Patrick Kavanagh once said that tragedy is underdeveloped comedy, comedy not fully born. Behind its somber moments and chilly witticisms, The Hungry Grass is a supremely divine comedy: God’s laughter at the shattering of a world. In the end that world proves too strong for one mortal man to sustain, and so he must feel himself set free of life rather than deprived of it.

Richard Power died in his early forties in 1970, not long after the acclamation of this book as a masterpiece.

Declan Kiberd, 2016

Prologue

At the funeral, several priests remarked how appropriate it was that Father Conroy should have returned on his last day to Rosnagree, the parish in which he was born. They had been touched by his return, by the way he had limped in expectantly among them, like an emigrant returning to seek nourishment at his roots. They had never thought of Conroy having roots before.

One or two – Father Mahon, for instance – saw no cause for sympathy. Conroy’s return, to them, seemed a final example of the man’s genius for causing trouble and inconvenience. That he should have timed his death during the dinner at the parochial house in Rosnagree was more than upsetting; it was deliberately destructive, for that annual dinner – which Conroy had never bothered to attend before – would never be the same again.

It meant a lot to all of them, that dinner. It was the one occasion of the year which reunited them, the fifteen priests who had been ordained together for the diocese of Kilcloyne.

Arriving every year in Rosnagree always gave them a feeling of holiday. Just as one becomes suddenly aware of the onset of spring, so they noticed everything at once – the hedgerows opening out to distant blue hills, the Scotch pines behind the steeple, the rooks that sailed across the front of the parochial house. On the road below the gate, the car roofs of some firstcomers gleamed in the sunlight, and on the top step – his saluting base, they called it – Father O’Hara, the parish priest of Rosnagree, waited to welcome them once more.

His hostliness beamed down the length of the tiled path between the rows of newly staked dahlias. It made each of them feel he was being welcomed individually, that his failings as a guest would be overlooked and that any little graces he might have would get full appreciation. The strange thing about Father O’Hara’s dinners was that these promises were fulfilled. They always left, looking back as happily as they had looked forward in anticipation.

Dinner was late, for Elsie, the housekeeper, was not to be hurried. Anyway, nobody minded the delay; it seemed only to lengthen the day pleasurably in their anticipation. They were all of an age when a good time must be taken slowly and with a minimum of waste.