The narrative, which details trifling ordinary lives surrounding a coal merchant and his family during the Christmas season, builds up for the two significant moments that has been prepared and expertly captured as the ultimate moral questions in this brilliant work. One is poignant and the other is beautiful and magical. It seems to cast a way on how to survive against injustice together as a human being with dignity nevertheless struggling in this sometimes evil world.
As a non-native English speaker, I cannot say that I didn’t have difficulty interpreting the context of the work in the bombarded Irish dialects and unique cultures in English text without referring to dictionaries or Google Images.😅
과연 놀라운 재능이다. 반전서사나 거창한 스토리 같은 것은 없어도 된다. 이 소소한 중편 소설에서, 클레어 키건은 주제를 관통하는 윤리적 질문을 던지는 두 가지 중요한 순간을 향해 일견 사소해보이는 서사를 차곡차곡 쌓아나간다. 영어 원서로 도전해서 아일랜드 방언과 특유의 문화를 모르면 알 수 없는 단어들이 쏟아져나와 길지 않은 분량인데도 애먹으며 읽었다. 작가가 의도한 몇 퍼센트나 맥락을 이해했는지는 모르겠지만, 일천한 어학능력으로 독해하기에도 클레어 키건의 재능은 눈부시다. 역시나 문학작품 영어 원서는 쉽지 않다. (300-400 페이지의 논픽션보다 100페이지 남짓의 픽션이 원서로 읽기 훨씬 어렵다😭)
‘Isn‘t it a good job Mrs Wilson didn‘t share your ideas?’ Furlong looked at her. ‘Where would my mother have gone? Where would I be now?‘ ‘Weren‘t Mrs Wilson‘s cares far from any of ours?‘ Eileen said. ‘Sitting out in that big house with her pension and a farm of land and your mother and Ned working under her. Was she not one of the few women on this earth who could do as she pleased?‘
People could be good, Furlong reminded him-self, as he drove back to town; it was a matter of learning how to manage and balance the give-and-take in a way that let you get on with others as well as your own. But as soon as the thought came to him, he knew the thought itself was privileged and wondered why he hadn‘t given the sweets and other things he‘d been gifted at some of the houses to the less well-off he had met in others. Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people. - P91
When he got to the gable and went round to the coal-house door, the need to open it left him, queerly, before it just as soon came back, and then he slid the bolt across and called her name and gave his own. He‘d imagined, while he was in the barber‘s, that the door might now be locked or that she, blessedly, might not be within or that he might have had to carry her for part of the way and wondered how he‘d manage, if he did, or what he‘d do, or if he‘d do anything at all, or if hed even come here - but everything was just as he‘d feared although the girl, this time, took his coat and seemed gladly to lean on him as he led her out.
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