No country for young men /

In this caustic castigation of the fulminating, destiny-drunk obsessions of sectors in contemporary Ireland (""a repeatedly defeated island, throttled by ancient and fermented rage""), O'Faolain again underlines the deadly fatuity of living within myth-making. Suddenly jaunty with ""gamboling spirits,"" American James Duffy, with his native trust in possibility, arrives in Ireland on a fuzzy film-assignment. Under the cover of simply filming the Great Old Boys of the Rebellions, he'll track down the ""Old Sell-Outs"" of the 1920's. In the home of alcoholic Michael and unhappy Grain. ne O'Malley is a new and unwelcome arrival--a senile, 75-year-old nun, great-aunt Judith, casualty of a convent closing. James will eventually latch onto Judith (along with edgy others) because of the secret she seems to harbor--particularly about the interesting demise, in the 1920's, of an American who transported money to the Cause. While the memories of Judith rasp through her dim, chaotic memory-bank to her consciousness (she will never tell her secret), James, awaiting romantic passions of a ""transporting magnitude,"" and Grainne, awakened to the ""timeless land"" of sex, become lovers in Dublin city, where mushrooms grow in the damp ""like ears."" (The lovers make steamy love to the sputtering tapes of the Great Old Boys reminiscing.) Among those with ears attuned to aberrations (the numblings of the nun, the disloyalty of Grainne): a hard-nosed son of Michael and Grainne's mutual grandfather, a famous (pragmatic) patriot; a simple man-of-the-ranks with his ""sweaty fervour"" of Irishness; the O'Malleys' worried teen-aged son; and shadowy others. As in The Irish Signorina (1986), an old myth-drenched society bristles with killing knives; and the close of this drama, in which walled-in loves can project monstrous robotic cruelties, is a masterpiece of horror and distanced irony. With an acidulous humor, a satiric commentary on a phantom-hounded society--both funny and savage, lusty and chilling. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.