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Product Description
A reprint edition paperback, 1965 of the classic novel of small town Ireland - The Valley of Squinting Windows, with an introduction by Benedict Kiely.
Moderate creasing to the covers, heavier creasing to the spine. internally there is aprevious owners name on the front title page, binding tight. Heavy age tanning.
Valley of the Squinting Windows is a classic Irish novel set in Westmeath circa 1914-16. Garradrimna ( his name for Devlin) is a tiny village where everyone is interested in everyone else's business and wishes them to fail.
Twenty years before the events of the book, Nan Byrne had a relationship with a local man, Henry Shannon, hoping to marry him for his wealth. She falls pregnant but Henry refuses to marry her. After a miscarriage, the baby is buried at the bottom of the garden. Henry marries another woman and later dies, while Nan emigrates to England and marries Ned Brennan. They later move back to Garradrimna, where the villagers rejoice in telling Ned about his wife's past.
Ned is now an alcoholic, brought low by the humiliation of his wife's past promiscuity. He makes a little as a labourer, whereas Nan works every day at sewing to support their only child, John, studying in England to become a Catholic priest. However, she has become as cruel, petty and jealous as the rest of Garradrimna, and connives with the postmistress to sabotage Myles Shannon's chance at romance with an English girl, to get revenge on the Shannon family for rejecting her....
