September 19, 2025

Looking for Cornelius
by Diana Hayes

Eugene: Resource Publications, 2025
$21.00 / 9798385250332 

Reviewed by Trish Bowering

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For many, the search for one’s ancestry is deeply important and meaningful. Salt Spring Island-based writer Diana Hayes has penned a captivating tale of one woman’s search for her Irish roots, offering a story that invites the reader to explore Irish history and experience a bit of magical connection to the past in the process. Hayes, a prolific poet (Sapphire and the Hollow Bone), has now turned her pen to prose, and Looking for Cornelius is her debut novella.

Deirdre Ó hAodha has taught traditional Irish music at the prestigious Academy of St. Anne’s in Montreal for the last five years. A fiddle player who had toured with a travelling Irish band, the position at St. Anne’s is her dream job, and she’s been mentoring young musicians who have a passion for the old Irish lyrics and composition. Her students come from disadvantaged backgrounds in the inner city.

One student, Éamon, shows particular promise on the fiddle: “He would disappear into the music as an oarsman slips off the edge of the world, beyond the veil to a place only his imagination could follow, beyond the rogue waves of a mid-Atlantic Sea.” Deirdre selects the young teen as the student who will accompany her to Ireland for the Cork County Arts Council summer festival. If Éamon’s performance scores are high enough, it could mean a full music scholarship to Cork College University.

Before the two embark on their overseas journey, Hayes introduces a third character: Deirdre’s lost-to-history great-grandfather Cornelius, born Ireland during the Great Hunger, a devastating famine in that region from 1845-1852 that led to mass starvation and hardship, and is estimated to have killed a million people. It also triggered a mass emigration, and Deirdre believes that Cornelius was one of those souls who left Ireland at that time, though she knows little else. Deirdre was born in Toronto, raised in a household with her parents, sister and grandparents, until she lost them all in a house fire at age twelve. The only survivors were Deidre, her cat Roo, her precious Ogham pendant, and her fiddle.

The story of Cornelius has been with her most of her life. It had been family lore that Cornelius had “second sight,” and Deirdre is similarly blessed. It’s a mystery how her fiddle was saved from the fire that fateful night, but one suspects Cornelius somehow had a hand in it. Now, as the story of Deirdre’s trip to County Cork begins, her Ogham pendant is missing. Hayes writes, “Had Cornelius visited in the night again to play tricks just to have a bit of fun with her and make his presence known?” It had been gifted to her by her Granny Moll and represents her connection to Ireland—‘Ogham’ is the first known written representation of the Irish language, found on inscriptions from the Ogham Stones primarily found in counties Cork and Kerry.

Talismans like the pendant, as well as dreams, play a significant role in the story. Hayes effectively portrays the longing that Deirdre has to connect with her ancestors, and it’s a part of her protegé Éamon’s life too, as they were both orphaned at a young age. Those losses are key to the story and explain Deirdre’s excitement about her trip to Ireland; she sees it as a homecoming. Once the pair land in Ireland they rent a car and have time for sightseeing, but Deidre’s heart is pulled towards the Cork County of Cornelius’ past. She knows that the drive there “would conjure a deep sense of returning, a magnetic pull towards Cork and the Celtic Sea where her heart would beat stronger and steadier, bringing a sense of reunion, a place of belonging.”

Hayes includes some traditional Irish lore and legends in her narrative, which adds to the sense of place. When they hike to Glendalough to visit the cell of St. Kevin, we learn about the saint, with his “healing powers and love of nature.” Deirdre recounts the tale of St. Kevin and the blackbird to Éamon, in which the saint holds his arm extended for a fortnight to allow a blackbird to nest. I also learned a bit about St. Brigid, “the patron saint of healers and poets as well as creativity and womanhood,” as Deidre plays “St. Brigid’s Jig” on her fiddle before the pair leave for Dublin.

Indeed, music plays a huge role in the book, and adds so much. I had a great time listening to “St. Brigid’s Jig,” when I came to that part of the book–it brought the story to life! A traditional song, “The Parting Glass,” is featured as a melody played at the end of the annual St. Anne’s concert in Montreal, and again when Deidre and Éamon visit a pub in Cobh, where lauded Irish musician Freddie White is playing. White, I was interested to learn, is an actual Irish singer-songwriter, and after I finished the book, I took the time to look him up and listen to some of his music. I also listened to several renditions of “The Parting Glass.” The book would do well with an accompanying soundtrack, to be sure. 

In Skibbereen, they are met by historians from the Skibbereen Heritage Centre as well as the chair of the Ó hAodha Family Circle of West Cork, an ancestry group that Deidre has connected with. The narrative plays out gradually and beautifully as Deidre is able to finally connect with past. Discovering more about the real Cornelius’ life and times, and his eventual fate, was a highlight of the novella. There are some surprises, too, for both Deidre and Éamon.

Looking for Cornelius is an engaging story that encourages us to look at the meaning of history, family and ancestral connection, and Hayes uses the ideas of second sight, dreams, and portents to explore this idea. It’s a poetically written novella that invites contemplation, and the sense of musicality that runs throughout adds to the sense of enchantment. The descriptions of important Irish locales, accompanied by stories from the past, were so lovely. This book would make particularly excellent reading for anyone planning a trip there, as well as those interested in Irish history or ancestry.

Trish Bowering lives in Vancouver, where she is immersed in reading, writing, and vegetable gardening. She has an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Victoria, and obtained her M.D. from UBC. Now retired from her medical practice, she focuses on her love of all things literary. She blogs at TrishTalksBooks.com and reviews on Instagram@trishtalksbooks. [Editor’s note: Trish has recently reviewed books by Patrick Tarr, David Bergen, Mikaela Reuben, Natalie Appleton, Nick Perry, Brian Thomas Isaac, Susan Juby, David Asher, and Alison Acheson for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review