Dermot Bolger was born in Dublin Ireland
and is the acclaimed author of many fictional works.
In his life he's been a poet,
playwright and publisher.
His works have been published across Europe. And his novel "The
Journey Home" became one of the most controversial novels
of the 90's. In "Temptation", Bolger steps across
an imaginary forbidden line with male writers and tells the
story of a family on holidays to Wexford told from the wife's
point of view.
Alison Gill is approaching middle age and
with it comes all the fears and phobias. One of them is how
her life seems stuck in a rut as her family prepares to go
on annual holidays to Fitzgerald's Hotel in Wexford (Ireland).
Alison has been coming to this hotel ever year with her husband
since before their marriage and continued to come as the children
were born. The hotel is familiar to her because she even accompanied
her own family when she was a child. Certain traditions you
never outgrow. But this year was different. Approaching 40,
her lifelong dreams never realized and a husband to whom she
can't even tell about her recent health scare is more than
she can bear.
While at the hotel, her husband Peadar (Peter)
is called back to Dublin to see to a construction problem
at the school where he's head principal. He promises to be
gone only a day or two but when he fails to return Alison
is left wondering if it was the school he left for at all
and her imagination starts to run wild.
It's with the appearance of an old flame that
Alison starts to rethink where her life is going, and has
been. She learns that Chris had spent his holidays at the
same hotel for years, only a few weeks before her family came.
While their lives seemed to parallel in many ways, they never
seemed to cross, until now. Alison learns that Chris is here
alone this time because of the unexpected death of his wife
and child earlier in the year. He hadn't rebooked his holiday
at the hotel in time and the only slot they had was this one.
Chris is still distraught over the loss of
his family who had been taken from him in an instant and violent
tragedy. His intent was to spend one last holiday at Fitzgerald's
Hotel to recall all of the happy moments his family had spent
here. His future uncertain passed the next day until it's
clear that his fate has brought him here to end his life.
But when he finds a long lost love, Alison, there is a temptation
for both of them to explore what they were denied so many
years before. But the temptation isn't as strong as his grief
and her loyalty to a husband who is possibly having an affair
on her is too strong to change what he knows he must do. He's
not prepared for the consequences when Alison finds out.
"Temptation" is a step into the
lives of every day people living only as they know how and
bent on a tradition started generations before. The life cycles
are obvious as the characters memories of their own pasts
show each others maturing from the time when Alison and Chris
were together, their separation and the different roads they
took through life that actually seemed to parallel. This story
reaches into the heart of something everyone must go through
when approaching 40, the midlife crisis. As well, it delves
into the tragedies that some of us will know in our lives,
grievous loss and the extreme measures some will go through
to try to end their pain. In this light, "Temptation"
has a strong backbone for what it takes to make this novel
memorable and heart wrenching.
However, as I approached the final chapters
I was left with a sense of unfinished business. There seemed
to me something missing, a lack of conclusion, missing chapters…something.
There were unanswered questions about Peadar's disappearance
that I felt Alison had the right to know, questions any wife
would ask of her husband when her mind is so unsure. Yet she
failed to. And Peadar's own closed mouth reappearance at the
end of a family holiday still left doubts in my mind that
he had only returned to Dublin for the construction project
on the school as he said or if it was someone else. As well,
Alison had recently had a very serious health scare and was
hoping to talk to her husband about it on the holiday and
possibly revive their tired relationship. Yet with his disappearance
she didn't have the chance to. And with his reappearance she
chose to keep her issues to herself and continue on with her
life in a rut as before. Her only buoy is her knowledge and
comfort of Chris's final decisions about his own life.
I had high hopes for "Temptation".
With Mr Bolger's reputation in literary excellence and the
first few pages I'd hoped to come across a novel of excellence.
There was that in the beginning, but the end left me wanting
for something I couldn't really name except that the novel
seemed unfinished…for the lack of a better term.
Bolger fans may enjoy this story and his step
into the shoes of a woman and her fears and phobias. I can't
fault that he didn't do this expertly. He did. But for first
time readers of his work, as I am, there may be some disappointment
in the unfinished nature that I felt on getting to the last
page.
