this other much more dangerous Catholic pagan. Her mortal sins were her own, and nothing to pester others with." Clare has similar scruples about her lesbian relationship with the Spanish singer, Luisa. To Thomas, the charming Welshman who is in love with her, and who claims she is immoral on account of her lesbian liaison, she replies: "I am, I suppose, a sinner – certainly I am a sinner in the argument of my Church. But so would I be if I were your lover." These Irish women know their catechism and they never fully escape from its influence. As Clare says: "There's no vagueness in Catholic instruction." Through dint of hard work, good management and a god-given gift, the two sopranos manage to find their true voices, which are essentially an extension of their innermost being. O'Brien clearly had a love and understanding of opera and what was required to succeed at the highest level in its demanding environment. The European flavour of her novels was the result of her own extensive travels and her competence in French (which she studied in university) and Spanish (she worked as an au pair in Spain for over a year). The main characters of the novel are finely delineated, as are some of the minor ones such as Thomas, Iago Duarte, Paddy Flynn, the French nun, Mère Marie, and a host of others. Reading Kate O'Brien's prose is a delight, especially now that there are so few writers who possess the same exactitude and attention to detail that she displays. Take the following description of how Thomas is struck by the change in Clare after her return from a torrid few days in the company of Luisa: "She looked up; he was shocked, not so much by her great pallor, [..] as by the deep accent of weariness, almost of emaciation, on her unprepared, unwary face." Love does not bring happiness to O'Brien's characters, no more than it did to the author herself. But if this is the price that must be paid for such beautiful writing, perhaps the pain was worth enduring.