Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 298
The Atlantean Irish: Ireland’s Oriental and Maritime Heritage by Bob Quinn
Trade Paperback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 20.00 UK; 272 pages, with full colour and black-and-white illustrations throughout
Irish identity is best understood from a maritime perspective. For eight millennia the island has been a haven for explorers, settlers, colonists, navigators, pirates and traders, absorbing goods and peoples from all points of the compass. The reduction of the islanders to the exclusive category 'Celtic' has persisted for three hundred years, and is here rejected as impossibly narrow. No classical author ever described Ireland's inhabitants as 'Celts', and neither did the Irish so describe themselves until recent times. The islanders' sea-girt culture has been crucially shaped by Middle Eastern as well as by European civilizations, by an Islamic heritage as well as a Christian one. The Irish language itself has antique roots extended over thousands of years' trading up and down the Atlantic seaways.
Over the past twenty years Bob Quinn has traced archaeological, linguistic, religious and economic connections from Egypt to Arann, from Morocco to Newgrange, from Cairo and Compostela to Carraroe. Taking Conamara sean-nos singing and its Arabic equivalents, and a North African linguistic stratum under the Irish tongue, Quinn marshalls evidence from field archaeology, boat-types, manuscript illuminations, weaving patterns, mythology, literature, art and artefacts to support a challenging thesis that cites, among other recent studies of the Irish genome, new mitochondrial DNA analysis in the Atlantic zone from north Iberia to west Scandinavia.
The Atlantean Irish is a sumptuously illustrated, exciting, intervention in Irish cultural history. Forcefully debated, and wholly persuasive, it opens up a past beyond Europe, linking Orient to Occident. What began as a personal quest-narrative becomes a category-dissolving intellectual adventure of universal significance. It is a book whose time has arrived.
The Honan Chapel: A Golden Vision edited by Virginia Teehan and Elizabeth Sincott Heckett
Hardback; 60.00 Euro / 80.00 USD / 40.00 UK; 288 pages, full colour illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
The Honan Chapel, at University College Cork, consecrated in 1916 was a unique concept, reflecting in both its architecture and decoration every element of the Irish arts and crafts movement. It was founded in the belief that it is essential for a University College to meet both the spiritual and academic needs of students. Associated with this was the belief that the chapel’s design must be truly Irish in inspiration and representative of early Irish ecclesiastical art. Internally the extraordinary collection of chapel furnishings, textiles, vestments etc. was conceived and executed at the height of the early twentieth century Celtic revival and is a unique expression of that renaissance. It contains items in silver and wood, cloth, paper and stone, providing a valuable and unique record of the best of Irish ecclesiastical art at the time, and is a remarkable expression of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement.
The contributors to this volume illustrate different aspects of the Honan collection, the social and cultural context in which pieces were made, as well as the artistic environment of the arts and crafts movement. The book also includes the first a comprehensive inventory of the contents of the collection, And over 150 stunning photographs using the latest digital technology.
Dialogues: Women Artists from Ireland by Katy Deepwell
Trade Paperback; 28 Euro / 33.00 USD / 19.00 UK; 194 pages, with illustrations throughout
This illuminating book brings together interviews with contemporary women artists whose work was exhibited in Ireland in the 1990s - a significant decade for art in Ireland, particularly for women artists. While the artists interviewed live and work internationally, each has an individual and complex relationship to Ireland, responding in their work to its landscapes, stories, language and histories and engaging with a wide range of concerns including motherhood and family, sexuality, and dislocation. An equally wide range of media are used, from painting to installation; from performance to public art projects. Artists interviewed: Orla Barry, Maud Cotter, Pauline Cummins, Rita Duffy, Frances Hegarty, Jaki Irvine, Sandra Johnston, Sharon Kelly, Alice Maher, Susan MacWilliam, Mary McIntyre, Alanna O'Kelly, Catherine Owens, Vivienne Roche, Anne Tallentire and Louise Walsh.
The Vanishing Kingdoms: Irish Chiefs and their Families by Walter J.P. Curley
Trade Paperback; 22.50 Euro / 28.00 USD / 18.00 UK; 190 pages, with and black-and-white illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
Vanishing Kingdoms combines an account of aristocracy and its history in Ireland with an interview-based description of twenty recognized Irish chiefs of the name and their family backgrounds. Three of them, The O'Brien, O'Conor Don and The O'Neill, have legitimate claims to high kingship; all are descendants of territorial kings and sub-kings. For the most part shorn of their privileges and territories in a democratized, socially fluid Ireland of the twenty-first century, as a group the chiefs exercise a continuing fascination and a living link to the past, leaving an imaginative yet tangible mark on the Irish landscape.
The families are grouped by province ULSTER: The O'Neill; The O'Dogherty; The O'Donnell; MacDonnell; The Maguire MUNSTER: The O'Brien; The O'Callaghan; The O'Carroll; The O'Donovan; The O'Donoghue; The McGillycuddy; The O'Grady; The O'Long LEINSTER: The Fox; The O'Morchoe; The MacMorrough Kavanagh CONNACHT: O'Conor Don; The MacDermot; The O'Kelly; The O'Rorke
Through the unfolding diorama of these individual family stories, Vanishing Kingdoms gives an enriching view of Irish history and society. Contemporary portraits of the current chiefs, photographs and engravings of their dwellings, past and present, complement a vivid narrative.
A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000 edited by Brian Shaffer
Hardback; 125.00 Euro / 150.00 USD / 80.00 UK; 580 pages
A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000 serves as an extended introduction and reference guide to the British and Irish novel between the close of World War II and the turn of the millennium. The Companion embraces the full range of this rich and heterogeneous subject, covering: specific British and Irish novels and novelists ranging from Samuel Beckett to Salman Rushdie: particular subgenres such as the feminist novel and the postcolonial novel: overarching cultural, political and literary trends such as screen adaptations and the literary prize phenomenon. All the essays are informed by current theoretical debates, but are designed to be accessible to non-specialists. The volume as a whole gives readers a sense of the vitality with which the contemporary novel continues to be discussed.
Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890-1930 by Daniel Schwarz
Paperback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 16.00 UK; 300 pages [Add To Basket]
Daniel R. Schwarz has studied and taught the modern British novel for decades and now brings his impressive erudition and critical acuity to bear in this insightful study of the major authors and novels of the first half of the twentieth century. After a compelling introduction outlining his method and a substantial first chapter establishing the intellectual, cultural and literary contexts in which the modern British novel was produced, Schwarz turns to close reading of modernist masterworks. He shows how Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow, Joyce's Dubliners and Ulysses, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse and Forster's A Passage to India form essential components in a modernist cultural tradition which includes the visual arts.Without lapsing into jargon, Schwarz's work takes account of recent developments in theory and cultural studies. His persuasive study will not only be invaluable to students and teachers, but will also be of interest to the general reader. (Also available in Hardback at 80 Euro)
The Thin Green Line: The History of the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC by Richard Doherty
Hardback; 38.00 Euro / 47.50 USD / 25.00 UK; 310 pages, with photo insert [Add To Basket]
Formed out of the Royal Irish Constabulary at the time of Partition, the RUC's history is predictably a turbulent one right through to its replacement in 2001 by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Few police forces in the world have suffered so grievously as the RUC and this book is a fitting memorial to the sacrifices made in the interests of the civil population it was determined to protect. Throughout its history, it has not only had to perform normal police duties but contain the ever present IRA threat. In 1969, the climate changed and ushered in a new and even more violent era of sectarian strife. The emergence of extreme nationalist organisations posed grave problems and, with the RUC in a prime role, the position of the Chief Constable was hugely important. This book tells the story of a remarkable police force without fear or favour. Ironically its reward for containing a hugely challenging internal security situation and at the same time policing the community traditionally was its disbandment.
Crime, Punishment and the Search for Order in Ireland by Shane Kilcommins et. al.
Trade Paperback; 35.00 Euro / 42.50 USD / 22.50 UK; 350 pages [Add To Basket]
This book surveys the transformation in crime and punishment in Ireland from the late eighteenth century to the present day. It is informed by some of the most recent and influential thinking within criminology and asks whether Irish society has become conditioned by a pervasive fear of crime which fuels a punitive attitude towards offenders. It draws on a wealth of previously unexplored archival, statistical and policy-related material to explain how the Irish criminal justice system has arrived at its present state, and to assess whether rehabilitation has ever really been its guiding principle. It examines how the system has adapted to a long-term increase in the crime rate.
The Doctor’s House: An Autobiography by James Liddy
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 144 pages [Add To Basket]
The Doctor's House is an unconventional autobiography of one of Ireland's most engaging and independent poets. In the first section, James Liddy describes his early life in Co. Wexford. His father was a Dispensary doctor, and his mother was an American from New York. Liddy's poetic prose style conveys a sense of living in both past and present. His love of the unusual, and a striving for intellectual freedom, propelled him, as a student in Dublin, to become one of the literary mandarins who made McDaid's pub the centre of Irish literary life. Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh, John Jordan, Richard Riordain, and Michael Hartnett figured largely in his life at that time, as did American writers Edward Dahlberg and Anthony Kerrigan. James Liddy was a member of a new generation of writers in the 1960s; this book gives the flavour of this sparkling period. The final chapters, his pivotal move to America, his adventures in San Francisco, New Orleans, and the German-American dream city of Milwaukee, mark the development of his poetry and his ever present sense of fun and intellectual exploration.
Black State Cars by Alan Jude Moore
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 70 pages [Add To Basket]
WINNER OF THE 2nd SALMON POETRY PUBLICATION PRIZE
"The voice of this well sustained and consistently strong collection is unusually urban. Cosmopolitan in the real sense of the word; its strength is in its landscape and structure. Starting with a variant of the Shipping News and weaving through locations like Athlone; Connolly Station, Dublin; Berlin, and Russia, the writer shows his ability to make each place his own as he brings the reader through his multi-faceted world of imagination and place." Joe Woods, Adjudicator of the Salmon Poetry Publication Prize
Sculpture in Black Ice by Breda Sullivan
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 78 pages [Add To Basket]
"Breda Sullivan's third collection of poetry is a testament to the continued grace she exercises over subject matter of the most difficult nature. Her poems resonate with an unnerving elegance and honesty and her voice is a trustworthy and intimate one. She writes about family and loss with ceremonial care. Her language is lucid, her images stark and striking. Indeed, her poems explore the life of the heart with an unflinching integrity. Sculpture in Black Ice is a tremendous collection of lyrical bravery and beauty." Paul Perry
The Velocity of Dust by Gary j. Whitehed
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 85 pages [Add To Basket]
With sharp imagery, metaphor and music, the poems in The Velocity of Dust sift through the natural world and human nature, finding their subjects in time, family, love, work, spirituality, redemption, and death. Using what X.J. Kennedy has called "a keen eye for unforgettable details, a masterly command of the language," Whitehead endeavours to find what lies beneath the surface, as in the title poem in which a young couple, refinishing a kitchen table to "remove the old layer of dark varnish," expose more than just the wood's grain. Perhaps just as important, this poet delights in the mystery of process as much as in the truth that is revealed
Gregory Carr, Bookseller
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