The Rag Tree: a Novel of Ireland

"I sometimes quip about the length of time it has taken to write The Rag Tree by saying, I started to write a book about war and then peace broke out... through the journey of the story's own growing pains, it became a story of a country and its people amid a historic transition." 
--D.P. Costello

The afterword to Costello's The Rag Tree: a Novel of Ireland was written at the tail end of Ireland's Celtic Tiger boom, just before the collapse. To read The Rag Tree, to reflect upon the strides that Western Europe's whipping boy has made in the last century (as the reader will), and then to stick the knife of mentioning the more recent troubles would require the mind and soul of a right little shit.

After all, so much of Ireland's charm has roots in indefinable magic and whimsey. Breathtaking vistas, the liveliness of ancient Celtic traditions, pubs. Sure, this can sometimes end up looking like, as one character in The Rag Tree puts it, "Paddyland. Planet Ireland. Every castle and historic site has a ticket booth and fence thrown around it. Where's the giant mouse with the green ears?" And that exploitation is a shame. But if one of the steps to casting off the weight of 800 years of exploitation (and one too many borderline offensive homages on St. Patrick's Day) is to indulge in a little of your own, it seems churlish to blame the Irish when that fabled magic begins to work for them for the first time in a millennium.

Such is the hope of the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) at the outset of The Rag Tree. He hopes to ensure Ireland's future prosperity through his Eire Nua referendum, an initiative that some see as a threat to Ireland's past, not to mention its freedom and independence. It's to Costello's credit that he never pointedly chooses a side on Eire Nua (though the reader can safely guess). Even the outcome of the roundabout plot to reunite Northern Ireland with the independent Republic is wisely left open-ended. In a winding story (all Irish stories are winding ones) about a country long cleaved by warfare and oppression, offering clear answers would be insulting.

The worst that can be said of The Rag Tree is that the plot seems too often driven by coincidence. Or, if not coincidence, then a mysterious, god-like conspirator calling himself "the Blackbird." It doesn't matter much either way: if you mind coincidence, you'll have a few problems with the Blackbird, as well. And normally I'd have been among the detractors of such a plot device. But here again we see the inexorable pull of Ireland and its stories: a little bit of luck and a whole lot of whimsey that will draw the reader in, whether the reader wants to be or not (actually, The Rag Tree puts a rather grim spin on traditional whimsey; I call it "grimsey").

Example: I spent much of the book telling myself that Mattie Joe Treacy's spiritual protector--a pooka in the form of a raven who goes by "Brian"--didn't exist outside the mind of the mildly-disturbed and often drunken Treacy. After a while, I decided that Brian did exist, but as a series of transient ravens that followed Treacy, though never actually speaking to the man. And by the end, I was forced to give in. Brian was a tad too charming for me and if he wanted to exist in the otherwise real, understandable world of The Rag Tree, who am I to stop him?

You can approach Irish legends with whatever eye-rolling skepticism you choose, but stubbornly holding onto that just makes you an asshole. It's not unlike dismissing the magic of Disneyland. A Disneyland with considerably more Guinness and whiskey.

Grade: B+