Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 115
For the Love of Mary Kate by Hazel McIntyre (5.99 IEP / 8.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This novel is a compelling saga of love and courage spanning three generations. Born illegitimate in a convent in 1920s rural Ireland, her mother banished to New York to save the family name, little Mary Kate Quinn's future seems bleak. To keep a hastily made promise to her daughter, Sara Quinn rescues her granddaughter from the fate of the orphanage. Driven to seek refuge in the rambling old house of her former employer, Sara begins a new life. With patience and love, Sara and Mary Kate transform the lives of its inhabitants. Meanwhile Maura Quinn has become a nanny in New York. She falls in love with Andrew and rather than reveal the past she returns home to be reunited with her daughter. Back in Ireland Maura is torn between her child and the man she left behind in New York.
Lament in the Wind by Hazel McIntyre (Paperback; 5.99 IEP / 8.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
With a keen ear for the rolling echoes of history, the author brings to life a vivid and unforgettable gallery of colourful characters. When career women Mary Thompson is entrusted with the diaries of Cassie O'Connor, she is driven to tell her story. Cassie's story begins with her early childhood in an Ireland of famine, eviction and emigration. Following her father's death, Cassie and her mother are forced to seek shelter in the workhouse rife with fever and death. Marcie Briggs, daughter of the local clergyman, rescues them. They begin a new life at the rectory where Cassie acts as unpaid servant to 'The Madam' who despises her. Feeling rejected by a mother who hardly seems to notice her existence, she leans more and more on Marcia for the affection she craves. Out of a time of turmoil, confusion and exile on a famine ship to Canada emerges a love story told with intense and sympathetic realism.
Runts of the Litter by Austen Breaffa (Paperback; 4.99 IEP / 7.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is a funny and sad novel, a perceptive book, comical and sharp, memorable and captivating, about the reality that is created when reality is avoided. It is the story of Ernest and Jon, and aspiring poet and an aspiring actor, who are two dissatisfied, penniless youths thrown out of their living accommodation with only 24 hours notice. Instead of keeping their refunded deposit for a new apartment, they use the money to get drunk and set about trying to stay drunk to escape reality. Their reality is that they have had no success in their chosen artistic endeavors and feel entirely displaced. They wander in their drunkenness and dissatisfaction through the dark and hostile capital city street's night and try and formulate a plan to address their homelessness which, when it eventually comes to them, they try to fulfil in one desperate and deranged long weekend.
Inchicore, Kilmainham and District by Seosamh O Broin (Paperback; 12.00 IEP / 18.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is a local history that concerns an area where, over the centuries, many of the varied threads of Ireland's story have come together. Inchicore and Kilmainham have contributed significantly to the political, religious, military and industrial history of the City of Dublin
An Eagle's View of Irish Lighthouses by John Eagle (Paperback; 11.95 IEP / 18.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book brings together photographs of fifty Irish lighthouses, together with the author's comments about each one. It also includes description, where they are located and how to find them. It is not meant to be a definitive guide to every Irish lighthouse, but a taster to whet the appetite of those who might not have seen the beauty of these structures before. This book will also be appreciated by anyone with an interest in lighthouses.
Ordinary Decent Criminal by Gretta Curran Browne (Paperback; 6.99 IEP / 9.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Michael Lynch, suave, sardonic and sexy, strides the Dublin streets as if he owns them - the king of the Irish underworld. He dreams up audacious robberies and carries them out with a panache that endears him to the common man. He has four passions in life: motorcycles, crime, his marriage to a wife he adores and his love affair with her sister. He challenges authority at every turn. His audacity culminates in the ultimate art theft from Dublin's most prestigious gallery, where he outwits the police, interpol and even the IRA. Detective Sergeant Noel Quigley is a cop with a mission. Determined that Lynch must be caught and stopped, he believes that only he can do it. But when Quigley finally runs his target to ground and corners him in the act of committing a major crime, Michael Lynch just keeps on smiling.
The Last Corporation Man by Vincent Flood (Paperback; 4.99 IEP / 6.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is an account of the other side of life as witnessed by the much maligned 'Corporation May'. To try and show what life was like for the less fortunate in Irish society, in some way, a sort of social history of the city of Dublin. The interaction between Inspector, Foreman, Workers and Tenants, the dreadful living and working conditions experienced and stoically accepted. The eccentric characters, who by their deeds and actions helped to make life at least bearable and in some small way improved the quality of life for the unfortunate tenants. Mostly, it is about people making the most of what life had dealt them, in some bizarre and poignant situation.
The Keepers of the Truth by Michael Collins (Paperback; 9.99 IEP / 13.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
The last of a manufacturing dynasty in a dying industrial town, Bill lives alone in the family mansion and works for the Truth, the moribund local paper. He yearns to write long philosophical think pieces about the American dream gone sour, not the flaccid write-ups of home-bake contests and high-school sports demanded by the Truth. Then old man Lawton goes missing, and suspicion fixes on his son Ronny, bad boy of the area. Paradoxically, the spectre of violent death breathes new life into the town, with network attention and national scoops for the Truth. For Bill, a deeper and more disturbing involvement with the Lawtons themselves ensues. The Lawton murder and the obsessions it awakes in the town come to symbolize the mood of a nation on the edge.
Fast Forward by Clare Dowling (Paperback; 5.99 IEP / 8.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is a racy story of three women who want to have it all. Cathy Conroy is a failed actress; Jean Ormsby, a struggling theatrical agent; Tess Fisher, a superbly successful Cabinet Minister's wife. The film is the brainchild of Minister for Arts, Peter Fisher, Tess's husband, a desperate publicity stunt to save the government's majority in a crucial by-election. With Hollywood legend Jack Thornton as director and fifty million American dollars as backing, the huge production descends on rural Kilkenny. Now life favors the three women with a second chance.
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