I read Troubles because it is an esteemed historical novel, known for its richness of comic incident and irony, a nove…I read Troubles because it is an esteemed historical novel, known for its richness of comic incident and irony, a novel which treats a place and period I find fascinating (Ireland during the “War of Independence”), but I ended up loving it for very different reasons: I found it to be--in spite of (or because of?) its dark humor--one of the finest romantic Gothics I have encountered. It is redolent with ironies, of course, but they are ironies darkened by tragic waste.It begins in 1919, when British Major Brendan Archer, still a bit shell-shocked from the war, travels to the fictional east coast town of Kilnalough to visit a woman he is almost sure he is engaged to (although he has no memory of proposing). This woman, Angela Spencer, resides in her father’s seaside hotel near Kilnalough, and the historical interest of the book comes from the Major's observations—on and off, during the next two years—of the changes in the atmosphere of the hotel and the town as the Irish desire for independence intensifies, particularly as it affects the decaying Anglo-Irish Protestant gentry, like the Spencer family itself.Just as interesting as the history, however, is the ghost of the gothic which envelops the book. In my gothic interpretation, the sex of the protagonist is reversed, with Major Archer in the role of Jane Eyre or the second Mrs. de Winter: he is intelligent, capable, but a bit damaged, and rather unsure of his position in this unfamiliar world.. Angela, who greets her “fiancee” ambiguously and then disappears somewhere into the upper rooms, suggests the crazy lady in the Rochester attic or the ghost of Rebecca de Winter: could she--and her cryptic letters--hold the key to the secrets of the old Majestic Hotel?The Majestic Hotel! Just like the Rochester mansion or Manderley itself, this old, …