Mangan's legacy
Mangan's legacy. An Irish Family Story is a novel by Brian Moore that was published by Diogenes Verlag in Zurich in 1999. The original was published in 1979 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York under the title "The Mangan Inheritance" .
The North American Jamie penetrates to his roots in Ireland and finds rot.
time and place
The action takes place in 1978 in New York, Eastern Canada and in the Irish county of Cork to Drishane.
action
Born in Canada in 1942, McGill graduate , journalist, verse smith and freelance writer James Mangan lives in New York. His wife, the successful actress Beatrice Abbot, runs away from him. Jamie, as Mangan is called, spends a few days with his father in Montreal . While rummaging around at home, Jamie finds a daguerreotype from 1847. He can hardly believe his eyes. Jamie's resemblance to the portrayed Irish poet James Clarence Mangan is obvious. Secretly, the not very successful poet Jamie must now consider himself a more important poet. How much Jamie loved traveling to Ireland and looking for the manganese! The father, a well-known editor-in-chief in Montreal, had earlier had to break off a corresponding trip to Ireland without result. The father has left Jamie's mother and lives with Margrethe. Jamie had always wanted to own the attractive Margrethe, six years his junior, but in the end he had never fallen out of the role of the good son.
Just on the day when Jamie had the key experience with the daguerreotype, the news of the death of his wife Beatrice reached him. The actress and her lover, a theater producer, were killed in a car accident. Jamie, almost destitute, inherits about $ 800,000 from his wife. So he is able to search for his ancestors in Ireland. More precisely, Jamie wants to find out whether he is related to the poet Mangan. In the family Bible of Jamie's grandfather, Drishane appears as the place of birth. The grandfather had emigrated from Cork to Québec in 1892 and made it up to the auditor of the Canadian Pacific Railway in Canada .
In Shannon landed and Bantry arrived in Drishane, Jamie will quickly find it in the local parish registers. His grandfather is descended from Patrick James Mangan (born 1841 in Dublin , died January 1, 1899) and Kathleen Driscoll. This Patrick is said to have been a son of the poet Mangan, claims Reverend TR Drinan, MA , one of the Mangan biographers. However, the Drishan pastor cannot read the proof of this from his books. Jamie should do some more research in Dublin.
But one thing is certain. Jamie is related to the Drishaner manganese. Patrick had a brother. His sons are called Fergus Mangan and Michael Mangan. Fergus died in 1972. He left behind a son Conor and a daughter Kathleen. Dinny Mangan, Michael's son, wants the American journalist, this intruder, to get out of Ireland as quickly as possible. However, Dinny hides the reason. But Jamie is welcomed by Kathleen and the pedophile , dwarf Conor in a neglected caravan. The siblings lead a lottery life and benefit from the wealth of their American relative. Jim, as they call Jamie, falls madly in love with 18-year-old Kathleen, sleeps with her several times and wants to take her to North America with him. Before doing this, he really wants to find out whether he is related to the poet Mangan. Eventually Jim gets to the point where Dinny reveals the family secret to him. That means, Dinny sends Jim on a trip to his - allegedly deceased - father Michael. This lives - for good reason - hidden from official stalking. Because Michael had his own 12-year-old, strong, beautiful daughter Maeve and then Kathleen, also when she was only twelve years old, forced to incest . Michael, who looks just as similar to the poet Mangan as Jim and also writes as unsuccessfully as Jim, wants to be praised by his visitors as an Irish poet in the footsteps of the great ancestor James Clarence. Jim turns away, disgusted by the child sex offender .
Back home in Montreal, Jamie's father is dying from a stroke . Jamie finds Kathleen generously financially and, at Margrethe's urgent request, flies to Canada in a hurry. Because the father wanted to tell him something very important. Jamie meets the father just in time. The dying man's last words: Margrethe is pregnant. Jamie should look after the child in the future.
shape
The end of the novel can be read as a happy ending. Jamie had her eye on Margrethe.
The book is more than a thriller. Brian Moore weaves verses from TS Eliot and the Poète maudit James Clarence Mangan into the plot. The author uses the Manganese biography of the historian John Mitchel . So z. B. reported that Mangan was a cataloger at the Dublin University Library. Mitchel described his first encounter with manganese. This description is quoted and processed twice in the text.
German editions
- source
Brian Moore: Mngan's Legacy. An Irish family story. Novel. Translated from the English by Bernhard Robben . 448 pages. Diogenes, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-257-23285-3