Associated Press: Frank Delaney writes exquisitely of longing

by SUMMER MOORE

"The Matchmaker of Kenmare" (Random House, $26), by Frank Delaney: Frank Delaney shows the romanticism in his roots by telling a moving tale of love, angst and Irish superstition during World War II in his new novel, "The Matchmaker of Kenmare."

Ben MacCarthy is searching for his wife, who has disappeared without a trace. A writer for the Irish Folklore Commission, Ben travels to Ireland to track and document stories and legends – and chasing rumors of his lost love.

One day, Ben is sent to the home of Kate Begley, who arranges marriages. She uses self-proclaimed "magic," which includes reading the palms of her potential clients.

The novel is primarily a story of longing, and Delaney uses his grasp of language to illustrate the feeling.

Delaney describes the scene as Kate, who lives in Kenmare in a house overlooking the ocean, tells the story of how her parents were lost at sea when she was very young.

"Sitting in the sunlight, with the same deadly sea beating down there, racing like a herd of dragons along the rocky shores and snarling up at us as though we might be their next meal, we leaned on our chairs toward each other and exchanged views of eternal seeking."

Ben decides to accompany Kate to France to work as a spy. He is so enamored with her that he blindly follows her every time she calls. Even though Ireland is technically neutral in the war, Ben and Kate are thrown into violent situations in a volatile continental Europe.

Although "The Matchmaker" is a sequel to Delaney's "Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show," it reads like its own story in the form of a letter from Ben to his twins (he's never met them). Ben's tale is both an account of what happens to him and proof of how telling the story forces him to grow.

"Every story costs you something; as you tell it, you give it away," he says.

Delaney grabs the reader from the first paragraph with his comfortable and nostalgic style. His metaphors are so visual, readers can taste, smell and see the action. His words make us want to pack up and move to where "on a balmy summer night in the high northwest of Ireland, twilight lingers forever; the sun scarcely leaves the sky."

Publishers Weekly Reviews The Matchmaker of Kenmare

In Delaney's panoramic sequel to Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show, matchmaker Kate Begley plies her profession in neutral WWII Ireland. Into her life come Venetia Kelly narrator Ben MacCarthy, whose wife has gone missing, and Charles Miller, a U.S. intelligence officer who sends Kate and Ben on a secret assignment to France. Upon their return, Kate and Charles marry, but after D-Day, Charles disappears while on a dangerous mission, and Kate enlists Ben's help in finding him. They travel to France and Germany, where they stumble across the German army about to launch its last-gasp assault in the Ardennes and end up questioning the wisdom of remaining neutral in the face of overwhelming evil. An expert at mining Irish lore for congenial fiction, Delaney spins an exciting yarn of romance and intrigue, and, in Kate, he has created an indomitable, unforgettable character. Though the novel's leisurely pace is at odds with the wartime plot (and the subplot about Ben's missing wife will be confusing to those not familiar with the previous book), Delaney wrings the pulp out of a Jack Higgins–like premise and turns it into something more satisfyingly literary. (Feb.)

Starred Kirkus Review for The Matchmaker of Kenmare

Review Date: January 1, 2011
Publication Date: February 8, 2011

"Years after his Irish vaudeville adventures in Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show (2010), 29-year-old Ben McCarthy loses his heart to an eccentrically spunky young matchmaker who keeps him platonically glued to her side as she searches for her missing new husband, an American captain, in war-torn Europe.

"McCarthy, who works for a government folklore commission, is collecting material on matchmakers in Ireland when he meets his match in Kate Begley. Their unusually intimate friendship, which requires them to sleep naked together so they know each other (almost) to the fullest, is well-timed. Ben is haunted by the disappearance of his wife Venetia, a mystery that was never solved. Four years into World War II, known as "The Emergency" in Ireland, a pervasive sense of isolation grips the country, a strategically desirable place for Germany and the United States. After Kate's stolid husband, Capt. Miller, resumes his duties in Europe, and then talks her into going behind German lines on a secret mission, she and Ben find themselves in danger. When military authorities tell her the man known as "Killer Miller" was killed, she refuses to believe it and obsessively pursues him across a span of years and across the Atlantic Ocean—still leading Ben around by the heartstrings. Retrospectively told by Ben to his daughters, this book is a teasing epic punctuated by hints of how much worse things are going to get for the heroine. The resolution of Venetia's disappearance feels tossed off, and the novel ends up in John Irving territory with its cute antics involving zoo animals and oddball characters. As a result, it doesn't take flight as much as it should. But with its memorable characters and variety of adventures, Delaney's brand of Irish fabulism is still a delight to read. The novel burnishes this veteran writer's reputation as a consummate storyteller.

"One of the best fictional wartime couples animates veteran Delaney's darkly wistful novel."

Booklist review of The Matchmaker of Kenmare

STARRED REVIEW:
The Matchmaker of Kenmare.
Delaney, Frank (Author), Feb 2011.

Delaney re-earns his reputation for total reader engagement with his latest deeply thought-out novel, which weaves together various strands of the general theme of searching. In memoir format, narrated by a man in old age, the plot finds its provocative place in the WWII years and the immediate postwar years; in substance, it combines the charm of an Irish yarn with the excitement of a political thriller and the romance of a 1940s war movie. Young Ben McCarthy, fulfilling his job with the Irish Folklore Commission, which means taking story-gathering trips around Ireland, one day meets a young woman, Kate Begley, who makes her living as a matchmaker, connecting local unmarried women and men. The encounter is fateful.

She led me into trouble so deep that my own father wouldn’t have found me,” Ben recalls. Although Ben has, in addition to his professional search project, a personal one—looking for his missing wife—he finds Kate so mesmerizing that he accompanies her on a wild adventure taking them from neutral Ireland into hardly neutral continental Europe, first to retrieve for the U.S. Army a German man who has knowledge the Americans want and then to track down the American officer Kate improbably marries, and with whom she promptly loses touch. As artillery guns fire overhead, hearts ache: a compelling combination.