The Great Shame [Taschenbuch]

The book is sweeping in many respects, its length, the time in History it covers, and the meticulous research that must have been required in its creation. The beauty of the work is it can be read as a major Historical Work or if the reader prefers, a 19th Century novel.

I found the writing to be very dense requiring more time than I normally would take to read such a book. There is so much information that if much of it is new and you wish to really get your mind around it, it requires a good deal of time. I actually read the book in parts and took time to put in to perspective what I had read. This book is probably about double the length or even more than that of the average book today, but don't deny yourself a great read because it takes two hands to carry.

Irish History is not the material that makes for many happy endings. Another reviewer mused about what they would think of this book in England, I think it would be hard to find on a bookshelf! The History of and the time that brackets The Great Famine is as grim as any human suffering you have read before. The English landlords behavior was atrocious and this book pulls no punches in that regard. The Author also talks about some of the more unsavory groups that operated in Ireland and often found themselves on a ship to the other side of the world. To the Author's credit he does not dwell, he recounts History and it's left to the reader to draw conclusions. Someone else wrote there were some factual errors and they appear well informed. I don't believe they are detrimental to the work or its merit, they are worth knowing for historical accuracy.

Whether you are Irish or not the book is time well spent. At the conclusion you will be sorry it's over, but I always take that as a sign it was a great read. And as someone once said "there are no Irish stories with happy endings". This book may not be uplifting in the traditional sense, but as present developments in the news are showing that saying may yet be proven wrong. Ireland is doing very well as it enters the 21st Century, and some of the descendents of those who were forced to leave, are now returning.

As the Diaspora Descendents returns, and Ireland flourishes, that would be the happiest ending of all.

This is an epic journey, just as the formation of the Irish diaspora needs it to be. You never quite know where you are you going to go next, as ships sail back and forth from Ireland to Australia and from Australia to the Americas. It is the roaring days of sail just before steam, and gold is being discovered right and left on both sides of the Pacific, sufficient to lend impetus to various Fenian schemes through goldfields' fundraising.

One of the characters involved in the 50s was a man destined to become an American Civil War hero with the rank of general. He fought on the Union side while another Irishman who had fought the same battle as he had at home in Ireland, and had also been transported for it, fought with the Confederates. Such were the fortunes of war at that time.

The book also recounts how the Fenian forces tried on three occasions, prior to Confederation, to invade Canada in order to hurt the British in North America. They also had the long-term plan of mounting an invasion of Ireland from a Canadian base. It was all a bit pathetic in the end, but for a time, it was in deadly earnest and who could have said what the result might not have been had the Fenian forces succeeded.

Perhaps the most interesting part of a very entertaining book is the retelling of an attempted rescue from Western Australia of the last group of Fenian "lifers," all soldiers who had been cashiered from the British Army for their part in Fenian plots in England and Ireland. These men had little hope of ever leaving their prison, and were mostly ailing by the time American Fenians had raised the enormous sum needed to buy a ship to go to their rescue. The hair-raising tale of what happened is one of the nineteenth century's best adventure stories, and Keneally relishes the telling of it.

So this is a book which has everything an Irishman, or an Irishman at heart, could wish for. I wonder what the reaction of the English might be to such a tale. The evidence is somewhat damning, to the effect that political repression of the most odious kind was used during and after the famine. Of course, this is only referring to the nineteenth century and does not go back in any detail to the awful story of Cromwell's men or even earlier, which might lead one to think that the English, when they came to Ireland, only did so to practice.

If you've got any Irish blood in you, (and if you didn't previously know one way or the other, this may prove to be a glorious occasion for finding out) you'll fairly quickly be learning to say the old war cry, Erin go bragh. Ireland forever! It's a strange tale and one that should make us reflect about the nature of power and its misuse. It all seems so long ago now but that's just a mirage of sorts, for it was really only just the other day.

Lastly I should point out that writing a book like this must have been a sheer delight. Keneally seems to have visited many of the sites he talks about and they are often in out of the way places. I imagine that it was an absolute pleasure for him to write a book like this and I look forward to the day when he finds time to do it again. I can't recommend "The Great Shame" highly enough.

I would reccomend it to anyone wanting to learn about the history of the Irish, in particularly of those who "found themselves in Van Diemen's Land". But also students of Common Law and the Constitution might want to read it for the Draconian laws the British imposed on the Irish (e.g."imprisonment for even thinking aloud that the British Empire might be overthrown someday").

It is lengthy but well worth the time to take to read it...the illustrations and photos are wonderful too and really aid in picturing the details of the times.