Summary

Chapter three begins with Norah buying a plane ticket to London in order to visit her mother's childhood home in Herne Hill. Norah admits that her mother is English, and her Irish reputation is a fiction. She then visits the home on Milkwood Road in which her mother was born. This leads her to telling the story of her mother's birth.

On the evening of April 23rd, Menton FitzMaurice, Norah's grandfather, was away from home acting in a musical comedy called the Lady of Eglantine. While he is away, his wife begins giving birth to Katherine. She is alone until a neighbor checks in on her, and the birth becomes somewhat of a neighborhood spectacle. In the middle of her narrative of these events, Norah describes the play that Menton acted in that night, as well as the critical reviews it received in...