The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna: book review

The Misremembered Man (2008) is set in Ireland from the mid-1970s.

Jamie McCloone was ten-and-a-half months old when he was abandoned in a shopping bag on the steps of the St. Agnes Little Sisters of Charity convent in Derry, Ireland, in 1934. From then on, he has cursed his mother, all women in general, and nuns in particular. He hates change.

Jamie is now a 41-year-old farmer, living off the land, in a limestone cottage in Duntybutt, two miles from Tailorstown, which he inherited from his adoptive aunt Alice and uncle Mick. His companion is his dog Shep.

Patrick and Rose McFadden live on the farm next to Jamie. They think Jamie should ‘get himself a woman’ – a wife.

Lydia Devine is a 40-year-old teacher – ‘still unmarried’ – living with her ‘plucky’ 76-year-old mother. Her mother’s greatest fear is that her daughter would find herself a husband and abandon her.

Rose puts an advertisement in the Lonely Hearts column of the town’s newspaper. Rose has several responses, but she does not plan to marry anyone. Her intention is to take the chosen man to Heather’s wedding for the day as her companion. She hates attending weddings alone.

Jamie is depressed; Lydia is oppressed. Do they meet? After two-thirds of the way into the book (after 200 pages) they do (in the 1970s it is the time of letter-writing and slow postal services).

This is more than a love story. Intertwined in the theme of loneliness is the background to Jamie’s depression – the cruely of the orphanage, abuse by the nuns, and the emotional challenges in life. The author describes Jamie the child, and Jamie the man.

The slowness of Jamie and Lydia meeting enables considerable character development, the flashbacks to the orphanage provides the dark aspects of Jamie’s life, and the dialogue between Lydia and her mother details the bonds that bind them. Slow paced, in parts, it takes an effort to reach the end.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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