The Mangan Inheritance by Brian Moore, and The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Brian Moore; The Mangan Inheritance, Published 1979. Flamingo Press. This is not the first book of his that I have read. My son told me to read this author some years ago.



'The doorbell.
Mangan went to the front door, looked through the peephole, then unlocked.' (first sentence)



There was no dramatic confrontation at this door opening, but there is a highly dramatic one in a derelict ruined castle on an Irish hillside later in the book.

James Mangan, son of a Montreal newspaper editor, and a published poet, given an assignment to interview Zero Mostel, meets Beatrice, a Broadway and film actress. They live in New York, he in her shadow, as his attempt to continue with his poetry is unsuccessful.









He leaves behind his comfortable but unfulfilling life in New York after finding documents and books relating to an ancestor back in his father´s home in Montreal where he goes alone for Christmas. The putative ancestor, also James Mangan, intrigues him and he goes to Ireland to trace this man´s descendants and any proof of a direct connection to himself.


The contrast between the warmth and comfort of his affluent life and the bleak countryside with its lifestyle of poor unsophisticated people is cathartic for Mangan, the Canadian. He feels closer to real feelings, to life in the raw in the area he comes to south of Bantry. The local hotel is closed and the priest makes arrangements for his accommodation. He makes contact with local people. There is a mystery surrounding the behaviour of the Mangan descendants that he meets, and eventually our affluent hero finds a Mangan poet, in the wild, and measures the experience against the life of the leisured, cultured city man.
Who would you rather be?
I will not give away Mangan's choice. Nor any more of the absorbing story which is a good read. I gave it eight out of ten. And I knew which life I would prefer given Mangan´s choice. And I liked the idea that he could have a choice.



Richard Ford's 'The Sportswriter'

is another story about a writer who has early success but considers he has failed by going on to be a sportswriter.
My daughter brought a copy of the book to the house when she came on holiday two years ago. She didn´t read very far before saying it was 'a man´s book'. Her husband, Steve, had read it and enjoyed it so she had given it a try. I too had started it and left it some years before, thinking there would be lots about American football and baseball, neither of which I could get excited about. And now there were two copies in the house. Maybe I should give it a chance. It turned out that the story is really about Everyman struggling to find a purposeful life.

The first sentence: 'My name is Frank Bascombe.' Second sentence: 'I am a sportswriter.'
My version published by The Harvill Press, London, 1996, copyrighted in 1986.
I recall a scene near the start when Frank goes to interview an injured football player in a wheelchair. The injured man is bitter and so is the weather on his street leading down to Lake Michigan as the two men go outside to talk.
Our hero, Frank, had a book of short stories sold to a film producer after his university course at Ann Arbor, Michigan. Married, but separated after the death of a son, he remains in touch with his wife and two surviving children who live close by. I had no problem finishing the book this time.
Eight out of ten.
End.