Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 280
New Irish Fiction, Poetry and Plays
Fillums by Hugh Leonard
Hardback; 20.00 Euro / 24.00 USD / 15.00 UK; 232 pages
The year is 1942, and Drane is the most boring town in Ireland. There is no public transport, and someone is scrambling the wireless signals; Mrs. Miniver is banned by the censor; and there are no half-crown hops at the locked-up town hall. The only diversions are the shows put on by the local amateurs, the Standing Ovations, and the old films at the Picture House. But if life is full, last evening’s ‘fillum’ is always worth re-lovings, as ‘Perry’ Perry and his wife Babs, recently arrived from Dublin, soon discover. Beautifully written, infused with warmth, with and its author’s infectious love of the movies, this is the new novel from the master of Irish letters.
An Accident Waiting to Happen by Adrian White
Trade Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 262 pages [Add To Basket]
Gregory is a young man with no plans to become a father anytime soon. But then he falls for Caitlin – and with Caitlin comes her son, Tomas. As someone with a history of messy relationships and even messier breakups, Gregory is pleasantly surprised to find that he’s actually not bad at playing the family man. Then one day, Caitlin doesn’t come home. By the time the neighbours, police and social services some knocking, Gregory is already facing a few facts: that he didn’t know his partner nearly as well as he thought; that suddenly he’s the only semi-responsible adult in Tomas’s life; that he might not be able to cope with any of it … Both boys are going to have to grow up – and fast – as together they go in search of the woman they love; the truth; and the key to their freedom.
Double Wedding by Patricia Scanlan
Hardback; 20.00 Euro / 24.00 USD / 15.00 UK; 440 pages
Jessica and Carol, two childhood friends, are both engaged to be married. Secretly afraid her fiancé is going to chicken out, Carol is insisting on a double wedding. Jessica is appalled at the idea: she doesn’t want to share the happiest day of her life with whining Carol and her womanizing boyfriend. Unfortunately for her, she has a soft heart and is easily persuaded to agree. Then her mother goes ballistic. This is not what she wants for her precious daughter. Carol’s parents are separated and at loggerheads. Neither wants the other to be there. Who will win that war? Nadine, Carol’s younger sister, is wild and disruptive and drinks like a fish – hardly the ideal wedding guest! Will Carol’s family come to blows? Will her fiancé do a runner? Will they make it to the altar? And can Jessica and Carol’s friendship survive a double wedding?
Song for Salamander by Miriam Gallagher
Paperback; 12.50 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 240 pages [Add To Basket]
When Salamander Quinn decides to liberate all the lost souls at St. Job’s Infirmary, he embarks on a Kafkaesque journey. His plans are further complicated by the arrival of a mystery woman who sets in motion a chain of startling events. Faced with mounting odds, as his past comes back to haunt him, he struggles to prevail. With the Health Service in crisis and Dublin in the grip of global warning, he risks all to attain his goal.
As My Sparks Fly Upwards by Matthew St. Amand
Trade Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 158 pages
This book is a collection of eleven short stories about ordinary people thrust into life-changing circumstances, where the fight-or-flight impulse kicks in, and the human heart is placed on life’s anvil for another hammer blow. One story follows a best man who is secretly against his best buddy’s marriage and finds him having to talk the panicking groom into going through with the ceremony at the last minute. Another concerns a man living in Dublin who one night sees a statue of Jesus standing upon a pedestal inside a Plexiglas box and attempts to rescue him. And a third follows a rock ‘n’ roll fan who makes a pilgrimage to Bono’s estate in Killiney where he reflects on art, fandom and hero worship.
Forever and a Day: Poems by Matthew St. Amand
Trade Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 12.50 USD / 7.00 UK; 58 pages [Add To Basket]
A debut collection in which the poet wishes for time to slip away through an open window – and it happens for him! Although they are set to the engrained pacing of the calendar, the poems move forward at a standstill, so tight is the poet’s vision and lyrical focus: an ex-girlfriend’s pregnant younger sister.
Drunken Sailor by John Montague
Trade Paperback; 12.50 Euro / 15.00 USD / 7.50 UK; 76 pages [Add To Basket]
At Seventy Five, John Montague, the doyen of Ulster poetry, is as vigorous and creative as ever. This collection opens at the mouth of Cork Harbour, then journeys across the country to West Cork before embracing matters of his Northern past. Mortality and the power of myth are among his subjects, and there is an underlying dialogue with Yeats, from the ruined towers at Roche’s Point, to the glimpse of Ben Bulben in the ambitious longer poem, ‘The Plain of Blood’, with which the book culminates. (Also available in hardback at 20 Euro)
The Book of the Angel by Medbh McGuckian
Trade Paperback; 12.50 Euro / 15.00 USD / 7.50 UK; 86 pages [Add To Basket]
Taking its title from the Old Irish eighth-century Latin document, Liber Angeli, in which St. Patrick is granted the ecclesiastical see of Armagh through colloquy with an angel, and its inspiration from the reconciliation in Renaissance and medieval art, between the tenets of Christ’s Passion and the tensions of passion, between Agape and Eros, these poems use the millennial standpoint to contemplate the eternally unfathomable mystery of the Incarnation. The divine and the secular are held in solution by a series of vignettes of the Annunciation, followed by a visitation to the most this-worldly and carnal paradise of Hollywood, Los Angeles. Included are responses to the apocalyptic wars engendered by September 11, but ultimately the book’s focus is on personal triumph over the forces of dissolution and the possibility for human salvation through the advent into this life of extraordinary and exceptionally loveable individuals, who may or may not be akin to what we mean by ‘angels’. (Also available in hardback at 20 Euro)
Rhyming Weavers and other Country Poets of Antrim and Down edited by John Hewitt and with a foreword by Tom Paulin
Paperback; 12.50 Euro / 15.00 USD / 9.00 UK; 192 pages [Add To Basket]
During the nineteenth century there was a remarkable flowering of peasant verse in the Ulster counties of Antrim and Down. Witty, irreverent and deeply egalitarian, these poems were written by working people – handloom weavers, small farmers and country school-masters – for people much like themselves. The poets wrote in the ‘lively tongue’ of the Ulster-Scots vernacular and drew their themes from the landscape and the life of the community at a time when the making of flax into linen played a basic part in the economic and social pattern. This book is both a study and a celebration of the lives and work of these country poets. The editor’s extended introduction provides an accessible account of the context in which the poets wrote and is complemented by a select anthology. First published in 1974, the book was an act of recovery, an excavation of a vibrant aspect of Ulster’s literary heritage. Reissued now, thirty years later, with a new foreword by Tom Paulin, it remains a seminal work, making an important contribution to Ulster-Scots writing and to debates about language and identity in these islands.
Shining City by Conor McPherson
Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 16.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 66 pages [Add To Basket]
In Dublin a man comes to a counselor seeking help. He claims to have seen the ghost of his recently deceased wife. But what begins as just an unusual encounter becomes a desperate struggle between the living and the dead – a struggle which will shape and define both men for the rest of their lives. This play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London before playing at the Gate Theatre, Dublin and at the 2004 Dublin Theatre Festival.
Plays: Two by Conor McPherson
Paperback; 16.50 Euro / 20.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 220 pages [Add To Basket]
This book collects four plays. The Weir is one of the most successful plays of recent years. In a bar in a remote part of Ireland, the local lads are swapping spooky stories to impress a young woman from Dublin newly moved into the area. Dublin Carol is set on Christmas Eve, when a Dublin undertaker is visited by his estranged daughter urging him to face up to the past. Port Authority tells of three interwoven lives: a boy leaves home for the first time; a man starts a joy for which he is unqualified; a pensioner is sent a mysterious package. And in Come On Over, published here for the first time, a Jesuit priest, sent to investigate a ‘miracle’ in his home town, re-encounters the woman who loved him thirty years before.
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