Langrishe, go down / Aidan Higgins.

1937 -- The lights in the bus burned dim -- Helen awoke in sour white daylight -- Taking her time, Helen cycled slowly -- Helen stood in the nave of the old church -- Imogen closed the door behind her -- The Angelus bell began ringing from the village -- In Helen's room the Venetian blinds -- I hear the wind in the high beech tree -- The rockery and main garden grow wild -- 1932 -- Otto Beck lay in the meadow -- One sunny, cloudless day -- Late one night Imogen awoke -- Why did I? -- As the lights were out in Agnew's -- Oh but it's true, Barry -- When Imogen opened her eyes -- Tollis peccata -- About the same time that Imogen was boarding -- He asked me would I go to the theatre with him -- And you, he wanted to know, you are well off? -- He led her along a ferny bridle path -- She came again to the cottage -- They followed the sheep path -- Gin days; greenery everywhere -- Imogen said with her teeth, her jaw -- The autumn came and went -- Dum bibitur ... Otto said -- Naked in the small cottage bedroom -- He had been talking about his early student days -- 'Dear Otto' -- An uncanny dusk. End of an uncanny day -- Can I help it if I'm feeling sick? -- Time passed. The pale white privet flowers -- The child is dead -- 1938 -- The hearse stood at the gate -- 'Anschluss!' -- Imogen awoke early.

"Langrishe, Go Down traces the fall of the Langrishes - a once wealthy, highly respected Irish family - through the lives of their four daughters, especially the youngest, Imogen, whose love affair with a self-centered German scholar resonates throughout the book. Their relationship, told in erotic and occasionally melancholic prose, comes to represent not only the invasion and decline of this insular family, but the decline of Ireland and Western Europe as a whole in the years preceding World War II."--Jacket.