'She came in like a shadow. She slid and bore herself into my eye, between my eyelids which blinked against the dust.'
She is Maud Gonne, the muse of writer William Butler Yeats. Yeats here returns as a ghost, after having been buried in France in 1939 in the cemetery of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, to be returned to Ireland a decade later. He emerges from his grave to recount his thwarted love with Maud, a story that merges with that of the independence movement of Ireland, of which they were both emblematic actors.
Yeats' ghost has suddenly arisen because diplomatic documents long kept secret have resurfaced, casting doubt on the contents of the coffin brought back into Ireland for a state funeral. Where did the poet's body go? Does he still hover, as he wrote, 'somewhere above the clouds'? What remains of our loves and our deaths, if not their poetry?
Besserie's exciting new novel follows on from Yell, Sam, If You Still Can (Le Tiers Temps), translated by Cliona Ni Riordain. In Maylis Besserie's second novel, she turns her attention from Samuel Beckett to another iconic Irish writer, W. B. Yeats. The connection between France in Ireland is once again explored in the context of art, culture and the days at the end of life.
