An Irish Country Cottage: An Irish Country Novel by Patrick TaylorMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Life continues in Ballybucklebo with the accidental loss of Donal Donnelly and family's cottage to fire. Though the Green and Orange Troubles are beginning to rise once more and Ulster is seeing Catholic-Prod turmoil increasing, the folks here are, as always, united neighbors and friends who come to the family's aid in many ways. Jack Mills, a Protestant and Helen Hewitt, a Catholic are getting engaged. Jack is Dr Barry Laverty's best friend and Helen is a medical student almost finished her training. While both sets of parents had been accepting of the relationship, lately Helen's father especially has been quite vocal with his disapproval of the match.
Dr Emer is beginning to become more self-confident though she is wondering if medicine is her calling, since, in her opinion, she didn't make the right call in two cases early enough. Her handling of Donal's wee daughter, Tori, who appears to think herself a bad little girl since she was playing near the stove where the fire began before her bed-time. Tori is having nightmares and, though the cottage is coming along and will soon be habitable, she cries whenever Julie and Donal try to show her the new place.
Barry and Sue Laverty, in the meanwhile, are having problems conceiving. This brings in the strand dealing with woman's reproduction, the use of contraception in Ireland,and the development of the pill. The tests and findings and treatment of infertility is a major theme in the book.
All in all, as the time moves into the 1960's the town and its people and the doctors who live among them and serve them, so too the reader goes with them Delighted as always to be a visitor to an Irish Country town.
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