Alice Taylor lives in the village of Innishannon in County Cork, in a house attached to the local supermarket and post office. Since her eldest son has taken over responsibility for the shop, she has been able to devote more time to her writing. Alice Taylor worked as a telephonist in Killarney and Bandon. When she married, she moved to Innishannon where she ran a guesthouse at first, then the supermarket and post office. She and her husband, Gabriel Murphy, who sadly passed away in 2005, had four sons and one daughter. In 1984 she edited and published the first issue of Candlelight, a local magazine which has since appeared annually. In 1986 she published an illustrated collection of her own verse. To School Through the Fields was published in May 1988. It was an immediate success, launching Alice on a series of signing sessions, talks and readings the length and breadth of Ireland. Her first radio interview, forty two minutes long on RTE Radio's Gay Byrne Show, was the most talked about radio programme of 1988, and her first television interview, of the same length, was the highlight of the year on RTE television's Late Late Show. Since then she has appeared on radio programmes such as Woman's Hour, Midweek and The Gloria Hunniford Show, and she has been the subject of major profiles in the Observer and the Mail on Sunday. To School Through the Fields quickly became the biggest selling book ever published in Ireland, and her sequels, Quench the Lamp, The Village, Country Days and The Night Before Christmas, were also outstandingly successful. Since their initial publication these books of memoirs have also been translated and sold internationally. In 1997 her first novel, The Woman of the House, was an immediate bestseller in Ireland, topping the paperback fiction lists for many weeks. A moving story of land, love and family, it was followed by a sequel, Across the River in 2000, which was also a bestseller. One of Ireland's most popular authors, she has continued writing fiction, non-fiction and poetry since.
The Phelans have owned Mossgrove for generations. The small, rural Irish farm has been the pride of them all until Ned's wife, Martha, arrives and begins to undermine generations of hard work and happiness. She resents the deep history of the place and sets about making it her own, shutting out what is left of Ned's family. She is particularly jealous of Ned's sister Kate, a successful local nurse and doting aunt to Martha's children. When Ned dies suddenly, Martha puts Mossgrove up for sale in hopes that it will be bought by the neighboring Conways, who have long coveted the Phelan farm. What she does not realize are the lengths to which Kate and the hired hand Jack will go to keep the land in the family. Set in the 1950s, this is a wonderfully warm, charming story of Irish life lived close to the earth. Taylor (Country Days, LJ 2/15/95) is a self-taught writer from rural Ireland. This will be read and enjoyed by both readers of Irish heritage and those who appreciate the resurgence of fresh and talented writing coming out of Ireland today. Taylor's gentle and affectionate view of her homeland is richly refreshing. Recommended.‘Susan Gene Clifford, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA
The mention of stormy nights in the first paragraph of this pleasant but predictable first novel by Irish memoirist Taylor (Country Days) is a fair indication of the slight drama that follows. The story of 32-year-old Kate Phelan's battle to save Mossgrove, her rural family farm, is set in Kilmeer, Ireland, during the 1950s. Three generations of Phelans have rallied against the crises of nature, booze, gambling and the treacherous Conway clan, but none has encountered an obstacle as difficult as Martha, Kate's new sister-in-law. "There is no love of the land" in rigid Martha. Taylor is heavy-handed with the bad woman vs. good woman plot, telling readers innumerable times how impossible it will be for Kate to stop Martha from ruthlessly selling Mossgrove following the death of Kate's brother. Kate is an unmarried do-gooder who, when she's not fighting nobly for her family's traditions works as a district nurse; she also defeats a child molester, and helps her soulmate-to-be to establish a much-needed secondary school. Martha's the haughty, cold outsider who hates Mossgrove because it's brimming with Phelan family history she was never a part of, and she resents the whole "happy" family. Kate breaks out of character and period for one jarring moment to denounce her adversary as "a pathetic bitch with a warped power complex." Though this unpersuasive outburst lies at the heart of Taylor's story, the numerous earnest subplots and idyllic rural setting may carry the undemanding reader through to the novel's tidy conclusion. (Mar.)
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