SOURCE: King, Robert L. “Differing Styles Ironically Jostling.” Commonweal 108 (27 March 1981): 184.

In the following review, King provides a favorable assessment of The State of Ireland.

The title of the novella which concludes Benedict Kiely's collection of short stories [The State of Ireland] comes out of the musings of its central character, a retired teacher forced by IRA Provisionals to be an agent of their terror: “Not even the Mafia thought of the proxy bomb, operation proxy, proxopera for gallant Irish patriots fighting imaginary empires by murdering the neighbours. … Proxopera, he says, and likes the sound of the word.” The unwilling Granda Binchey, whose memories of his dead wife are interwoven with lines from Catullus, would use language for stability—to exert a measure of control over a world that could quite literally blow up around him no matter what he chooses to do. So long as he can coin...