Roads from Home - Dan Davin

Edited and introduced by Lawrence Jones. 

The small, close-knit Irish Catholic community in largely Presbyterian Southland provides the setting for this novel. The place and the time (early 1930s) are memorably created. Here is a whole vanishing way of life solidly located in actual places. 'As in Hardy', Lawrence Jones says in his introduction, 'the places ... are intimately involved in the action, so that as in The Return of the Native, the very climax of the plot is dependent on geography.' 

The 'roads' of the title are those taken by the younger generation, as they part in various ways from the social and religious certainties of the Irish tradition. The pain of this inevitable process is shown with sympathy through the eyes of characters on both sides of the gulf. Davin's underlying philosophy may often be bleak but his people are warmly human. 

Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press, 1976. Hardback, 266 pages. (First published  by Michael Joseph, 1949.)

Condition: secondhand hardback in good condition. Dust jacket in fair condition with fading on spine and minor tears at the edge of the dust jacket, as shown in photos.