Valancourt Books discussion

Upon the original release of The Curse Of The Wise Woman in 1933, there were some very notable authors writing reviews praising Lord Dunsany's new book. I stumbled across these recently when searching in some old newspapers. No spoilers ahead.



Saturday Review of Literature, December 9th, 1933
Book critic and horror anthologist Basil Davenport

"This story shows Lord Dunsany at his best. His imagination, and his mellifluous prose, are to be found in it; but more than most of his books it keeps its feet upon earth. . . And this tale of a vanishing gentry and an unattainable paradise is told by an old man looking back, with tender desiderium, upon his youth; it is far away and long ago; it has the singular melancholy charm of something solid and yet hazy, like the woods in autumn."

Saturday Review of Literature, December 16th, 1933
World-renowned author, Graham Greene

"The lovely texture of the writing, the sense of strangeness which memory and a boy's imperfect comprehension lends, reminded me again and again of Alain Fournier. But the intrusion later in the novel of the supernatural, a growing prettiness and unreality in simile, prevent these memories of a past Ireland reaching the level of Le Grand Meaulnes."

The New York Times, 1933
Author unknown. It's a very lengthy review but so well-written I decided to share it. Although it contains no actual spoilers, I've hidden the plot because of its length.

"Sport and legend, beauty and nature and dark shadow of politics and the curses of the wise woman bringing the vengeance of the bog upon those who would destroy it are curiously mingled in this new romance by Lord Dunsany. Shining through it all, like the wonder of some fairy country glimpsed in the splendor of the sunset, is the loveliness of Tir-nan-Og, the Land of Youth, of apple blossoms that never fade and maidens whose beauty never wanes. Condemned by the church, which has declared that those who even let their thoughts dwell upon it too fondly are courting damnation, the charms of the Land of Youth lure some away, even from Heaven.

(view spoiler)[So at least they did some fifty years ago, when Charles James Peridore, narrator of the tale, was a lad of about 16, living with his father at High Gaut, the ancient seat of the family, not many miles from Lisronagh bog. One night, four men came to shoot the elder Peridore, who had become involved in politics, and, though he escaped, Charles never saw him again. After this dramatic opening the tale moves along quietly for some time, a loving record of going out after snipe, of the coming of the wild geese and of the great hunt that finished at Clonnabrann, where Charles first saw and loved his exquisite Laura. Yet even she was not as important in his life as Thomas Marlin, bog-watcher and only son of the wise woman, the witch who lived in a little, willow-surrounding cottage on the edge of the wild.

Westward beyond the bog lay the sea and further west was Tir-nan-Og, and it was from the untamed beauty of the bog that Marlin's spirit had drawn strength for visions. But presently the "Peat Development (Ireland) Syndicate" threatened to ruin the bog in the name of progress and, though the wise woman cursed the work and the workers, it seemed as if her curses were completely ineffectual, while Marlin, knowing that the hand of death was upon him and realizing that should he die on earth he would surely go to hell, one morning "rose and walked away out of the world, where age cannot overtake him and where death is only known from idle stories told in the orchards by those who are young forever, for the sake of the touch of sadness that gives a savor to their immortal joy." Yet there were some who believed that he had been lost in the bog and would be found perhaps one day, "sharing with the Pharaohs that strange eternity of the body that only Egypt and the Irish bog can give." The bog is beautiful and can bestow strange gifts, yet it can be terrible, too, and the climax of the tale comes when, in response to the curses of her, who swore by "turf and heather" and with the aid of its ancient allies, the north wind and the rain, the bog rose up in wrath against its would-be destroyers. (hide spoiler)]

Besides many lovely descriptions, both of the countryside of the bog, the book gives a vivid picture of a certain phase of Irish life as it existed half a century or more ago. Kindliness and cruelty, poetry and fear and superstition, all have part in a tale which is a blending of love of the out-of-doors with love for that other fairy country, a land in some ways closely akin to that other strange Celtic wonderland, Annwyn. The accounts of Charles's various expeditions after game are too numerous and too long, but there is a great deal of beauty in the book, and specially in the visions it calls ip of that country built from the dreams of youth, which is the land of youth itself, Tir-nan-Og."

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