A Phila. family seen fresh from Ireland

By Elise Juska

Pocket Books. 270 pp. $14

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Reviewed by Martha Woodall

The title of Elise Juska's latest novel,

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy,

is drawn from a variant of an Irish rhyme about the portent of magpies. It's a perfect epithet for this lyrical, enchanting narrative about a determinedly rational linguist who has to fly to Ireland to gain insight into her troubled Philadelphia family and to fathom her own unhappiness.

Juska, the author of The Hazards of Sleeping Alone and Getting Over Jack Wagner, opens her third novel with Claire Gallagher in the kitchen of the home she shares in a remote corner of New Hampshire with her entomologist husband, the practical, low-key Bob. With her own dissertation on hold after Bob accepts a researcher's position at the Institute of Biological Sciences, Claire struggles to fit in with the local women and passes her time creating E-Z crossword puzzles:

As Claire looks at her hand resting on the kitchen counter, a walking stick appears in her mind's eye. Her pale skin is the same shade as her Formica. The freckles sprinkled across the back of her hand merge with a smattering of dots the color of sand. . . . She has become indistinguishable from her kitchen."

Surprising her husband - and herself - Claire responds to the doleful insight by striding into Bob's laboratory and dropping her wedding band into one of his bug-killing jars. "I need to go," she informs him.

Ever logical, Bob responds by asking: "But, ah, where would you go?"

Not sure of a destination, Claire decides on an impromptu visit to her younger sister, Noelle, who is living with Paul, her bartender-boyfriend, and his large family in a small town in Ireland. Claire arrives to find Noelle and Paul preparing for their wedding. Although the two sisters' relationship has been strained, Claire allows herself to be shepherded to the usual tourist spots and drawn into the local tavern scene while she helps her sister get ready for the simple ceremony.

Claire is surprised to find herself responding to the warmth of the people and beguiled by the Gaelic attentiveness to language, legend and poetry. Her sojourn on the far side of the Atlantic gives her a new perspective not only on her marriage but also on the dynamics of her family that had been governed by her spirited, vexing and superstitious mother, who came to the United States from Ireland as a toddler. The mother suffered from lupus for years, and her recent death has left a gaping hole in the Gallagher family that Claire is just beginning to understand.

Reduced to its brief plot outline, One for Sorrow sounds as if it might be another heart-tugging, soggy romance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, Juska has created a welcome, refreshing novel that upends stereotypes and eschews clichés.

Hers is not a postcard depiction of Ireland.

Claire had expected this to be a gleaming, charming island. Gemlike, quiltlike, the Land of Leprechauns, the Birthplace of Blarney. Instead there is a near-grimness about it, all this tamed brown and green, muck and stone.

And Claire is aghast to learn that Paul's family has celebrated Christmas by dining at McDonald's, and startled to find that his 9-year-old brother Graham is breathless for news about American celebrities. He is disappointed that Claire is not acquainted with Jessica Simpson or Mariah Carey. "I don't know the Fresh Prince, either," Claire says.

"But he's from Philadelphia," the boy points out.

"Not every country is as [expletive] small as this one, Graham," Aoife, his disgusted older sister, tells him.

With her keen ear and discerning eye, Juska has soaked up the details that make her characters full-bodied and bring her settings to life, whether she is describing summers in Ocean City, N.J., or a drive through the Irish countryside.

She's done her homework; she's also been paying attention. She earned her master's degree in fiction at the University of New Hampshire and spent several months studying Irish literature and writing at University College Galway.

But it is Juska's delicate touch and note-perfect writing that allow her to gather the threads of the shrewdly observed details and weave them around her vivid characters, making One for Sorrow, Two for Joy a memorable, rewarding pleasure.

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