Mary Rose Callaghan

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Mary Rose Callaghan (Born January 23, 1944) Dublin, Ireland, is a writer and biographer.

Contents

[edit] Early Life and Education

Callaghan was the second of six children, and educated from the age of nine mostly in convent boarding schools. She enrolled as a medical student at University College Dublin where she took a B.A. in English, History, and Ethics/Politics in 1968 followed by a Diploma in Education in 1969.

After teaching in various secondary schools both in England and in Ireland, she became, from 1973 to 1975, assistant editor of The Arts in Ireland. She has done some journalism, publishing in The Irish Times, The Sunday Tribune, Hibernia, The Irish Independent, and The Catholic Standard. Some of her shorter her creative pieces have been published in U Magazine, The Irish Times, Image Magazine, and the Journal of Irish Literature.

She moved to America in 1975, which allowed her to focus on her writing, and she finished her first novel, Mothers, in 1978 (published in 1982). While continuing to write fiction, Callaghan also worked as a contributing editor for the Journal of Irish Literature from 1975 to 1993, and was associate editor for the first and second editions on the Dictionary of Irish Literature. She has taught writing classes at the University of Delaware. Callaghan and her husband Robert Hogan, traversed the Atlantic yearly, spending half their time in Newark, Delaware and half in Dublin, finally settling permanently in Bray in 1993. Since her husband’s death, Callaghan has continued to live in Bray, writing, taking classes in art history, and teaching.

[edit] Major Themes and Works

Callaghan is noted for her control of point of view, her characterization, her penchant for literary allusion, and her humor. The plots are often wild and quirky even though they take on serious themes. Mothers (1982), a powerful first novel, chronicles, in dramatic monologues, the lives of three Irishwomen from three generations. It explores marriage, adoption, pregnancy out of wedlock, and female sisterhood and created quite a stir during abortion debates in Ireland when it was first published. Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter (1985) is a portrait of an artist as a young girl. Modeled loosely on Dante’s Comedia and highly allusive, the novel, with its large cast of Dickensian characters, is comic but not as successful aesthetically as Mothers.

Taking a break from fiction, Callaghan was commissioned to write Kitty O’Shea: A Life of Katherine Parnell (1989). Callaghan‘s purpose here was to show Katherine Parnell’s life as a noble and courageous one, not simply one linked by chance to her famous husband. The Awkward Girl (1990) her next novel demonstrates her control of narration and plot structure which allows her to interweave thirty-six minor characters and apparently fragmented short “stories” around one major title character. In 1990, Callaghan published a novel for young adults, Has Anyone Seen Heather?, a murder mystery. This was followed in 1997 by a sequel, The Last Summer. In 1996, Callaghan published Emigrant Dreams (called I met a Man who Wasn’t There in America), a novel that epitomizes all of her strengths. Here, her Irish narrator (Anne O’Brien from Confessions, now a middle-aged writer), haunted by her dead Irish-American grandfather, explores questions of reputation, political correctness, emigration, memory, and the close relationship between creativity and insanity. The novel depicts the emotional problems of an Irish writer teaching in an American college, as she attempts to untangle the dubious involvement of an Irish-American ancestor who was involved in the real-life Becker murder trial of 1912.

The Visitors’ Book (2001) continues Callaghan’s interest in trans-Atlantic comic possibilities as each of twelve chapters chronicles how the narrator’s Bray home becomes a kind of B & B for visiting American friends and family. While her earlier novels tended to concentrate on specifically Irish situations and characters, the later novels move out to embrace trans-Atlantic themes, making use of both her Irish and her American experiences.

[edit] Critical Reception

From the start, critical response to Callaghan has been mostly positive. Although Marion Glastonbury in The New Statesman called Mothers a “sentimental, conventional and predictable tale,” Anne Donovan in The Library Journal said it is “engaging, as both an Irish and a feminist novel,” while the Kirkus Review reported that it is “grounded in genuine affection and lifted above mere soap by charm and wit.” Callaghan’s second novel did not fare as well as her first. Publishers Weekly calls Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter a “graceful touching tale,” but Booklist sees it as a “thin novel” and Anne Haverty in the TLS says that the novel “frequently takes refuge in a contrived charm, and the result is diminishing and curiously juvenile.” Jay Halio in DLB, however, argues that Confessions “did not receive the widespread notice and acclaim that Mothers did, probably because its subjects were less controversial.” The Awkward Girl, however, fares better with The Sunday Independent noting that it is a “profoundly moving book,” and Éire Ireland calling it “quite an exceptional novel, [. . . Mary Rose Callaghan’s work] may well place her in the ranks of the Irish writers of the twentieth century.” Sadly out of print now, Emigrant Dreams, probably Callaghan’s best novel, was received with almost unanimous good press. Publisher’s Weekly noted that Callaghan “fuses intriguing historical detail onto a psychological thriller that features more than one superbly wrought character. Eccentric and thoroughly enjoyable, this novel offers intelligent, witty entertainment.” Halio (DLB) says that “while the novel succeeds as entertaining fiction, it also offers perceptive comments about the writing process and how it is affected by the difficulties of married life and other relationships.” Callaghan’s seventh novel, The Visitors’ Book has also met with good reviews. The Irish Tatler calls it “ a wry and amusing look at Celtic Tiger Ireland” that is “written in the easy personal style of a journal.” Edel Coffey in The Sunday Tribune notes that “Callaghan takes the romantic visions some Americans have of Ireland and dismantles them with great comic effect.” In all, reviewers have liked Callaghan’s work. As Coffey says, she is “a seasoned writer and has established a reputation for her comic fiction.”

[edit] Bibliography

  • Mothers. Dublin: Arlen House, 1982.
  • A House for Fools . Journal of Irish Literature 12 (September 1983): 3-67.
  • Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter. London and New York: Marion Boyars, 1985.
  • Kitty O’Shea: A Life of Katherine Parnell. London: Pandora, 1989.
  • The Awkward Girl. Dublin : Attic, 1990.
  • Has Anyone Seen Heather? Dublin: Attic, 1990.
  • Emigrant Dreams . Dublin: Poolbeg, 1996. (published in America as I Met a Man who Wasn’t There. New York: Marion Boyars, 1996.)
  • The Last Summer. Dublin: Poolbeg, 1997.
  • The Visitors’ Book. Ireland: Brandon, 2001.
  • Shorter Works by author:
  • “Ronnie.” Journal of Irish Literature 5 (1976): 89-121.
  • “Breakfast With Turgenev.” Journal of Irish Literature 6 (1977): 14-20.
  • “My First Bra.” Irish Times 27 August 1979:12.
  • “Underwear.” Wall Reader and Other Stories. Dublin: Arlen House, 1979. 94-101.
  • “Two Daffodils.” U Magazine August 1981.
  • “Julia O’Faolain.” DLB 14: British Novelists Since 1960. ed. Jay Halio. Detroit: Gale, 1983. 580-584.
  • “A Novel Way of Cooking.” Woman’s Way 28 October 1983: 6,8, 38-40.
  • “The Siege of Fort Bathtub.” Modern Irish Stories. Ed. Caroline Walsh. Dublin: Irish Times, 1985. 70-75.
  • “Sisters—The Pain and Joy of a Lifelong Bond.” Irish Times 13 September 1985: 13.
  • “A Far, Far Better Thing.” Image Magazine May 1986: 96-102.
  • “Hold It! These Things Don’t Happen in Real Life.” Irish Independent 10 February 1987: 9.
  • “How I Saved Thirteen Thousand Pounds.” Journal of Irish Literature 17 (1988): 14-31.
  • “I Hate Christmas.” A Woman’s Christmas. Ed. Terry Prone. Dublin: Martello Press, 1994. 146-155.
  • “Crybaby.” Shenandoah 46 (fall 1996): 74-79.
  • “Windfalls.” If Only. Ed. Kate Cruise O’Brien and Mary Maher. Dublin: Poolbeg, 1997. 47-60.
  • Secondary sources:
  • “Callaghan, Mary Rose.” Contemporary Authors 118. Detroit: Gale, 1986. 74.
  • “Callaghan, Mary Rose.” Contemporary Authors New Revision Series 43. Detroit: Gale, 1994. 56-57.
  • “Callaghan, Mary Rose.” Beacham’s Guide to Literature for Young Adults 7. ed. Kirk H. Beetz. Washington: Beacham, 1990.
  • “Callaghan, Mary Rose.” Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English. Ed. Lorna Sage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
  • Felter, Maryanne. “Callaghan, Mary Rose.” Dictionary of Irish Literature. second edn. Connecticut: Greenwood, 1996. 214-215.
  • (Wessel-)Felter, Maryanne. “Commedia: The Fiction of Mary Rose Callaghan” Éire-Ireland 29.2 (summer 1994): 139-145.
  • Felter, Maryanne. “An Interview with Mary Rose Callaghan.” Nua: Studies in Contemporary Irish Writing (date): pages.
  • Halio, Jay. “Mary Rose Callaghan.” DLB 207:British Novelists since 1960. 3rd. series. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999: 66-71.
  • Halio, Jay. “Contemplation, Fiction, and the Writer’s Sensibility.” Southern Review 19 (winter 1983): 203-218 (passim).
  • Weekes, Ann Owens. “Mary Rose Callaghan.” Unveiling Treasures: The Attic Guide to the Published Works of Irish Women Literary Writers. Ed. Ann Owens Weekes. Dublin: Attic Press, 1993. 66-68.

[edit] References

  • Article is published by Maryanne Felter in Alexander Gonzales, ed. Irish Women Writers: an A-Z Guide. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2006. 54-56.