Think back for a moment. Think back to when you were sixteen years old? How was it for you?
Was it a magical time? A time for discovering boyfriends or girlfriends, for planning a career and a future, for simply having fun? Or was it a troubled and turbulent time, filled with hormonal surges,acne, horrific mood swings,exam nerves and arguments with your parents? How was it for you?
For me, it was a mixture of the two. I had finished my 'O'levels,started 'A' levels and was desperately trying to decide on a career. I had my first boyfriend, had a massive crush on Marc Bolan and rowed with my parents almost daily as I made the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood.
Life for Nuala (not her real name) was, I imagine, pretty similar to mine, (although her hearts desire was David Essex rather than Marc Bolan.) Like me she was a schoolgirl, although hers was a convent school in rural Ireland. Like me she had her first boyfriend.But unlike me, her rows with her family were not the normal teenage testing of boundaries...
Nuala's father was a Jekyll and Hyde character. Outside the home, he was a charming, affable and generous man,loved and respected by all who knew him. Yet, behind closed doors, he ruled his family with a rod of iron and his quick fists were all too ready to dispense his kind of justice to his wife and children.
Dan worked as a coalman, but he also had another job, one which was only spoken about in hushed whispers. You see Dan was a 'matchmaker'.
Think of it as rural Ireland's answer to the dating agency.In quiet corners in bars and on farms, Dan would introduce people who were looking for partners in life, taking a hefty comission for his efforts. The lonely, the ugly, the 'just too damn busy', would approach Dan on the quiet and ask for his help in finding a bride or groom, knowing that a successful introduction which led to an eventual marriage could cost them anything from £50 upwards, depending on their circumstances. Dan made a fair amount of money from this sideline, but he kept his best deal for his daughter.
For a sum of money, a Mini car and the promise of a future inheritance, Dan sold his 16 year old daughter Nuala into marriage to an elderly farmer - a man who had a history of wife beating.At first, no-one really believed that he actually intended to go through with his money making scheme. But, as the arranged marriage drew nearer and nearer, it soon became evident to Nuala and her friends that he was all too serious.
This then, is Nuala's story,as told to journalist Sean Boyle. It begins just before her fateful meeting with her husband-to-be, Paddy, and continues through her marriage and her desperate attempts to escape from the violent domination imposed on her by her father and husband alike. It is a story of rapes and beatings, of fear and loneliness, of defiance and, most of all, of teen spirit, which somehow survived under the most horrific circumstances.
Author Sean Boyle is currently the editor of a major Irish newspaper, and my one criticism of the book would be that it is rather 'journalistic' in style. It reads rather like a newspaper report of an event - he did that, she did this and then he did that. It lacks depth - but then, in this case,more depth may have made the book too horrific to read. As it is, the reader is constantly willing Nuala to escape. This is the kind of book where you almost dread turning the next page to see what sort of humiliation would be next for Nuala - yet at the same time, you are eager and impatient to know how she has coped. This is what keeps you on the edge of your seat and makes 'Sold into Marriage' compulsive reading.
Did Nuala escape? Obviously, I can't really reveal that without spoiling the book for you.
The book raises all sorts of questions for the reader. How could this happen? How could people stand by and LET this happen? Was Nuala's an isolated case, or are there more reluctant brides in rural Ireland? As you read, you have to constantly remind yourself that this is not the Middle Ages, nor is it a story from a third world banana republic - this is Ireland in the 1970's, and Nuala is still a woman in her forties.
Read it and mourn for a lost youth and a life scarred for ever by one man's greed.
Oh, and how was being sixteen for you? Still think you had it tough?
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
ISBN:0862785812
Price: £6.99
Date Reviewed: July 2002
My Rating: 4/5
