Read Ireland Book News - Issue 3
<-- [Back To Main Menu] 1. W. B. Yeats: A Life - The Apprentice Mage by R. F. Foster (hardback; 26 Irish pounds/40 US Dollars approximately) [Add To Basket]
In this first authorized biography of W.B. Yeats for over 50 years, Roy Foster bring new light into one of the most complex and fascinating lives of the late 19th and early 20th century. Working from a great archive of personal and contemporary material, he dramatically alters traditional perceptions to illuminate the poet's family history, relationships, politics and art.
From a childhood inheritance of 'delcasse' Irish Protestantism with strong nationalist sympathies, and an exceptional and talented family background, the narrative charts Yeats's development into a great poet. It ends in his fiftieth year with the controversies and disillusionment affecting his personal and public life at the time of the First World War. A bohemian life of uncertain finances, love-affairs, avant-garde friends and experiments with drugs and occultism prefaces his attempt to unite politics with high culture and his creation of an Irish national theatre. Constantly shifting between Dublin, Coole Park and London, with forays to America and Paris, ruthlessly constructing a public life as well as a creative reputation, Yeats attracted admirers and enemies with equal passion. His story intersects with those of an engrossing cast of characters including Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, George Moore, 'AE@, Ezra Pound and above all Maud Gonne - an influence eternally re-created 'like the phoenix', affecting almost everything he did.
The search for supernatural wisdom forms a constant threat, traced through Yeats's occult notebooks and closed related to the insecurities of her personal life. This book charts the growth of a poet's mind and of an astonishing personality, both of which were instrumental in the formation of a new and radicalized Irish nationalist identity.
2. Goodbye to Catholic Ireland by Mary Kenny (paperback; 11.99 Irish pounds/19 US $ apx) [Add To Basket]
This book is a cultural and personal narrative of Ireland from the fall of Parnell to the rise of President Mary Robinson: a social history of the 20th Century in Catholic Ireland as seen by those who experienced it. It explains Ireland today.
The book shows, among other things, how women played a role in constructing and supporting Catholic Ireland; how Catholic Ireland shifted from a broad institution within a British identity to a separate Irish identity; how Catholics and Protestants, despite doctrinal and historical differences, shared many similar values; how the Troubles in the North, in challenging 'a Protestant state for a Protestant people' actually had the effect of questioning the basis of a Catholic people; how the international dimension of Catholicity influenced Ireland - and vice-versa; and how Ireland, as a nation, is historically incomprehensible without Catholicism.
Above all, the simplistic image of Ireland as a society controlled by its churches is provocatively challenged in Mary Kenny's lively and humorous analysis.
3. Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane (hardback: 13.99 Irish pounds/22 US$ apx) [Add To Basket]
A Booker-prize nominated novel, this is a story of a haunted childhood, lived out in two dimensions. One is legendary: the Sun-fort of Grianan, home of the warrior Fianna; the Field of the Disappeared, over which no gulls fly; the house in Donegal where children are stolen away by demonic forces. The other is actual: the city of Derry in the Northern Ireland of the 40s and 50s; a place that is also haunted by political enmities, family secrets, lethal intrigue.
The boy narrator of the novel grows up enclosed in these two worlds, sensing that they are intertwined in some mysterious ways that he both wants and does not want to discover. Through the silence that surrounds him, he feels the truth spreading like a stain until it engulfs him and his family.
A book about how childhood fear turns into fantasy, and fantasy turns into fact, the novel unfolds its secrets like a collection of folk tales: the dead sister walking again, the lost uncle, Eddie, present on every page, the family house 'as cunning and articulate as a labyrinth, closely designed, with someone sobbing at the heart of it.'
Claustrophobic but lyrically charged, breathtakingly-sad but vibrant and unforgettable, this novel is one of the finest books about growing up in Ireland that has ever been written.
4. Ex-Isle of Erin: Images of Global Ireland by Fintan O'Toole (1874597499; paperback; 7.99 Irish pounds/12.50 US $ apx) [Add To Basket]
In his previous book, Black Hole, Green Card, Fintan O'Toole suggested that the Ireland imagined by nationalists has disappeared. In this book he explores what Roy Foster has called "laconic wit and lacerating vigour" the new images that are taking its place. Drawing on contemporary poliitcs, economic, literature and history, he suggests that Ireland is beginning to realise that its distinctiveness does not lie in any one way of imagining itself, but in the fact that it is a place forced from moment to moment to imagine itself anew. This book is part of that process. The author is one of Ireland's most incisive and provocative commentators.
Special Offers:
5. Celtic Ornament by Courtney Davis (hardback: Original Price: 14.99 Irish pounds/24 US $ apx - Our Special Offer Price: 7.99 Irish pounds/12 US$ apx) [Add To Basket]
Nearly 100 pages of Celtic ornamentation and explanation by one of the most celebrated artists in the field. Here he reinterprets and presents the intricacy and beauty inherent in Celtic ornamentation, from the famous manuscripts and gospels to the decorated brooches, sword hilts, fine metalwork and craftsmanship.
6. A Border Diary by Shane Connaughton (paperback: Original Price: 9.99 Irish pounds/16 US $ apx; Our Special Offer Price: 3.99 Irish pounds/6.30 US $ apx) [Add To Basket]
This book presents a remarkable picture of a unique territory at a rare moment in time - the Cavan/Monaghan/Fermanagh borderland during the filming of The Run of the Country before and after the IRA ceasefire of 31 August 1994. Not just a conventional film diary, it is a record of the politics, characters and language of a paradise or wilderness, lost or about to be regained - a hilarious and always loving look at the people and places of the author's birthplace caught in the dreamy glare of a Hollywood shoot.
(Please note that there are a limited supply of the 2 special offer books.)
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