A Pagan Place is written in the form of a monologue, delivered by a narrator who speaks only in the second person, as he or she recalls the childhood and family background of a girl from a small Irish farming community as she grows up in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The unusual point of view (“you” and “your” constantly occur, as in “Your father said he made a great cup of tea, your mother said it was like senna”) keeps the focus on the young girl, as if she is the center point around which all the events revolve.

The family lives in a small isolated village in Ireland, where it rains on two days out of every three, and in which everyone knows everyone else’s business. Occasionally, there are glimpses of events in the wider world, with references to Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler, and Winston Churchill, but in general the village is bound up in its own concerns. The small details of daily living and the colorful anecdotes about a gallery of eccentric village folk occupy a large part of the narrative. Everything is seen through the eyes of the child. In the house in which they live, for example, “The landing was big and cold. There was a sofa that never got sat on....” During a threatening visit from the bailiff, “He was so nice and kindly that you thought he was a priest. He smiled at that and so did your mother although she was crying just before and shaking holy water and saying Jesus and Mary.”

Underlying the narrative is the pervasive influence of Catholicism, especially as experienced by the child. At her first communion, for example, “The bits of paper soaked up all your saliva but it was not a sin when they grazed your teeth whereas it would be a sin if the Host were to.” There is always a strong sense of guilt, and the fear of the Devil is manifested in vivid images in the child’s mind. Catholicism is woven into the mundane, everyday fabric of things. Finishing a prayer with “Glory be to the Father” was routine, “like the full stop at the end of the words.” It makes itself felt unexpectedly, as when the child rebukes herself for whistling: “The Blessed Virgin blushed when women whistled and likewise when women crossed their legs.” There are glimpses, too, of the hostility between Catholic and Protestant: One of the worst sins “your mother” committed was to attend a Protestant funeral service.

The power of sex, most of it guilty and furtive, also pervades the story. It ranges from the obscene attempts of a man known as the Nigger to waylay girls as they pass by, to the tailor who touches the breasts of his female customers when he measures them for clothes, to the protagonist’s guilty pleasure in masturbation, and Emma’s shameless pleasure in recording her sexual activities in her diary.

There are only a few major events in the story. They begin when Emma returns from America for a visit. She had been born in New York and had, it appears, continued to live there after her parents returned to Ireland, having failed to make the fortune they had planned. Emma is five months pregnant, and this causes a fearful family quarrel. She only just avoids a beating from her father. He suggests an abortion, but the family doctor will hear nothing of it. The search for the father is made impossible by the revelations in Emma’s diary, which has a long list of her various men friends. Eventually, she is...