Troubles (Farrell)

Troubles
J.G. Farrell, 1970
New York Review of Books
459 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781590170182

Summary
Winner, 2010 Lost Booker Prize

1919: After surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer makes his way to Ireland, hoping to discover whether he is indeed betrothed to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the once-aptly-named Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough. But his fiancee is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline.

The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin.

As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles." (From the publisher.)

This is the first book in Farrell's Empire Trilogy; the second is The Siege of Krishnapur (1970) and the third is The Singapore Grip (1978).