Time After Time is the portrait of a family already ruined, living in an Irish ‘big house’ whose chaos and decay affects not only the building, but its inhabitants. Each of the aging Swift siblings who live in the house–Jasper and his sisters April, May, and Baby June–is in some way debilitated. Jasper only has one eye; the other having been shot out by Baby June in a childhood accident. April is deaf, an affliction of which she takes great advantage. May has a badly deformed hand and Baby June is dyslexic to the point of illiteracy. The Swifts are trapped into living together through mutual distain, their shared disabilities and, most importantly, their mother’s will.
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They don’t like each other, but remain living together, grown-up children, sniping and bickering and annoying each other daily. Even their animal’s argue, everyone’s cat or dog pitted against the others for food and attention.
He shut his mind almost completely towards their interests or occupations, except when he could be disruptive, or destructive about them: he had to allow himself a little fun.
Keane’s depiction of the ‘Big House’ in her fiction is not one of a cultivated residence that is the centre of the local community, but rather rests on a series of carefully constructed delusions, which bring about a false, but comforting illusion of stability. The siblings’ shelter in their memories of ‘darling Mummie’ and their dashing father who died, they were told, in a shooting accident, ignoring the niggling suspicions that the actions of their parents are the very reason they are now tied together in genteel poverty. Their beloved home has become a prison of sorts, trapping them all in the regressive patterns of childhood antagonisms and notions of superiority.
The novel is perfectly paced. Roughly the first third of the narrative depicts the routine at Duraghglass as it has been practiced without change for years. Jasper is the chef of the house; master of his filthy, kitchen from which his sisters are barred. There he concocts wonderful meals out of withered vegetables and mouldy meat salvaged from the dog’s dishes, even if he dislikes the women he is serving it to. April has devoted her life to the preservation of her appearance. Widowed, and the only sibling with her own money, her day revolves around her skincare regime and dressing for dinner. May is involved in an array of craft activities, mainly flower arranging, to deny the deformity of her hand. Tough little Baby June is, in effect, a farmhand, tending to the few animals left on the estate in the company of her beloved Christy, a boy from the village who works alongside her and whose paltry salary is a burden on the household finances. Each of the siblings is also, it is hinted, hiding a shameful secret.
Into their stultified existence, comes Cousin Leda, who last visited Duraghglass as a flirtatious young girl. The daughter of a Viennese Jew, she was assumed to have died long ago in a concentration camp, so her surprise arrival acts as a catalyst for change. The cat among the Swifts if you will.
Leda has come to disturb the lives of the cousins she resents, bringing with her secrets of her own concerning her involvement in the death of her father. Now a blind old woman, oblivious to her own signs of aging, she imagines she has returned, still irresistible, to the Duraghglass of her exalted memories and sets about to seduce each of the three siblings for her own gain.
Leda might have been wanting to write a book about her cousins, but all she wished for was a power over each against the other, and to steal even the secrets they didn’t know they kept.
What follows is an enjoyable comedy of manners as Leda trues to seduce each of the Swifts in turn, like the villain from a silent movie. Keane has created a cast of characters who are unlikeable, self-absorbed and often grotesque and yet they each remain sympathetic. It helps that the novel is incredibly funny, particularly the scenes between deaf April and blind Leda, with April trying to help Leda lose weight and Leda only suffering her because April has a stash of vodka in her room.
The novel comes to a riotous climax during a wonderful scene at the breakfast table, when Leda unmasks all the secrets she has discovered in the course of her visit in the hopes of becoming lady of the manor again. She pulls away the artifice that the four siblings have protected themselves with for years, but her plan doesn’t quite go as anticipated and the Swift’s secrets end up working to their advantage and true to character, they take all the revelations in their stride.
In comparison to Keane’s other ‘big house’ novel Good Behaviour, Time After Time has moments of melodrama and old-fashioned overstatement that mean it is less believable than its predecessor. As a novel, it might be less sympathetic towards its characters, but it is also much more humorous, showcasing Keane’s dry wit to perfection. She manoeuvres her cast of eccentrics to an ending which is as unpredictable as it is fitting. The Swifts are a family who adapt and change where necessary to survive, doing the best they can in the ruins of their irresistible past.
In her introduction to a recent edition of the novel, writer Emma Donohue calls Time After Time ‘a dazzling drama of human cruelty and frailty’ and it Is at turns funny and moving, with a searing dark humour, a keen satirical eye and a warm beating heart.
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