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Rating: 
Summary: Delightfully entertaining with an educational twist
Review: 1949 is the third book in Morgan Llywelyn's Historical Fiction series around Ireland's struggle for independence. It is not necessary to read 1916 and 1921 to follow 1949, although it might help when reference is made to significant events from previous periods, especially if you have little knowledge of Irish history.
1949 picks up approximately two years after the Irish Civil War. Red haired, blued eyed Ursula Jervis Halloran is 16 years of age and riding her horse Saoirse (Irish for 'Freedom') in Clare, Ireland, where she grew up on a farm with her father Ned (lead character 1916) and his Aunt Norah. She has received a letter from her pseudo-uncle Henry Mooney (lead character 1921) beckoning her to visit him and his wife Ella in Dublin. Against her fathers wishes she disappears to Dublin without a word to anyone.
When Ursula returns to the farm she informs her family she is going away to school in Switzerland, thanks to Ella's kind gift. Ned forbids it but she reminds him she is only his foster child and that she will do as she pleases, a path she follows throughout her life. Despite being adopted she has a strong bond with Ned and is deeply hurt by his anger. She leaves with business left unfinished between them.
On arrival in Switzerland, she learns it is finishing school, much to her chagrin. Being of beauty and great personality she nevertheless quickly befriends the upper crust whom she continues to correspond with after she leaves at age 18. She returns to an impoverished Ireland with its strong views on religion and politics.
Llywelyn is successful in painting the life of Ursula, a working class woman in a country trying to free itself from "foreign domination." With each chapter Llywelyn brings the reader into the fold to watch a girl blossom into a woman. She is strong willed from the beginning. In a society where women are to be seen and not heard Ursula stands on her own two feet in full sun, determined to make it on her own. She does not let anyone push her into the shadows of male servitude. Llywelyn has created a memorable role model for women.
Ursula was not without her own role models. Constance Markievicz' who encouraged her to be independent, choose her own path and only trust in herself for courage and honesty. This is true to Ursula's code to life.
Ursula is reminded that she is just a woman at every opportunity but she doesn't allow it to sway her own views and desires. While other women's interests revolve around hair and beauty products, Ursula cultivates her strong feminine and political views. Her contacts, interest in politics and occurrences abroad land her a job at the 2RN Radio Station. She is not permitted to broadcast as "Only the male voice is really suitable." Her schooling, meticulous letter writing to Henry, and to her acquaintances abroad, contribute to her success at 2RN and later with the League of Nations in Geneva. To work women had to be single or widowed, otherwise they were told to stay home with their children. Ursula vowed never to marry but that didn't stop the love triangle formation between traditional Irishman Finbar Cassidy and extravagant Englishman Lewis Baines.
1949 contains plenty of Irish politics as well as British propaganda, and covers the emergence of Hitler and the Second World War from an Irish perspective that is just as horrifying as all others. Llywelyn doesn't focus on the Catholic Church's impact on Irish society like other authors have in the past but its presence is clear. Politics and freedom from state are crucial. Llywelyn's characters are not idle bodies but great thinkers.
Tension mounts as the war hits closer to Ursula, affecting her and the people she holds dear. 1949 is not all doom and gloom. Morgan's wit is seen throughout in subtle glimpses as are tenderness, sexual fire and intense anger. One of my favourites is her mention of the "traditional Irish savings bank: under the mattress."
You can expect to learn a few Irish words like goster (chat; small talk) and seisiun (traditional music session) or learn of Irish traditions like keening (an "eerie singsong cadence, and unearthly wail" by women for the dead.)
Passages of Ursula's life are entwined with passages of Ireland's history. There are large patches without dialogue and I often felt I was getting a history lesson rather than reading a novel but this was fleeting.
There is a "Dramatis Personae" of fictional and historical characters in the first few pages. Another nice feature is the historical date markers. You are never without a doubt as to the timeline. Research and sources appear in the back. Not having grown up in the confines of Ireland's history I found it hard to keep the different groups and parties straight. It would have been nice to have a break down of each party, what they represented, length of existence etc... to refer to. The chapters are short, making it a great book for people on the move with limited time.
Llywelyn finishes this story with the inauguration of the Republic of Ireland on April 18th 1949. There are no loose ends but possibilities exist to gently tug the reader into the next book. I look forward to reading about the period leading up to 1972.
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Rating: 
Summary: WOW!!!! Morgan Llywelyn Does It Again!!!
Review: 1949, the third book in Morgan Llywelyn's series about 20th Century Ireland ( I am told there will be two more) is a compelling story of Ireland's continued struggle for complete independence from British rule, and for those who have been anxiously awaiting for this story, I can assure you, you will not be disappointed. Ursula, aka Precious, was found wandering the streets of Dublin as a toddler by Ned Halloran, who readers of 1916 and 1921 will remember. Her parentage a question, Ned was taken in by Ned and his wife, Sile, and raised as their own. 1949 is Ursula's story. It opens in the early days of the Irish Free State and ends with the forming of the Republic in 1949. We follow Ursula as she leaves Neds family farm in County Clare at the urging of Henry and Ella Mooney (who readers will also remember from 1916 and 1921). Henry wouldn't let Ella use any of her family's money to help support their family but does agree for her to pay for Ursula's education at an exclusive private school in Switzerland. When Ursula returns to Ireland she secures a job at the new radio station, helping write copy (but never allowed to be on the air herself). Through her eyes we see the continued political struggle in Ireland and her view of world events in the days before the second world war. Ursula has vowed never to marry, in large part due to new laws in Ireland against married women working outside the home. Nevertheless, she is very attractive to the opposite sex and to two men in particular - Finbar Cassidy, an Irish government official whose political views frequently clash with her own, and Lewis Baines, a dashing young English pilot whose conquests of beautiful women have become legendary. Morgan Llywelyn, whose knowledge of Irish politics and history is really unequalled in historical fiction written today, liberally adds historical facts and events to add depth and interest but never detracting from the overall story. I can't remember when I have looked forward to a book more. Readers of 1916 and 1921 will enjoy visits with characters important in those books including Henry and Ella Mooney, Ned Halloran, and Ned's family in County Clare. Llywelyn's stories appeal to a wide variety of readers and my husband and daughter, both of whom have read 1916 and 1921, were fighting over who was going to get to read 1949 when I finished.
Rating:
Summary: Great Ending to the Trilogy
Review: Assuming this was the last in the series the author started with 1916, it was truly a great finish. The main character in this book was the best of all her characters, and the way she interweaves the fictional plot with real events is just amazing. Through reading this series, the reader learns a tremendous amount of interesting history, and also will meet unforgettable fictional characters. To anyone interested in Irish history, and/or just a series of good books, I would recommend reading 1916, 1921 and most definitely 1949, preferably one after the other, because there are so many recurring characters that they may become hard to remember if one of the arlier books was read too long ago.
Rating:
Summary: 1949 - A Liberated Woman, A Liberated State.
Review: Equal parts fiction and history, lines blur as award-winning author Morgan Llywelyn weaves fictional and real-life characters into her masterful novels. The third work in her Twentieth Century Irish State trilogy, 1949, is a fiction-based glimpse into the evolution of the Irish Republic as seen through the eyes of the indomitable, self assured Ursula Halloran. Equally captivating, the first two novels of the Irish State series, 1916 and 1921, don't necessarily exist as prerequisites to 1949, yet it wouldn't hurt to read them first.
Young Ursula is the adopted daughter of IRA foot soldier Ned Halloran, a man deeply involved in Irish Republican skullduggery. Living on the family farm, the Hallorans are a montage of typical Irish dysfunctionality. Requisites drunks exist, but 1949 avoids focusing on caricatured, woe-is-me Irish alcoholics. Living with an unforgiving and unbending father who wants her to inherit and manage the farm, Ursula is surrounded by a number of shiftless male relatives. Female Hallorans don't fare much better, as Ursula's sister marries into the dregs of Clarecastle's Irish society. 1949 boasts the gamut of vanished Irish colloquialism that one would expect to find in a post-famine rural Irish setting, including occasional stock-in-trade Irish wakes, imposing parish priests, stifling poverty and rampant melancholy.
Ursula occupies her time reading books and riding her horse Saoirse. In Saorise she witnesses a mirror image of her own shackles-Ursula runs free, but only to a point, for at night they both remain tethered, Saoirse in a stall, Ursula in an oppressive environment. Ursula rails against limits placed on her by male-dominated Irish society. She promises herself she will never marry, for married women in Ireland were banned from working outside the home during the period.
A distant and uncommunicative Pa, Ned Halloran frequently absents himself from the farm while performing the business of the IRA in the North. Like Ned, Ursula is headstrong and they frequently fall-out. But unlike her step-relatives, Ursula is at once smart as a whip, blossoming into an attractive, passionate young woman. Ursula finds a benefactor in her doting uncle, Henry Mooney, a protagonist of the novel 1921. Mooney sees smoldering in Ursula the portent of success he himself achieved in the literary world. Thus Henry is as determined as Ursula is to free her from rural, backward Ireland. Following a visit to Uncle Henry and Aunt Ella, the stage is set for the ultimate break with Ned. Henry convinces Ursula to accept Ella's offer to send her to finishing school in Switzerland. Ned's reaction is to disown his stepdaughter. With nary a glance backward, Ursula is off to the continent where she is taken under the wing of Constance Markevicz, a real-life heroine of Ireland's independence movement.
In Switzerland Ursula matures into a rough diamond of the young woman she is destined to be. Hobnobbing with the titled, the landed and the idle rich, she yet suffers under the prejudices bestowed on the Irish by the English. Nevertheless, she develops great friendships among Britons of both sexes, including the dashing pilot Lewis Baines, for whom physical desire courses through her loins.
Upon returning to Ireland Ursula takes a position with radio station 2RN writing news copy ticketed for the airwaves. No amount of talent will allow her to crack the male-only news reporting clique and Ursula's informed that she'll never read her own copy on air. Against a backdrop of Nazi fires burning on the continent, she meets an Irishman, Finbar Cassidy, a civil servant and man who represents much of what she rebels against. Lacking ambition, he further urges Ursula to accept status quo at 2RN. He pursues Ursula with uncommon determination, and exhibits kindness to a fault. After the suave Lewis Baines reappears on the scene, Ursula casts the Catholic Church's teachings regarding sexual forays outside marriage to the wind. Not surprisingly, Ursula finds herself pregnant with child.
In Dublin an unmarried pregnant woman stands about as much chance finding work as a statue honoring Cromwell appearing on O'Connell Street, so Ursula is again off to Switzerland where the doomed League of Nations seeks to stave off the Nazi horde threatening Europe. Much of Llywelyn's thoroughly researched World War II history comes to play here, as Ursula takes a job with the League. Real-life characters show up, along with their real-life frailties and failures. Chamberlain boasts that `we will have peace in our time.' Eamon De Valera's former employee, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is on scene. Special dishonor is reserved for the lionized Winston Churchill. Profiling the Irish brand of World War II neutrality, Llywelyn offers a glimpse into what it really was, and what it meant to Anglo-Irish relations. It's terrific reading as marauding Germans roll over Europe.
With young son in tow, Ursula's back in Ireland in time to witness the post-war chartering of the Irish Republic, which occurs, understandably, in 1949. There's more of course: more farm, more Ned, more Lewis, more Finbar. Read it. You can't miss on this natural fit for the silver screen. If your cup of tea is history interspersed with titillating, finely woven fiction, 1949 is a must.
Laying claim to the unofficial title of Novelist Laureate of Ireland, Morgan Llywelyn boasts a body of fiction-based history, a dramatis personae, profiling the Irish condition.
Rating:
Summary: Third in an Intriguing Series
Review: Just completed the third volume of Morgan Llywelyn's series on "the Irish Century", and it enlightened me greatly on a little-known period of Irish history. The Easter Rising and the Troubles have been extensively chronicled, but the 1923-1949 period has had little written about it. Her dramatic story, while a bit overblown at times, continues the saga of the Hallorans and the Mooneys over a quarter century, while the world outside hurtles into WWII. I would assume that if the series does indeed have a fourth volume yet to come, it would probably be set around 1972 and the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and would likely have Michael and Bella Kavanaugh from the US return to Ireland and get involved in the Republican struggle against the Unionist tyranny in the North. At any rate, I have learned numerous things about modern Irish history that I did not know before, and enjoyed most of the author's dramatic characters. I would look forward to a final volume chronicling the 30-year conflict in the North leading up to the Good Friday Agreement, paralleled by the growth of the "Celtic Tiger" giant economy of the Republic to the South. While the author's sympathies are definitely Republican, she can portray the feelings of all sides in the century-long conflict and the common humanity of the characters makes the background struggle all the more poignant. My only criticism is her constant sniping at the Catholic Church as the major force in keeping Ireland "repressed and backward". Her anti-clericalism gets a bit much at times, but overall the story is very enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Third in an Intriguing Series
Review: Just completed the third volume of Morgan Llywelyn's series on "the Irish Century", and it enlightened me greatly on a little-known period of Irish history. The Easter Rising and the Troubles have been extensively chronicled, but the 1923-1949 period has had little written about it. Her dramatic story, while a bit overblown at times, continues the saga of the Hallorans and the Mooneys over a quarter century, while the world outside hurtles into WWII. I would assume that if the series does indeed have a fourth volume yet to come, it would probably be set around 1972 and the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and would likely have Michael and Bella Kavanaugh from the US return to Ireland and get involved in the Republican struggle against the Unionist tyranny in the North. At any rate, I have learned numerous things about modern Irish history that I did not know before, and enjoyed most of the author's dramatic characters. I would look forward to a final volume chronicling the 30-year conflict in the North leading up to the Good Friday Agreement, paralleled by the growth of the "Celtic Tiger" giant economy of the Republic to the South. While the author's sympathies are definitely Republican, she can portray the feelings of all sides in the century-long conflict and the common humanity of the characters makes the background struggle all the more poignant. My only criticism is her constant sniping at the Catholic Church as the major force in keeping Ireland "repressed and backward". Her anti-clericalism gets a bit much at times, but overall the story is very enjoyable.
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