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Carol Birch’s novel takes back in time. In 1969 Beatrice Conrad inherits a ruined cottage in a remote hamlet in the West of Ireland. She discovers the bones of a child in a hollow tree behind the house. In her search for the origins of the child, she meets Luke Quinn, a local man with strange eyes.

Beatrice’s desire to learn about the history of the house takes us back with her to her own grandmother’s childhood in the village and to a previous relationship with a different Quinn, a passion lived by her grandmother Lizzie but angily opposed by Lizzie’s father. We learn of the bitter feud between the Veseys and the Quinns which dates back to the harsh sufferings of the potato famine and the disease and evictions that accompanied it in the 1840s.

In the third section of the novel, we are back in that time with another Eliza Vesey who is the lifeline, in times of troubles, for the prolific Quinn family. We live through the famine years with her and follow her as she makes her way to Cork, starving and suffering from the fever.

The entire story is evocatively recounted with a superb final touch when all the hatred and misery of the past hundred years is laid to rest by the new owner of ’Darby’s house’. This was one of the most enchanting books I have read this year, even if its reliving of the troubles of mid-nineteenth century Ireland is so harrowing and gripping.

We finally understand the title, The Naming of Eliza Quinn.

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