Walled Gardens: Scenes from an Anglo-Irish Childhood - Softcover

An Anglo-Irish childhood lived in latter-day Victorian society is evoked in this dryly humorous, silkily literary memoir. Davis-Goff ( Night Tennis ) takes us into the upper-class country houses of Waterford in southern Ireland--Glenville, Ballinacourt. Despite the stuffy Protestant ambience, she reveled in Ireland's "benevolence of nature," eloquently recalled in passages that take the reader into the glorious abundance behind walled gardens. But similar largesse, emotional or financial, was not available within families. "The Anglo-Irish that I knew--the ones who had survived--played out their lives rather like punters at a roulette table betting with the minimum stake." Such perceptions of wilting gentry, of country people with opposing values as well as conflicting loyalties and unvoiced pain, are the material of Davis-Goff's rueful, wise recollections. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Davis-Goff offers an evocative memoir of a young Protestant girl growing up in the Irish Republic in the mid-20th century. Compared to the general Irish population, hers was a privileged childhood of governesses, country houses, and other comforts. Still, it was a period when the Protestant landed gentry was declining in terms of money, power, and influence. Capturing the change in a series of well-written vignettes and anecdotes, Davis-Goff writes of family, Church, her parents' deteriorating marriage, as well as the theater, horse racing, and other distinctly Irish activities. The book recaptures a part of recent Irish history that is no more. Recommended for libraries with growing Irish collections. BOMC alternate.
- Ron Chepesiuk, Winthrop Coll. Archives, Rock Hill, S.C.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.