Here was a really strange book where there was a nephew in love with an aunt, an aunt in love with a nephew (unfortunately a different one), an uncle with a lot of weird religious issues and all of this going on against the backdrop of how everyone really feels about the English in Ireland. SPOILER ALERT: they don’t like it.
I got about three-quarters of the way through and just had to stop. The incest, the obsessive Catholicism, I just couldn’t get into it. And the whole time one of the nephews was boldly heading towards what he thought was going to be a great victory for Ireland in an uprising happening at Easter 1916. He was to be garrisoned at the Post Office. I know next to nothing about Irish history, but I am pretty sure that was happened at the Post Office was not very nice, was in fact rather bloody, and that certainly it was not a victory. I just couldn’t hang in there for it.