Talk:The Search Party

Reviews

 * The Bookman (UK) 1909 Oct:
 * When a man writes a genuinely funny book, a book which is funny from beginning to end, a sidesplitting, irresistible, laughter-compelling comedy, the world is left grateful, but a little incredulous. It is too good to be true. It seems a sort of accident, a fortuitous combination of favouring chances which can never occur again. It is the dream of every golfer to do a hole in one, and for most golfers it remains a cherished dream. To a few only blessed beyond their fellows and beyond their deserving, the beatific moment is vouchsafed. But while any golfer may expect once in his career by some miraculous interposition of fortune to accomplish the incredible, no one expects to do it twice, still less to do it at two successive holes. So in much the same way, when we were all shaking with laughter over "Spanish Gold," there came the chastening reflection that Mr. Birmingham could never do it again. He might indeed, as others have done, repeat his formula and still be mildly amusing. But it would be merely a pale reflection of the dazzling original. It seemed as though the delicious abandonment of absurdity could never be recaptured. But the incredible has happened, and "The Search Party" is as gloriously and deliriously funny as "Spanish Gold." Once more Mr. Birmingham has proved himself


 * And the splendid part of it all is that in Mr. Birmingham's books nothing really is absurd. Absurdity is only relative, and in Ireland only the normal is absurd, which is another way of saying that the normal never happens.


 * Mr. Birmingham served a long apprenticeship before he wrote "Spanish Gold." The few who study Ireland seriously and those (almost equally few) who study contemporary fiction seriously remember "The Seething Pot," and the four novels which followed it. as a notable contribution to a baffling but urgent problem, the government of that British Poland which seems destined to confute all the maxims of political and economic science. Critics knew Mr. Birmingham as a sound literary craftsman and an acute and sympathetic observer of Irish life. But no one was prepared for the triumphant and exuberant fun of "Spanish Gold," and the superb mendacities of that much-enduring wily Odysseus immortalised as "J. J." Of course there is a good deal of caricature: the scheme of the book demands it. The two members of Parliament are sheer caricature; their stupidity is beyond the compass even of an M.P. But when Mr. Birmingham is dealing with Irish characters, especially in the case of his Connacht peasant types, there is only the faintest suggestion of travesty. His peasants are exquisitely amusing, but they are never impossibly absurd. Comedy is heightened by the keenness and shrewdness of Mr. Birmingham's observations, and as a master of humorous dialogue he has no rival except Mr. W. W. Jacobs.


 * The plot is audaciously simple. Dr. O'Grady, the Poor-Law doctor of Clonmore, with a pretty taste in horseflesh and fancy waistcoats, finds his salary unequal to his expenditure; and as his patients never pay him he sees no opportunity of making both ends meet. His affairs are reaching a crisis when he is suddenly called upon to attend the servant of the mysterious tenant of the dower house at Rosivera. Guy Theodore Red, the tenant of Rosivera, is an anti-militarist anarchist bent on hastening the millennium by a lavish use of dynamite. Dr. O'Grady is informed that he must remain a prisoner for a month until Red's plans are complete. As Red is prepared to pay him five pounds a day besides affording him complete security from the pressing attentions of his creditors, O'Grady's only anxiety is to escape being rescued. The state of his finances being well known in Clonmore, it is at once assumed that he has fled to America, and Clonmore, being sympathetic, displays no indecent curiosity at his disappearance. But O'Grady had ungallantly forgotten that he was engaged to Adeline Maud Blow, daughter of a Leeds tobacconist, famous for his "twopenny beauty" cigars. Miss Blow is a lady of tremendous determination. She comes to Clonmore with a blank cheque and the fixed intention of paying O'Grady's debts and then marrying him. Clonmore is too polite to tell Miss Blow that her lover has fled to the States, and their ingenious but wholly mendacious explanations drive her to the conclusion that he has been murdered. Miss Blow rises to the occasion, and demands that the constabulary shall at once search for the corpse. In vain it is pointed out that there is no corpse to search for. Miss Blow is not to be routed so easily, and her implacable pursuit of the District Inspector, Mr. Goddard, is a piece of gorgeous fooling. In the meantime other inhabitants of Clonmore who happen to visit Rosivera also become the compulsory guests of Guy' Theodore Red. Dr. O'Grady's captivity is shared by Patsy Devlin, two M.P.'s who have come to study "the Irish question" at first hand, and finally by Sergeant Farrelly and Constable Cole. All Clonmore threatens to vanish, till at last Dublin Castle has become seriously alarmed, and Miss Blow, having completely defeated Arundel, showing completely built-up corner. Lord Manton, the local peer, heads a regular army of constabulary and invades Rosivera in force. Red in the meantime, on O'Grady's advice, has fled, and after a delicious scene in which the doctor bluffs the indignant M.P.'s in a fashion reminiscent of "J. J," it is decided that the task of hushing up the whole affair shall be entrusted to Jimmy O'Loughlin, the hotel-keeper, and the most versatile liar in Clonmorc. "Jimmy'd tell the truth without turning a hair, so soon as ever he knew what it was you wanted him to tell." The scenes between Jimmy O'Loughlin and Miss Blow and between that redoubtable lady and Loni Manton are wildly funny. But a book as amusing as this is beyond praise and beyond criticism. There is only one thing to do—to read it.