4★
This begins as a light-hearted, affectionate look at a young girl growing up in Ireland in 1920, after the end of WW1, but her childish, secret adventure turns serious and shows the dark divisions in Ireland.

Nancy was orphaned very young and has been raised in a friendly, loving household by her Aunt Mary, her befuddled grandfather (a retired Major), and the family cook (and philosopher), Bridie. Grandfather is in a wheelchair and keeps constant watch on the distant railway line with his ever-present binoculars.

Her journal introduces chapters in the first person. The rest is third person point of view. Today is Nancy’s eighteenth birthday.

“Today I want to start to become a person. My new year. My life is ahead of me, empty like the pages of this book, which I bought myself as a birthday present. It is not really a diary, more passing thoughts that give impressions of me, so that in forty years, if, as Bridie would say, I am spared, I can look back and see what I was like when I started out. It is so easy to forget. I have noticed that from watching Aunt Mary, not to mention Grandfather, but then he is a special case, being slowly devoured by extreme old age.”
. . .
“There always seems to have been a war. I suppose in forty years things will be much the same, in spite of what people say to the contrary. Even in this small village so many people have been killed.”

In spite of the “if you are spared” comments by Bridie and the family’s close connection with war, she thinks mostly about herself and maybe having a crush on a young neighbour who works in the city, and she likes to think she’s jealous of his girlfriend. But really, she doesn’t know what she thinks. She’s just itchy for LIFE.

She asks Aunt Mary, “’Don’t you ever need to tear yourself open and get out all that stuff that’s burning you inside?’

‘You sound as if you need a surgeon rather than a friend. Tut! It’s part of the mythology of youth that people go round burning themselves up inside. It’s not like that at all, pet. Most people lead and want to lead calm, equilibrious…’ She laughed and repeated the word … ‘equilibrious lives.’ She reached out and touched Nancy’s hand. ‘There’s no point in making life more difficult than it has to be.’”

But equilibrium is the furthest thing from her mind. She finds a little deserted beach hut and claims it as her own, taking some books and putting up a shelf, much the way a lot of us might have found a little hidey-hole of our own in the bush or up a tree.

One day, she discovers someone else has been in her hut. Still, she continues on her merry way, wondering about who her father was, wondering what her mother was like, wondering what she will do when she grows up. And then she meets a very different boy about her own age and has to grow up.

I enjoyed the Irish weather on the page but wouldn’t in real life. It’s sunny, then almost immediately wet. People are always soaked, having to race inside to dry off and get into a hot bath. But that’s what makes the Isle so Emerald.

“The wind was soft and rain promising, though the sun was shining brightly. Round the horizon great piles of clouds waited their moment.”

I also enjoyed the gentle humour, usually around Aunt Mary and her friends, two sisters with whom she played cards, drank whisky and gin and dressed up and went to the races. The sisters have returned from their trip to France.

“The tall Miss Brabazon moved over to their Daimler and began to pat its bonnet as if it were a horse.”
. . .
“Nancy wondered if she were about to offer the car an apple. ‘And dear old car behaved like a perfect gentleman. Didn’t he, George?’ The small Miss Brabazon nodded.”
. . .

‘He never even flinched at French petrol.’”

The title comes from Grandfather saying to Nancy, “‘Someone once said ‘Death is an old jest, but it comes to everyone’”. He guesses Kipling, and when she corrects him, saying Turgenev, he suddenly blurts out that he never liked the Russians.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, war and conflicts intrude. Difficult times.

Thanks to NetGalley and Open Road Media for the copy for review from which I’ve quoted.

"Death is an old jest but it comes new to everyone." ~ Ivan Turgenev

A few years ago I read an astounding novel by Jennifer Johnston called "Shadows on our skin", so I thought I HAD to add a novel by her to my "Reading Ireland month" selections. I chose "The Old Jest" because it won the Whitbread Book Award in 1979.

Set in late summer 1920, "The Old Jest" is an atmospheric and nostalgic look at the life of Nancy Gulliver, who has just turned eighteen. She never knew her father, and her mother died giving birth to her, so Nancy lives with her dear Aunt Mary and her 'potty' old grandfather who is suffering from dementia.

Nancy fancies herself in love with the much older Harry, a friend of the family. She is jealous that Harry and their neighbour, Maeve, seem to have eyes only for each other.

Nancy is exuberant, impetuous and impatient, all traits which belie her youth and naivety. She experiences dramatic emotional highs and lows, is introspective, and at times unwisely impulsive.

Nancy has just finished school and like most people of her age she is restless and eager to get on with her life. She seems very aware of the vast potential her life could offer, and she enthusiastically starts a journal where she records her emotions and day to day trivia so she won't forget. To escape the adults, she spends much of her time down on the beach where her only companions are the seagulls...

It is in an old beach hut that she frequents that she meets a stranger. Old (in her opinion) tired, and ill looking, she realizes he must be a soldier. They come to be friends, conversing on the beach about books, life, and death. She smuggles him books to read and food from the kitchen.

Over time, Nancy agrees to deliver a message for her new friend. A friend who, as she had suspected, is an IRA foot soldier. The results of her actions will prove life altering...

In my opinion, this novel is about youth, old age, and the chasm between the two. The young view the chasm as vast, whilst the old view the chasm as a mere dimple of years. It is also about change, that which we create ourselves, and that which is foisted upon us.

"The old jest" puts a human face on Irish history.

Written simply about a simpler time - turned tumultuous, "The old jest" is a thoughtful and ageless novel written by a master of prose.

I don’t think Jennifer Johnston could write badly if she tried, and this novella demonstrates her usual understated, spare and controlled style very well indeed. With never a word wasted, she conjures up an atmospheric and haunting episode in the life of a young girl who gets caught up in the Irish political turmoil of the 1920s. Having said that, this is not one of my favourites of her novels as I found the central character hard to engage with, but as a portrait of this turbulent time in Ireland's history it is both convincing and moving.

Jennifer Johnston’s short novel, The Old Jest, a coming of age tale, takes place over a number of days in 1920. The main focus is an 18-year-old girl named Nancy, and when the book opens it’s her birthday. On the cusp of adulthood, Nancy has finished school and plans to attend Trinity in the autumn. There’s not enough money in this faded Anglo-Irish gentry family to send her to Oxford university–plus there are rumblings of “a war with England.”

Nancy is an orphan. Her mother died some years earlier, and she never knew her father, a man who remains a mystery figure. She’s been brought up by her Aunt Mary who bears the burden of the household since her brother, Gabriel died at Ypres. Nancy’s grandfather, General Dwyer is “potty,” but these days we’d probably say he has Alzheimer’s. One of the biggest dramas in Nancy’s life is her crush on a young man named Harry who has his eyes on the bigger prize of the heiress Maeve.


Nancy’s diary entries make up some of the novel, so we see her confessional thoughts, and her desire that her grandfather die “before we become damaged by his decay.” She’s still a girl, and yet she’s supposed to act like an adult. Nancy chooses her moments to flip back and forth as if she can’t quite accept the responsibilities and polite behaviour of adulthood.

Outside of the safety and security of Nancy’s home, civil unrest occasionally washes up on their doorstep. There’s mention of the Black and Tans, but life in the household is mainly untouched by what goes on in the outside world until Nancy meets an IRA man who’s hiding out in an abandoned beach hut she frequents. He calls into question everything she’s been taught to believe:

“After all,” he said gently, “Your grandfather was a killer too, and no one makes sarcastic remarks at him for that. Not at all. They gave him medals and a pension, He wasn’t even killing to defend his own fatherland, indeed the very opposite. He was taking other people’s land away from them. Creating an Empire for a little old lady with a thing like a tea cosy on her head.”

There’s a sweetness hovering over the novel that partially comes from Nancy’s innocence and zest for life. (Some readers found Nancy annoying–I did not.) Some of the sweetness comes from the idea that we are glimpsing the last days of a particular lifestyle–although Nancy is initially unaware of the truth of the family’s circumstances.

I liked this novel, which has the feel of a well-fleshed out short story, for its bittersweet glimpse at Nancy’s life; by the time the book concludes, it’s easy to see that her world has irrevocably changed. Her innocence is gone, and so her childhood passes away, leaving her to face an uncertain adulthood.

Review copy