Farewell companions

James Plunkett's long-awaited second novel is, like his widely acclaimed Strwnpet City, a rich and intricate tapestry of Irish life, this time of the period from the 1914 war to the ending of World : War II. Like many other great novels it Is basically about growing up. We watch Tim McDonagh : and his two close friends moving through childhood and adolescence to early manhood, adapting each in his own-way to the varied and complex strands of the Irish heritage. A powerful influence, of course, is the Church, But there is. also the strong blood-myth of race and an equally pervasive nostalgia for a lost, golden age of the Gael, that mysterious groping back to a crowded, mythological world of gods, warriors and hero-poets. There are, too, , the passionate antagonisms of the Civil War .which had so. recently marked the setting-up of the new State and turned the triumph of the uprising to dust and ashes. Rich and highly articulate characters personify . these influences - O'Sheehan, the eccentric old librarian and Celtic scholar who believes he is Oisin, - son of Finn, MacCumhaill and hero-poet of Gaelic mythology and so about 2,000 years old Cornelius Moloney publican-politician, who hopes to make his fortune by training, greyhounds; and petty politicians and feuding Treatyites and Anti-Treatyites who were at one time brothers-in-arms.