Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 394 - 19 October 2007
The Field Day Archive by Cormac O Duibhne
Trade Paperback; 40 Euro / 52 USD / 26 UK; 176 pages, with black-and-white photos throughout
THE FIELD DAY ARCHIVE is a guide to the letters, minutes, photographs, scripts, programmes, reels of film, audio recordings and other items that compromise the files of Field Day, the well-known theatre and publishing company. The resources which it lists and describes are indispensable for students of Irish political and literary culture from 1979 to the present. The Archive contains correspondence of the company founders, Brian Friel and Stephen Rea, and the minutes of the meetings of the Board of Directors, which included Seamus Deane, Davy Hammond, Seamus Heaney, Thomas Kilroy and Tom Paulin. The volume contains numerous illustrations of Field Day stage productions, publications and other activities, a comprehensive chronology and introduction to the Archive by Cormac Ó Duibhne.
The Dublin Review Reader edited by Brendan Barrington
Hardback; 20 Euro / 30 USD / 15 UK; 342 pages [Add To Basket]
Since the appearance of its first issue in December 2000, The Dublin Review has published new work by world-class writers four times a year. The Dublin Review Reader gathers a selection of the magazine’s best non-fiction so far – essays of all kinds, reportage, criticism, travel writing and memoir.
Writers included are: John Banville, Angela Bourke, Ciaran Carson, Amit Chaudhuri, Catriona Crowe, Brian Dillon, Anne Enright, Roy Foster, Cona Groarke, Selina Guinness, Seamus Heaney, Michael Hoffmann, Ann Marie Hourihane, Kathleen Jamie, Molly McCloskey, Patrick McGrath, Derek Mahon, Christina Hunt Mahony, Lia Mills, Andrew O’Hagan, Glenn Patterson, Tim Robinson, Ian Samson, George Szirtes, Colm Toibin and Maurice Walsh.
Trouble with the Law: Crimes and trials from Ireland’s past edited by Liam Clare and Máire Ní Chearbhaill
Trade Paperback; 25 Euro / 34 USD / 17 UK; 216 pages
The ten stories in this collection reveal the variety of ways in which human beings got into trouble with the law, whether through extortion, adultery, bigamy, petty crime or rebellion. The intrigue, outrageous behaviour, massive fraud or petty crime committed by a range of characters in Trouble with the Law uncover something of the local, public and private worlds of Ireland in the past. They reflect the relations between husbands and wives, between rulers and the ruled, and between buyers and sellers.
Law-breakers fascinate historians. Their interest is not limited to questions of guilt or innocence but extends to what the breaking of the social rules tell about those who lived in former times. As the authors show, trials were not simply technical events in which the law was applied. They were events that returned the world to normal and the rituals of the courtroom were part of the affirmation of the prevailing social order.
Michael Collins: A Life in Pictures by Chrissy Osborne
Hardback; 25 Euro / 32 USD / 16 UK; 170 pages, with full colour and black and white photos throughout [Add To Basket]
"The Michael Collins Album" is a unique collection of photographs that catalogue the life of this great man. It includes many illustrations of the buildings and locations he would have known in Ireland and Britain but as they are today, together with rare photographs of his family and the people he knew. It also includes photographs of personal items such as his Waterman's fountain pen and his GAA medal, won for sprinting in 1914. This stunning compilation also covers his relationship with the love of his life Kitty Kiernan, and includes a close up of Kitty Kiernan's watch, a pre-engagement present from Collins. A must have for all Michael Collins enthusiasts, this book is a pictorial history of one of the men who shaped Ireland, and the intriguing images prove that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Rachel’s Food for Living by Rachel Allen
Hardback; Publishers’ Recommended Price: 30 Euro. Read Ireland Special Price: 25 Euro / 32 USD / 16 UK; 240 pages, with full colour photographs throughout
Bestselling author and TV chef Rachel Allen is back with a celebration of favourite foods for making memories. Ever feel rapture over a pudding? Fall in love over a romantic meal? Can you remember the smell of baking in your grandmother's kitchen? Food has the power to conjure up many emotions -- it can make us feel happy or energetic, nostalgic or loved. Cooking and enjoying great food with others is part of how we relish life and in her new book, Rachel Allen provides the mouth-watering recipes to help you do just that. Rachel explores the foods that stir these wonderful feelings. She provides inspiring and easy-to-achieve suggestions for all kinds of occasions whether you want to make an indulgent celebratory meal for someone special, create memories with your kids, or need a little healthy boost!or a sneaky treat! This is the food that will make you smile. Rachel's Food for Living includes over 100 new recipes such as Perfect Lamb Stew; Korean Beef with Avocado Rice; Spanish Chorizo and Chickpea Soup; Little Mocha Kisses.Contents include: 1 Food for the soul 2 Childhood favourites 3 Making memories with your children 4 Food to celebrate a special day 5 The Lazy Sunday
Irish Travellers, Tinkers No More: Photographs by Alen McWheeney
Hardback; 50 Euro / 75 USD / 38 UK; 112 pages, with black-and-white photographs throughout
In 1965, Alen MacWeeney came upon an encampment of itinerants in a waste ground by the Cherry Orchard Fever Hospital outside Dublin. Then called tinkers and later formally styled Travellers by the Irish Government, they were living in beatup caravans, ramshackle sheds, and time-worn tents. MacWeeney was captivated by their independence, individuality, and endurance, despite their bleak circumstances. Clearly impoverished, Travellers were alienated - partly by choice - from greater Irish society. They lived catch-as-catch-can. Traditionally, tinkers had been tinsmiths and pot menders; always, they had been horse traders, and they continued to keep some piebald horses. They worked now and again as turf-cutters or chimney sweeps. The women begged in the streets of Dublin and large towns; some told fortunes. They were not welcomed in the country towns of Ireland, where they set up their encampments in lay-bys and cul-de-sacs, littering the roadsides with their waste, hanging their washing on bushes. To Alen MacWeeney, they recalled the migrant farmers of the great American Depression - poor, white, and dispossessed - as the government attempted to get them off the roads of Ireland and gather them in settlements. Although they had been eligible for the dole since 1963, the tinkers - become - Travellers cherished their wayward, ancestral lifestyle. Already noted in the United States as a photographer of great sensitivity, MacWeeney became accepted by the Travellers and began to photograph them. In a moving essay in the book, he writes: "Theirs was a bigger way of life than mine, with its daily struggle for survival, compared to my struggle to find images symbolic and representative of that life." Over five years, he spent countless evenings in the Travellers' caravans and by their campfires, drinking tea and listening to their tales, songs, and music - "rarely shared or exposed to camera and tape recorder."
Murders at Wildgoose Lodge: Agrarian Crime and Punishment in Pre-Famine Ireland by Terence Dooley
Hardback; 30 Euro / 40 USD / 20 UK; 286 pages [Add To Basket]
On the night of 29-30 October 1816, eight people were murdered by burning to death in a house in a remote part of County Louth, known locally as Wildgoose Lodge. Those killed included a five-month-old child. The perpetrators all belonged to a local agrarian secret society that was avenging the execution of three of their comrades hanged for an earlier raid on Wildgoose Lodge the previous April, following information given to the authorities by the owner of the house, Edward Lynch. Following the murder of Lynch, his family and servants the local community closed ranks. For months, the authorities failed to arrest anybody in connection with the crime. Then the state administration took over.From Chief Secretary, Sir Robert Peel (later British Prime Minister) down to the police force operating in Louth there was massive collusion between Dublin Castle administrators, a corrupt chief police magistrate, lawyers and landlords in Louth to bring suspects to trial and prosecution. Four men on death row for unrelated crimes were reprieved and offered significant monetary rewards in return for giving evidence. Local informers - neighbours, friends and possibly relatives - of those murdered as well as those tried gave corroborating evidence. In the end eighteen men were executed and then gibbeted or dissected, at least half of whom were innocent. This was an awesome local episode with national implications which makes for an absorbing and intriguing story.
Irish Theatre Handbook 4th edition edited by Liz Carroll
Trade Paperback; 20 Euro / 30 USD / 15 UK; 256 pages [Add To Basket]
Irish theatre is renowned the world over for its rich literary tradition and for the quality of its writing, acting and directing. More recently, the work of Irish designers is making its way onto the world stage and the work of many Irish theatre, dance and opera companies is seen internationally to great acclaim.
The Irish Theatre Handbook is comprehensive guide to the professional theatre, dance and opera industry in Ireland, North and South. This 4th edition contains a wealth of information, listing 122 drama, 26 dance and 7 opera companies, 36 festivals and 102 venues complete with artistic and programming policies, personnel and contact information.
The revamped and greatly expanded Individuals and Services section offers a one-stop-shop to over 500 individuals and companies working in creative, production, technical, management and services sectors. The section provides contact information for a wide range of practitioners, including set, lighting, costume, sound and make-up/hair designers, directors, dramaturgs, producers, prop makers, stage managers and technicians.
The Handbook also includes a directory of funding and training opportunities, youth drama, dance and opera groups, support and resource organisations and a wide selection of international festivals, markets and networks.
In the time since it was first published, the Irish Theatre Handbook has become an indispensable resource and has developed a growing international readership.
Manchan’s Travels: A Journey Through India by Manchan Magan
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 256 pages [Add To Basket]
A rollercoaster ride through the mad masala of modern India, a culture pole-vaulting from the middle ages to the future. “His writing is unashamedly sensual and he has an engagingly confessional narrative voice; his adventures are as poignant as they are hair-raising.“ Sunday Telegraph. This entertaining, offbeat travelogue by an Irish tv documentary maker is a true story of deluded maharajahs, murderous environmentalists, sex-obsessed yogis, and bizarre high-society belles. It stretches from women throwing themselves on funeral pyres in the deserts of Rajasthan, to mind-reading children in Himalayan forests and devious missionaries on the shores on the Ganges.
It begins in the Himalayas, where Manchán (aka Mocha) has blissfully dropped out, when suddenly he gets a call from his brother who is coming to India to make a tv travel series and wants him to present it. First, he has to sort out Tara, a patient in the local leper station who is threatened by the community for being gay; he brings him to Delhi, leaving him in the care of a band of hermaphrodite dancers. Do the brothers succeed? Is Tara forced to make the ultimate sacrifice that the eunuchs demand? And what of the Norwegian man who begs Mocha/Manchán to track down a two thousand year old immortal yogi? It’s a bizarre and truly helter-skelter journey through the subcontinent, ending in triumph on the roof of the world with Manchán and his brother managing to befriend the Nepalese secret service and thereby escape years behind bars.
This Champagne Mojito is the Last Thing I Own by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly
Trade Paperback; Publishers’ Recommended Price: 20 Euro. Read Ireland Special Price: 16 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 360 pages [Add To Basket]
We don't think we can improve on the author's own summary of his book: I am many things, roysh -- unbelievable babe magnet, red-hot lover, loyal kind of goy, best forward who never played for Ireland -- but there's a few things I was basically sure I'd never be, related to a jailbird for storters, or listening to the old dear getting randier than a goat in heat, or even a father, for that matter. It's funny how life decides to throw you a total hospital pass every now and then. Really, like, hilarious. One minute you're the man, a ledge in his own town, every bird in sniffing distance wanting a piece of the action, and the next ...Well let's just say if I had gone to Blackrock Morket, roysh, and paid some crusty old crone to tell my future, and she told me all this, I would have said, 'Sorry, witch features, but what the fock are you banging on about. I'm Ross O'Carroll-Kelly. I am the man, and I always will be. Roysh!' I would have been wrong, dude. And we are talking totally here.
That’s My Baby by Pol O Conghaile
Small Paperback with Endflaps; 13 Euro / 18 USD / 9 UK; 166 pages [Add To Basket]
"I'm going to be a Dad." These words are enough to stir more emotions in a man than he would normally express in a whole year. Even though he had hoped for and anticipated the moment, when his partner told him she was pregnant, Pól Ó Conghaile went into shock. Would he be able to give his child the best opportunities in life? What if something went horribly wrong? And, God forbid, what if his child didn t get The Simpsons? To help sort through the chaos, future father decided to write a weekly letter to baby-to-be. Over the course of 33 letters, as baby stretched from 8mm to the size of a butternut squash, so did the author s sense of himself as a Dad. That s My Baby! ends before the parenting begins. But the journey is filled with love, life and laughs enough to sustain mums and dads, potential or otherwise, for a long time to come.
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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