Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 367 - 17 February 2007
Parsons Bookshop: At the Heart of Bohemian Dublin, 1949-1989 by Brendan Lynch
Large Format Paperback; 17 Euro / 24 USD / 13 UK; 252 pages with black-and-white photos throughout
"Tell us, Mary, about the morning that Brendan [Behan] and Patrick [Kavnagh] arrived [at the bookshop] together"... Even Beatrice laughed as Mary recounted the confrontation which could have put Sarajevo in the shade. "We all held our breaths for the fireworks. But they greeted each other cordially, and Patrick suggested they adjourn to Mooney's for a libation. 'They b-barred me, we'll try Searson's,' Brendan stammered. 'I've a problem there,' Patrick growled. Between the two of them, there was nowhere local they could go. They had to trudge off like a pair of delinquents to the wilds of Ballsbridge." For forty years from 1949 to 1989, Parson's Bookshop was a Dublin literary landmark and meeting place. Situated on the crest of Baggot Street's Grand Canal bridge, it defined the Bohemian quarter of writers and artists known as Baggotonia. Owned by May O'Flaherty who was ably assisted by Mary King and three other ladies, Parson's Bookshop played a major role in Ireland's literary and cultural development. "Parson's bookshop - where there were often as many writers on the floor as on the shelves," said Mary Lavin. In this affectionate chronicle of a very special establishment, Brendan Lynch describes the Dublin literary and artistic scene from the fifties to the eighties. Parson's was a second home to Brendan Behan and Patrick Kavanagh, and other Nobel and Pulitzer-winning customers included Flann O'Brien, Liam O'Flaherty, Frank O'Connor, Mary Lavin and Seamus Heaney. Artist customers ranged from Louis le Brocquy, Patrick Scott, Patrick Pye, Michael Kane and Brian Bourke to the ultimate Bohemian, Owen Walsh, who occupied a local studio-cum-boudoir for the lifespan of the bookshop. Archbishops of various denominations also worshipped at this shrine to literature, while political visitors ranged from senators and government ministers to taoiseach Garrett Fitzgerald and president Jack Lynch. With numerous anecdotes, stories and personal reminisces about some of Ireland's greatest literary figures, "Parson's Bookshop" provides a warm and amusing account of life in Bohemian Dublin.
Field of Bones: An Irish Division at Gallipoli by Philip Orr
Large Format Paperback; 20 Euro / 26 USD / 14 UK; 268 pages [Add To Basket]
During August and September 1915 almost 3000 young volunteer Irish soldiers died on the killing-fields of Gallipoli on the Turkish Adriatic. They had sailed from Dublin earlier that year as a division of Kitchener's Army. At Suvla Bay they fell to gunshot-wounds and shellfire, while thirst, sunstroke and dysentery reduced their chances of survival. Hundreds were to be burned alive in raging bush-fires. The Irishmen in this conflict of 'unparalleled brutality, ferocity and waste' were of all creeds and classes. Former 'Larkinites' from Dublin's docks fought alongside Trinity students, stockbrokers and barristers. Unionists from Portadown and Ballymena marched with nationalists from Castlebar and Skibbereen. Some enlisted out of a sense of patriotic duty, others simply in order to 'get regular meals'. Whole groups of friends such as 'The Dublin Pals' and 'The Toffs in the Toughs' enlisted - and died - together. In post-war Ireland political revolution led to the removal of Gallipoli from memory. One popular ballad told the Volunteers 'you fought for the wrong country, you died for the wrong cause, when the greater war was at home'. The bone-strewn strands of Suvla were forgotten. Almost ninety years later, the author came across a quiet country road in the Irish midlands called 'The Dardanelles', which sent him on a journey of discovery, and recovery. Here, in heart-breaking detail, built from letters, diaries and archival sources, is the story of The 10th (Irish) Division, many of whom still lie today in Suvla Bay's deserted fields of bones. Foreword by Keith Jeffrey.
Colonial Crossings: Figures in Irish Literary History by Marjorie Holmes
Large Format Paperback; 25 Euro / 30 USD / 20 UK; 115 pages
Colonial Crossings is provocative, rigorously argued and lucidly written. Marjorie Howes s attention to recent developments in postcolonial theory moves the discussion of Irish identity into a new comparative and trans-national frame. In Colonial Crossings, Marjorie Howes is concerned with the responses of both major and minor literary figures to cultural conjunctures in the emergence of modern Ireland. She illuminates the affective political power of secretions in the poetry of Lady Wilde, the shifting religious allegiances of William Carleton, Sheridan Le Fanu s deployment of femininity in the Anglo-Irish Gothic, and corporal punishment in the novels of the Irish-American writer Mary Anne Sadlier. Colonial Crossings also includes revelatory discussions of Joyce s Gretta Conroy and the question of female migration and Yeats and the public sphere.
Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland by Joe Cleary
Large Format Paperback; 25 Euro / 30 USD / 20 UK; 242 pages [Add To Basket]
Did Ireland produce a more radical and ambitious literature in the straitened circumstances of the first half of the twentieth century than it has managed to do since it began to modernize and become more affluent from the 1960s onwards? Has Irish modernism ceded place to a prevailing naturalism that seems gritty and tough-minded, but that is in reality aesthetically conservative and politically self-thwarted? Does the fixation with de Valera s Ireland in recent narrative represent a necessary settling of accounts with a dark, abusive history or is it indicative of a worrying inability on the part of Irish artists and intellectuals to respond to the very different predicaments of the post-Cold War world? These are some of the questions addressed in Outrageous Fortune. Scanning literature, theatre, film and music, Joe Cleary probes the connections between capital, culture and criticism in modern Ireland. He includes readings of James Joyce and the Irish modernists, the naturalists Patrick Kavanagh, John McGahern and Edna O Brien, and comments too on what he terms the neo-naturalism of Marina Carr, Patrick McCabe and Martin McDonagh. He concludes with a provocative analysis of the cultural achievement of the Pogues.
Words We Use by Diarmaid O Muirithe
Hardback; 25 Euro / 30 USD / 20 UK; 310 pages
Diarmaid O Muirithe's column "Words We Use" has been a feature of "The Irish Times" over many years. Written in the author's typically modest, witty and sympathetic style, it displays prodigious learning lightly worn and is a delight for all who are interested in and fascinated by the meaning of words. Diarmaid O Muirithe is a lexicographer and etymologist. He explains the origins of words, where they come from, and why we use some of the expressions we do. His knowledge and erudition in languages, ancient and modern, is enormous. With sections from Computers and Shakespeare, Political Correctness, Magic and Monsters to Text Messaging, "Words We Use" is simply a joy.
Last Word: A Life Working with Managers by Ivor Kenny
Hardback; 25 Euro / 30 USD / 20 UK; 306 pages
For almost half a century, Ivor Kenny has been working with managers, who he says are the salt of the earth. From his appointment at the Irish Management Institute as Information Officer and Editor of Management, through his swift promotion to Director General, to his work internationally with companies and boards as a Senior Research Fellow at University College Dublin, Last Word tells the story of a changing Ireland. Interwoven with the story is a radical (in its correct sense of getting to the root of thing) message - the need for clear thinking, for strategy based on action, and for accountability. Last Word is a call to arms - for managers and for government. Though Kenny's trenchant arguments once earned him the soubriquet 'the most dangerous man in Ireland', his constant good humour and optimism permeate the book. Ivor Kenny's principal preoccupation is working with international companies on their strategies - or, as he says, helping managers see more clearly what they already know so that their organisations work better. He is a director of Independent News & Media Plc and of IONA Technologies Plc. Now a Senior Research Fellow at University College Dublin and President of the International Management Centres, he was Director General of the Irish Management Institute from 1962 to 1983; Chancellor of the International Academy of Management; a Research Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin; and Executive-in-Residence at Indiana University.
Literary Walking Tours of Dublin by Brian Showers
Trade Paperback; 20 Euro / 26 USD / 14 UK; 160 pages, with black-and-white photos throughout [Add To Basket]
DUBLIN HAS SPAWNED three important writers in the nineteenth century gothic tradition: Charles Maturin (1782-1824), Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) and Bram Stoker (1847-1912). These writers contributed memorable and influential stories that were inspired by and often set in their native Dublin. Their fictions, which delve into universal and supernatural themes such as ghosts, vampires and the devil, persist in popularity to this day. The footprints of these writers and inspirations for their stories can be traced through Dublin's dark alleys, distilled from its public houses and unearthed in its churchyards. These writers, whose lives crossed paths with other notable nineteenth century personalities, were often intertwined with the history of the city itself. This guidebook reconstructs the lives of Maturin, Le Fanu and Stoker as walking tours with the help of maps, photographs and excerpts from their works. Also reprinted inside are Maturin’s 'Leixlip Castle', Le Fanu's 'Ghost Stories of Chapelizod' and Stoker's 'The Judge's House'; each story illustrated by Duane Spurlock. Cover art is by Meggan Kehrli and a foreword by Pat Liddy. Ideal for tourists who have come to explore Ireland's 1200 year old capital, native Dubliners who want to learn more about their city's spectral past, and those who just want a mind's eye tour of haunted Dublin. After all, who can resist a good ghost story?
Best Walks in Ireland by David Marshall
Pocket Paperback; Publishers Recommended Price: 18 Euro. Read Ireland Book Review Special Price: 16 Euro / 20 USD / 11 UK; 352 pages, with full colour photos and maps throughout [Add To Basket]
The Best Walks series aims to select the very best walking opportunities to be found in a region or national park. There is something for everyone in these walking guides. Each book suggests twenty to forty good quality walks - where possible, circular to avoid difficulties with transport. The walks are clearly graded and include easy, moderate, challenging and strenuous/difficult routes more suitable for the experienced hiker. A clear route description and exceptionally detailed map is included for each walk and there are practical suggestions on transport to and within the region plus a section with useful addresses and telephone numbers. Best Walks in Ireland has five walks in the north and fifteen in the Republic of Ireland. It takes in well-known areas such as the Antrim coast, the Mountains of Mourne and the Dingle peninsula and also remote, wild areas of Ireland still largely undiscovered by tourists.
In Irish Waterways by Edward O’Regan
Paperback with Endflaps; 8 Euro / 12 USD / 9 UK; 150 pages, with black-and-white photos and maps [Add To Basket]
Over a ten-year period, starting in 1939, Edward O'Regan took to Ireland's waterways in a collapsable canoe, bringing with him only basic provisions and a tent. His expeditions took place on canals, rivers and lakes. Tent and Canoe in Irish Waters tells the story of those distant adventures, conveying the charm of a more innocent Ireland, the hardship of The Emergency, but most of all a fantastic sense of several great explorations. Edward O'Regan crossed the country several times, going west along the Royal Canal, north to the lakes of Cavan, through the midlands on the Shannon, and into the deep south on the Blackwater. Beautifully illustrated with evocative photographs of the various trips, this is much more than a memento of Ireland in the 1940s or an account of a boating enthusiast. This is social history at its best.
Northabout: Sailing the North East and North West Passages by Jarlath Cunnane
Large Format Hardback; 28 Euro / 36 USD / 20 UK; 238 pages [Add To Basket]
Eight Irishmen and their 47-foot aluminium boat Northabout left Westport in June 2001 to sail the demanding Northwest Passage. Rivalling the Antarctic for drama and tragedy, it meanders north of Canada and Alaska through the Arctic Ocean. Many had failed until the great Amundsen achieved the first navigation in 1903-06. During 2001's brief Arctic summer, the crew endured the hazards of ever-moving ice and navigation through narrow channels of open water. They photographed the harsh beautiful landscape and superb wildlife, and met isolated communities of the native Inuit. Completing the voyage in a record thirteen weeks, the crew returned home leaving the boat in Alaska to cruise British Columbia the following year. The call of the wild induced a return to the Arctic in July 2004 to try the more difficult Northeast Passage, - longer, more remote, against prevailing currents, adjacent lands barren, languages and permits difficult - via the icy seas of Siberia from the Bering Straits to Norway. Overcoming Russian bureaucracy they sailed in July 2004 from British Columbia. The voyage took two seasons. In 2004, Northabout was nearly trapped in ice many times. Finally, stopped by solid pack ice, Northabout was laid up in Khatanga in Siberia for the winter. The team returned in summer 2005 for the most difficult section of the voyage around Cape Chelyuskin. On October 12, 2005 Northabout sailed into Westport, County Mayo, having completed the first ever, and more difficult east-to-west, circumnavigation of the Arctic icecap by a small yacht.
Lansdowne Through the Years by Edward Newman
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 30 Euro. Read Ireland Book Review Special Price: 25 Euro / 30 USD / 20 UK; 305 pages, with full colour and black-and-white photos throughout [Add To Basket]
Lansdowne Road Stadium, the oldest international stadium in the world, has been at the centre of Irish sporting life since it opening in 1878. This year the stadium will close its doors as it undergoes extensive renovation. As the time comes for the last fan to make his way through the turnstiles, "Lansdowne Through the Years" commemorates the best rugby played at the stadium in the last 60 years. Edward Newman brings together the memories of thirty great rugby players and personalities - including JPR Williams, Jack Kyle, George Hook and Gerry Ryan. Accompanied by ninety stunning photographs, these recollections provide the perfect record of Irish rugby's greatest days and greatest deeds.
Gregory Carr, Independent Bookseller
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