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Overview
Somewhat grudgingly, Lyle agrees, but during their years in Galway, they discover that the surprises of life are not over. Going home is more complicated than butter and the bay, and thirty content years does not mean that a couple is immune to romantic intrigue. In this new life, while Mary and Lyle are rediscovering each other and building a richer life together, an unexpected event forces Lyle to decide where his home truly is.
Told in "quiet stories with emotions like old stepping-stones that have sunk beneath the surface" (Christian Science Monitor), Beth Lordan's evocative and heartfelt novel explores the complex emotional terrain of mature marital relationships.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060530372 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 01/04/2005 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.65(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
But Come Ye Back
A Novel in Stories
Chapter One
Cemetery Sunday
On the moving day itself, everything went beautifully, straight on from the moment Mary woke to a sliver of bright July sunlight under the hotel-room drapes with the idea that this whole undertaking was courageous. The extravagance of the thought tickled her, and she grinned, listening to Lyle's steady breathing, but why not? The last time she and Lyle had carried labeled cardboard boxes upstairs and stacked them in uncurtained rooms, their boys had been small, and they'd been moving from near Boston to near Cleveland, and she'd believed then she'd never move house again. And yet here they were, Lyle at sixty-five and she at sixty, having sold that house and posted their belongings across the ocean to start, again, a new home, in Galway, the town of her childhood.
She and Lyle had been back in Galway only two days, just long enough to get adjusted to the time difference, but they'd been over last summer to choose a house, and she'd written and telephoned, and her sister, Róisín, had given advice, and everything was arranged. All those belongings (the best bed linens and table linens and crockery, the photo albums and special Christmas ornaments, the childhood presents and homemade cards from the boys, and -- in the bottom of a box marked MARY—WINTER, with a few things that had been her mother's -- the old necktie box containing her own plait, cut off when she left Ireland thirty-four years ago to marry Lyle), all those cherished things she needed to make a home, sat in boxes in a storage locker, to be brought in by Róisín's grandson Barty in his truck. Róisín's husband, Michael Carey, would go with him and oversee; since his heart attack last year, he wasn't allowed to lift, and Barty, with his earrings and all, wasn't a boy to send without supervision, Róisín herself said. The furniture Mary and Lyle had chosen last summer was to be delivered this same morning, and Lyle would supervise all that unloading and setting up. Mary and Róisín would direct the boxes and keep tea coming.
Mary took the sunshine as a blessing on this brave new life, and she let nothing in the day shake her from it. When the men from Tom Dempsey's Furniture were late arriving, she said, "Why, now we'll have the chance to dust the moldings before the rooms are filled with things," and when Lyle grumbled, she sent him off to the shop two streets over for the newspaper and bread and tea. "By the time you're back, they'll have your chair in the sitting room," she said, and they did. They were fine lads, too, cheery and strong, and it did her heart good to hear their young voices in the new house (though Lyle went on grumbling as he told them where to put the things they unloaded -- "Seems like they'd know the difference between a kitchen table and a coffee table without being told," he said) (and she said back, laughing, "Ah, they do, but they're not so sure an American would agree!").
She thought Lyle was heroic, too, coming away with her to a foreign country where he knew nobody. She'd seldom thought of returning until after their boys were off on their own, but then, when Lyle retired, and more and more of their friends moved away to Florida or back wherever they'd come from, the rare thought had become a wish. Back here, she and Róisín would go about together: they'd talk of their parents and the world as it had been when they were Mary and Róisín Curtin, girls together; they'd share their worries about their grown children. The sea would be near, and butter would have a taste to it, and she'd understand the weather; she'd get to know her brothers' wives, and her brothers, who had still been boys when she left. Lyle had no close family left in America; his father had been from Mayo (though he'd died before Lyle knew him, and Lyle had never made any great claim to Irishness, that foolishness of so many Americans about green beer and claddagh rings). She'd had no family at her wedding and had lived almost forty years far from home for his sake, and she wanted to grow old among her own people and be buried among them in a grave with flowers planted on it and curbing all around.
When she'd finally brought up the subject of moving, she'd been ready to say all that, but it hadn't been necessary. She'd just said she wanted to be near her sister and her brothers, and he had nodded -- they'd been eating chicken, she remembered -- and said he'd look into it. A week later he'd said it looked like a plan, and for all that he'd explained to her the economic advantages (this fine two-bedroom, semidetached house had cost less than a new condo in Ohio, to say nothing of the moderate climate and the savings on heat, the reasonable approach to health care), she took it as an act of love.
So none of the grumbling he did that moving day touched her at all, and none of the small difficulties made any real bother either. If the box spring rubbed off a patch of paint in the upstairs corridor as the lads turned it at the top of the stairs, take it for a sign: she'd not been so very fond of that grayish white color, and once they were settled in, Lyle might enjoy a project of painting it something brighter. A bit of summer rain never hurt anyone, and if Barty tracked dirt on the carpet bringing in the damp boxes from the truck ...
But Come Ye BackA Novel in Stories. Copyright © by Beth Lordan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
Mary Curtin, a young Irish nanny, and Lyle Sullivan, an American accountant, meet and fall in love at a picnic. For over 30 years, Lyle, an impatient and demanding husband, makes a life for them in America. Through those years, the accommodating Mary makes a home for them, where they raise two sons. But when Lyle retires, Ireland calls to Mary: she wants to grow old among her own kind, where the ocean is near and the butter has flavor -- she wants to go home.
Somewhat grudgingly, Lyle agrees, but in their years in Galway they discover that the surprises of life are not over. Going home is more complicated than butter and the bay, and 30 contented years does not mean that a couple is immune to romantic intrigue. Their bond is tested when Lyle meets a beautiful American woman, and Mary finds a lonely Irish man. Yet for both, marriage is more than romance, home is more than a country. In this new life Mary and Lyle will rediscover one another, and are building a richer life together when an unexpected event forces Lyle to decide where his home truly is.
Lordan's stirring novel illuminates the complex emotional terrain of mature marital relationships, providing an unforgettable testament to the lifelong journey undertaken when lives intersect and intertwine. Masterful in its evocation of character and place, and suffused with the rhythms and flavors of the Irish seaside, But Come Ye Back is an astonishing, and infinitely wise reflection on love.
Questions for Discussion
- How did you respond to the character of Lyle? Did you feel that he was a good husband to Mary? Was Mary a good wife to Lyle? What was the criteria that you used to answer that question: do you feel that we define the marriages of others by our own desires and expectations for a marital relationship?
- Do you feel that Mary and Lyle's marriage mirrors that of couples being wed in contemporary times? Is a marriage defined by the generation in which the bond was made, or are all marriages essentially the same across time and space?
- Of their move to Ireland, Mary observed, "this whole undertaking was courageous ... Lyle was heroic, too, coming away with her to a foreign country where he knew nobody." Discuss Mary's vision of her husband as a hero -- do you believe that sacrificing your own happiness or desires for your significant other is a form of everyday heroism?
- How is But Come Ye Back the story of the one left behind? Through Mary's death how does Lyle come to find out that he really is the man that she always knew that he was? During three decades of marriage, how did having a "better half" enable him to behave as his "not-better half?"
- Why do you think that the subtitle is called "A Novel in Stories?" How did the many stories of But Come Ye Back allow readers to look at a relationship in all its facets? Did Lordan succeed in creating a lasting portrait of a couple's maturity and love?
- How did the second person narration of the last story change your experience as a reader? Why do you think Lordan chose to unfold her final chapter in this voice? Which story in the novel was your favorite and why? Which did you enjoy the least? How would the book be changed if one story were selectively removed from the novel?
- When the Sullivan sons go to Ireland following Mary's death, the men, who "had never expected to find themselves without her" find that they have little to say to one another. Discuss the prickly and complex nature of communication within families. Do certain family members serve as the catalyst to family members staying in touch; to celebrating family gatherings and holiday celebrations together? Do females -- mothers and daughters -- play a stronger role in keeping families unified? What happens to the Sullivan family when they lose their matriarch?
- How did Lyle's American heritage and Mary's Irish background form an enduring tension between them? How did they sublimate some of their innate cultural behaviors and mannerisms in order to please one another? In what ways do Lyle and Mary, and Laura and Mark -- like many long-married couples -- loathe each other? In which ways can they not bear to be separated from one another?
- How does the separation of the narrative into stories reflect the individuality of Mary and Lyle? How does the interwoven nature of these stories represent their connection by marriage and by their children?
- When Mary longed to return to Ireland she imagined that "she and [her sister] Roisin would go about together: they' talk of their parents and the world as it had been when they were Mary and Roisin Curtin, girls together: they'd share their worries about their grown children. The sea would be near, and butter would have a taste to it, and she' understand the weather; she' get to know her brothers'wives, and her brothers, who had still been boys when she left." How does her homecoming differ from her idealized longing? How does rekindling her relationship with Roisin disappoint Mary's expectations? How does the reality of what she finds in Ireland deflate Mary's vision of her new life?
- How does the ordinary become extraordinary within the pages of But Come Ye Back? How does Lyle change as a man when he learns to make peace with the intrinsic ordinariness of life? How does this knowledge influence his opinion of what constitutes a "home" and where he sees himself in the world?
- From reading But Come Ye Back did you feel that you knew intimately the author's own opinions about marriage and long time love? Was Lordan's displayed confidence in longtime love infectious, or did reading But Come Ye Back raise questions for you about the institution of marriage?
About the Author
Beth Lordan is the author of the novel August Heat and the collection And Both Shall Row.
Suggested Reading: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott Island by Alistair MacLeod Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich Monkeys by Susan Minot Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov The Collected Stories by John McGahern