- 448 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
The Cruelty Men
About this book
Abandoned by her parents when they resettle in Meath, Mary O Conaill faces the task of raising her younger siblings alone. Padraig is disappeared, Seán joins the Christian Brothers, Bridget escapes and her brother Seamus inherits the farm. Maeve is sent to serve a family of shopkeepers in the local town. Later, pregnant and unwed, she is placed in a Magdalene Laundry where her twins are forcibly removed. Spanning the 1930s to the 70s, this sweeping multi-generational family saga follows the psychic and physical displacement of a society in freefall after independence. Wit, poetic nuance, vitality and authenticity inhabit this remarkable novel. The Cruelty Men tells an unsentimental tale of survival in a country proclaimed as independent but subjugated by silence
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Table of contents
- Dedication
- Prologue
- PART I: DISPLACEMENT AND RESETTLEMENT
- Connaire O Mac Tire: Wolfland (1653)
- Mary: We Lived in a Dream at the Edge of the World (1935)
- Padraig: My Little White Darling
- Mary: The Graveyard Growth
- Padraig: Found by the Hag
- Mary: Bridget Is the First to Leave
- Padraig: This Can Happen
- Mary: My Hair Turns Grey and Maeve Leaves Home
- Padraig: With Little Boy a Thaw
- Mary: Little Padraig the Fairy Child
- Padraig: Makes a Whistle for Patsey
- Mary: You Never Knew What He Was Thinking
- Seamus: As Bold as a Pig in the Peas
- Padraig: Should Not Have Gone Near Him
- Seamus: There’s a Wild Look on Him
- Padraig: The Trap
- Seamus: It Is You Killed my Mother
- Mary: A Living Dread (1945)
- Padraig: Captured by Balor
- PART II: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
- Batt: He Was a Great Man for the Stories, It Was Said (1799)
- Mary: Mary’s Plan to Save Seán from Seamus and the Cruelty Men (1945)
- Maeve: A Very Pious Young Girl
- Mary: You Got Two Ends of the Rope
- Maeve: Poxy Trim Town (1946)
- Mary: The World Goes Around as if There Were Wings on It (1947)
- Seamus: I Had Burnt my Coal and Got No Heat
- Mary: Whatever Baby Likes
- Maeve: I’ve Watched You from the Landing
- Seamus: The Weaker Sex
- Maeve: It Was Just a Bit of Diversion
- Padraig: Whisper It from Tree to Tree
- PART III: A MARRIAGE, AND A BIRTH AND A DEATH
- Bride: The Earth Wails All Night Because It Has Dreamed of Beauty (1847)
- Maeve: My Eyes Were Painted On (1949)
- Seamus: A Letter from Brooklyn
- Padraig: The Land of Boiled Cabbage
- Mary: She’d Go to America and Start Again
- Padraig: Put One About You
- Maeve: We Have the Songs You Taught Us, That Is All
- Mary: The Veils Were Thinner at This Time of Year (1951)
- Maeve: He Had Taken Out My Soul and Opened It
- Mary: The Luck-Child
- Seamus: Then Something Queer Happened (1952)
- Mary: It’s a Blessing to Be in the Lord’s Hand as Long as He Doesn’t Close His Fist
- Padraig: Balor’s Eye
- Maeve: This Is Not a Hospital
- Padraig: Crack. They Break the Back
- Maeve: Meeting the Grass Man
- Seamus: Where Comes a Woman, There Follows Trouble
- Mary: We Learnt Their Tongue and Not They Ours (1953)
- Maeve: I Had Two Beautiful Children
- Hag: I Send Her Leaves and Feathers
- Mary: Face the Sun but Turn Your Back on the Storm
- Padraig: Crom Cruach in the Form of a Priest
- Mary: The Rubbish of Ireland
- Padraig: Bloody Slaughter Urges
- Mary: The King of Everything
- Padraig: Goes to the Centre of the Sun
- Mary: The Morning After the Sisters of Mercy Ball
- PART IV: THE CURSE
- Hag: I Chose Him, You Killed Him
- Sadhbh: Woe to Those Who Are Lost in the Time of a Storm (1900)
- Maeve: Most of Us Smelled of Paraffin (1953)
- Seamus: For Fear He Would Be a Hangman That Would Hang the People
- Mary: And Death Not Come to Me Until I Reach It
- Seamus: The Wiremen (1954)
- Maeve: Going Underground
- PART V: THE CLEARING
- Hag: You Dreamt of Losing and You Lost
- 435: Curly Hair Is a Sin (1956)
- Baby: Day of My Beloved, the Thursday (1958)
- Ignatius: A Walking Hoor (1962)
- Baby: Vast Emptiness, Nothing Holy (1958)
- 435: We Prayed to the Blessed Virgin (1957)
- Ignatius: Bad Egg, Bad Bird (1962)
- Baby: Firbolgs and Fomorians Running Amok (1958)
- Ignatius: He’ll Be With Us for a While (1962)
- Baby: A Respectable Institution (1962)
- Ignatius: The Saint of Workers (1962)
- Baby: Finally, I Was Home in Kilbride (Christmas 1962)
- Ignatius: What Would Genghis Khan Have Done?
- Baby: He Should Have Run Off to Hollywood
- Ignatius: He Had a Head on Him Like a Lump of Wet Turf(1963)
- 435: And Make Her Like a Wilderness (1963)
- Ignatius: The Clearing (1963)
- 435: 890 Watching Out for 891 (1964)
- Ignatius: Sick as a Small Hospital (1964)
- Baby: More Nuns! (1964)
- Ignatius: Bleeding Gums (1964)
- Baby: She Took Me to the 4 Ps (1964)
- 435: The Wild History of Their Past Has Faded from Their Minds (1965)
- Baby: The Burning of the Books (1968)
- Ignatius: Now a Free Man (1968)
- Baby: Live Horse, and You Will Get Grass (1968)
- 435: The Mountains Are Not Dead (1969)
- Ignatius: All We Have Is Love (1969)
- Copyright
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Yes, you can access The Cruelty Men by Emer Martin in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literature General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.