Nonfiction: The Graves Are Walking

As published in Irish America magazine, Review of Books

October / November 2012  p.96

There are plenty of books about the famine. But with The Graves Are Walking, John Kelly has done more than simply re-examine the facts and submit a new take on the disaster; which in itself would have been quite a feat, considering the mounds of previous academic study devoted to subject. Kelly has constructed a narrative in which the circumstances surrounding the Great Hunger mirror the U.S.’s current socio-political climate.

The introduction, which takes us through Cork during the height of the famine, has a deliberately apocalyptic feel. Kelly recounts a brief interaction between an English colonel stationed in Dublin and a colleague in 1846. “There is an undefined notion that something terrible is about to take place. Men’s minds are in a very unsettled state.” The prophecies, the chaos, the eerie feeling that a storm, possibly a revolution, lingers in the not-too-distant future – sound familiar yet? Just wait.

This account speaks of mounting debts in the wake of the initial crisis, of a biased media, and of ideologues. Religious fanaticism and racial bigotry masquerade as political savvy. Kelly places much of the blame for the social disaster not on a crop fungus or a primitive infrastructure, but on what he claims was Britain’s purposeful attempt at social engineering.

The Graves Are Walking will undoubtedly be the subject of some controversy. But the fact that Kelly has made this effort to remind us that “history” is alive, repetitive and relevant, is something we should all be able to agree on as a worthwhile endeavor.

(Henry Holt & Company / 397 pages / $32.00)