The Herbalist
Niamh Boyce, 2013
Penguin
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780241964583
Summary
Voted Newcomer of the Year at the 2013 Irish Book Awards, The Herbalist is a vividly imagined tale of love, lust and longing set in a midlands Irish town.
A stranger claiming to be a herbal expert appears one morning in the market square and the local people are soon flocking to the exotic visitor. He seems to have a cure for everything that ails them. But as the summer progresses life becomes more complicated and dangerous for the herbalist and his devotees.
This is a rich multi-layered story of life in 1930s Ireland told through the eyes of four women, each of whose fate is changed irrevocably by the herbalist. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 11, 1971
• Where—Athy, County Kildare, Ireland, UK
• Education—B.A., National University of Ireland; M.A.,
Trinity College, Dublin
• Awards—Irish Book Awards, Newcomer of the Year (2013);
New Irish Writer of the Year (2012)
• Currently—lives in County Laois, Ireland
Visit the author's blog.
Book Reviews
Boyce’s subject matter may be dark, and she treats it with the seriousness it deserves, but she writes with a lightness of touch not often seen in the genre; this is the most entertaining yet substantial historical novel I’ve read since Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea. You may not expect a book about fear and repression to be not only enjoyable but funny; The Herbalist often is.
Irish Times
Sharply rendered and full of dark humour.
Irish Times
A devilishly good debut novel.... Boyce has plotted and executed an elegant morality tale about the inescapable strictures of women’s lives in post-independence Ireland. Her publisher describes her on the jacket as "a dazzling new voice." I cannot disagree.
Justine McCarthy - Sunday Times (UK)
A vividly imagined tale of love, lust and longing ... It is also an important book, which adds a rich fictional version of Irish history to a stark period of Irish life ... a compelling read with a cathartic ending that deserves a wide readership. It remains authentic and moving to the end.
Sara Keating - Sunday Business Post
[C]omparisons to Edna O’Brien and Pat McCabe are more than justified. That said, Boyce has a unique voice and sensibility, one that’s entirely her own.
Image Magazine
A richly layered and finely realised evocation of the closed world of a vanished Ireland, encompassing its innocent insularity and its hidden corners where sexuality and respectability collide. Niamh Boyce's compelling female characters push against the rigid social parameters of 1930s Ireland, yearning for the light of the outside world, which comes in the shape of a stranger trading in herbs, cures, complications and danger.
Dermot Bolger
A humane and gripping story of women's lives.
Patricia Ferguson
Discussion Questions
1.How do the characters develop and change over the course of the book? Which of the characters changes most?
2.Which characters voice did you enjoy, which did you dislike?
3.Did you find the characters believable?
4.The book uses multiple narrators, why do you think the author chose to rotate the point of view in this manner?
5.How did hearing from all the different characters affect your opinion of The Herbalist?
6.The main character Emily is written in the first person (I) and Sarah and Carmel are written in the third person (she). What's the effect of this device your relationship with the characters?
7.Carmel expresses the urge to step into the biblical story of Lot, to stop Lots wife before she looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. Was there a point in the story where you wanted to step in and prevent one of the characters from doing what they were about to do?
8.Emily says of the herbalist—he was the only one who liked the first impression he got of me- what do you think The Herbalist symbolised for Emily?
9.Do you think Emily made the right decision in the latter part of the book?
10.Did the plot engage you, were the plot developments unexpected or did you see them coming?
11.When you finished the book, did any of the characters stay with you? Which one, if any? Why do you think that is?
12.The characters in this novel have been described as "yearning for the light of the outside world" (Dermot Bolger)—how do you think they would fare in the contemporary world?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)