Currently, the leading prophet of the acculturation of the Irish, to give the phenomenon its technical name, is Edwin O'Connor. In my view, he is an excellent novelist and a master at showing how much can be made of moth-eaten material. His "The Last Hurrah," published in 1956, was a classic in one sense of the word: Frank Skeffington, the hero, was politically and sociologically a completely standardized phenomenon….

There is evidence that when he began ["The Edge of Sadness"] …, O'Connor intended to leave the acculturation of the Irish for good and all, and deal with the simple but delicate problem of a priest who in his middle years turns to alcohol. The advance billing of the book made much of this theme. In fact, it forms only a small and not wholly plausible part of the story. The causes of the descent into drunkenness are not fully developed...