Title: Dancing at Lughnasa
by Brian Friel
Father and Father Ltd, London
Year: 1990
71 pages.
Used paperback in Very Good condition. Pages starting to yellow from age.
Summary:
Dancing at Lughnasa opens with a monologue by Michael, who introduces his nostalgic memories of the summer of 1936, when he was seven years old. His mother and aunts, the five Mundy sisters, all unmarried, live in a small cottage outside of town.
Kate, the oldest, is a school teacher and the only sister with a job. Agnes and Rose knit gloves to be sold in town and help keep the house with Maggie and Chris (Michael's mother) who have no income at all. Their brother Jack, who recently returned home, is a priest who has lived as a missionary in a leper colony in Uganda for 25 years. He is suffering from malaria and has trouble remembering many things, including the names of the sisters and his English vocabulary.
In addition to Jack’s return the summer is marked by another major event in Michael’s memory: the acquisition of the family’s first wireless radio. The radio, which breaks down more than it works, unleashes unarticulated emotions in the five women, who spontaneously break into song and dance, with or without its aid.
Size
Height: 7.8 in.
Width: 5.0 in.
Thickness: 0.2 in.
Weight: 2.4 oz.
Publisher's Note
It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside of the village of Ballybeg live the five Mundy sister, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six to forty. Braian Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a group of human beings trapped in their domestic situation, but the wider landscape, interior and exterior, Christian and pagan, of which they are nonetheless a part.
Industry reviews
"Does exactly what theater was born to do, carrying both its characters and audience aloft on those waves of distant music and ecstatic release that, in defiance of all language and logic, let us dance and dream just before night must fall."
Cox
