Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 478
29/30 May 2010
Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor
Large For Paperback; 15 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 256 pages
It's Dublin 1907, a city of whispered rumours. A young actress begins an affair with a damaged older man, the leading playwright at the theatre where she works. Rebellious and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a girl of the inner city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. She has dozens of admirers but in the backstage of her life there is a secret. Her lover, John Synge, is a troubled genius, the son of a once prosperous landowning family, a poet of fiery language and tempestuous passions. Yet his life is hampered by convention and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Scarred by a childhood of loneliness and severity he has long been ill, but he loves to walk the wild places of Ireland. The affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is turbulent, sometimes cruel, often tender. Many years later, an old woman makes her way across London on the morning after a hurricane. Christmas is coming. As she wanders past bombsites and through the city's forlorn beauty, a snowdrift of memories and lost desires seems to swirl. She has twice been married: once widowed, once divorced, but an unquenchable passion for life has kept her afloat as her dazzling career has faded. A story of love's commitment, of partings and reconciliations, of the courage involved in living on nobody else's terms, "Ghost Light" is a profoundly moving and ultimately uplifting novel.
(Also available in Hardback, special price of 18 Euro normal price 22 Euro. Also Signed Limited Edition priced at 250 Euro)
Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables by Seamus Heaney
Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 10 UK; 208 pages [Add To Basket]
The greatest of the late medieval Scottish makars, Robert Henryson wrote in Lowland Scots, a distinctive northern version of English. He was profoundly influenced by Chaucer's vision of the frailty and pathos of human life. His greatest poem, and one of the rhetorical masterpieces of the literature of these islands, is the narrative "Testament of Cresseid", set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, which completes the story of Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde", offering a grim and tragic account of its faithless heroine's rejection by her lover Diomede, and her decline into prostitution and leprosy. A work of unreconciled Shakespearean intensity, the "Testament" has been translated by Seamus Heaney into a confident and yet faithful modern English idiom which honours the poem's unique blend of detachment and compassion. A master of narrative, Henryson was also a comic master of the verse fable; his burlesques of human weakness in the guise of animal wisdom are traced with delicate comedy and irony. Seven of the Fables are here sparklingly translated; their burlesque freshness rendered to the last claw and feather. "Seven Fables and The Testament of Cresseid" is an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging encounter between two poets across six centuries.
An Autumn Wind by Derek Mahon
Large Format Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 10 UK; 80 pages
Derek Mahon’s rich new collection turns its wide-angled lens on a ‘dozy seaside town’ in County Cork, four fellow Ulster poets, a bicycle shop in Delhi and the volcanic origins of the Canary Islands, against the background of a ‘cascading world economy’. Alive to the current climate, it also revisits Chinese poetry of the T’ang era and explores that of modern India in the work of the fictitious Hindi poet Gopal Singh.
This is the work of a contemporary great, one who dreams that the world be re-enchanted, so that
we look to the still living whole to heal the heart and cure the soul.
(Also available in hardback priced at 18.50 Euro)
Until Before After by Ciaran Carson
Large Format Paperback; 14 Euro / 19 USD / 11 UK; 122 pages [Add To Basket]
A mere nine months since the publication of On the Night Watch (and that book appeared within a year of his acclaimed For All We Know and Collected Poems), Until Before After accumulates as an intriguing meditation on the passage of time and the persistence of love. Miraculously, this ever-shapeshifting author distils form to a new austerity while comprehending the ‘imponderable / toll time // takes’. Acts of recreation and creation, of forgetting and remembering, fathom ‘the mine-shaft // of until’ and relate how the present moment is constantly threatened — and, by definition, defeated. ‘Otherwise / is where we are,’ he writes, following a series of heart-rending hospital scenes, before ‘both took that step / over a threshold’ in an instance of recovery and return, a haunting presence and continuing present, that prevails in a shared intimacy of feeling and the single notes that become a music that is made and played together. (Also available in hardback priced at 20 Euro)
Encountering Zoe by Tom MacIntyre
Paperback; 13 Euro / 18 USD / 11 UK; 120 pages [Add To Basket]
This title includes new and selected poetry from one of Ireland's most respected writers. Praise for Tom MacIntyre: 'The words are all that matter; each word is given full force as if the reader was hearing it spoken for the first time. Everything lives in the words on the page, literally, because MacIntyre's language becomes a route in and out of experience' - Gerald Dawe, "The Irish Times".
John Lavery: Diary of a Painter by Kenneth McConkey
Hardback; 55 Euro / 75 USD / 45 UK; 248 pages [Add To Basket]
Recounting his life and achievements in old age, Sir John Lavery resorted to picaresque conventions - an orphan lad from Belfast, he discovered a talent for painting while working as a photographer's assistant, got himself to Paris by a series of misadventures, became a leading member of the Glasgow School, and ended up as a royal portraitist laden with international honours. His amusing, often apocryphal tale published in 1940 obscures the fact that the most important diary of Lavery's remarkable career lies in his painting. A friend of Whistler and Rodin, he was feted at the Venice Biennale and became a Royal Academician and Official War Artist. During these years, he was part of the international community at Tangier, where he established a winter studio. At the time of the struggle for Irish independence he painted portraits of the rebel leaders, including an extraordinary portrait of the patriot, Michael Collins, on his deathbed. A few years later an iconic image of his wife, Hazel, was used on the Irish currency. Winters in the 1920s were often spent in Florida or on the Riviera, savouring a Scott Fitzgerald lifestyle. Five years before his death in 1941, he set off for Hollywood to paint portraits of the stars. This new account is the result of painstaking research that adds greatly to our knowledge of the painter, the Edwardian art world and many of his distinguished contemporaries.
The Boy’s of St Columb’s: From the 1947 Education Act to the 1968 Civil Rights Movement - Profiles of Eight Remarkable Men from Derry by Maurice Fitzpatrick
Large Format Paperback; 20 Euro / 28 USD / 16 UK; 320 pages [Add To Basket]
'They would banish the conditional forever, this generation'. "The Boys of St. Columb's" tells the story of the first generation of children to receive free secondary education as a result of the ground-breaking 1947 Education Act in Northern Ireland. This book shows how the political and historical conditions of Northern Ireland altered as a result of the mass education of its population, culminating in the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s which drew its inspiration from the USA. The book profiles St. Columb's school in Derry, an excellent example of a school that underwent the shift from the dark post-war years into the more liberal 1960s, as a lens to understand the effect of the 1947 legislation. "The Boys of St. Columb's" consists of interviews with Nobel Prize winners, writers, diplomats, musicians and a socialist campaigner. The eight figures who make up this oral history are Bishop Daly, John Hume, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, Phil Coulter, Eamonn McCann, Paul Brady and James Sharkey. These interviewees, as well as being world figures, are also sharply insightful. They form as fine an example as exists of the watershed in Irish history brought about by educational overhaul. These eight remarkable men first learned to survive in the unionist state, and then to thrive. The considerable momentum that gathered from their endeavours, along with those of others, paved the way for future generations. As Seamus Heaney put it, 'they broke some silences' and opened avenues that had been unimaginable to their parents. Their achievement is still being felt today. NB: This book is a tie-in with a documentary film of the same name that will be aired on RTE and BBC in 2010.
Dead Drunk: Saving Myself from Alcoholism in a Thai Monastery by Paul Garrigan
Paperback; 10 Euro / 14 USD / 8 UK; 242 pages [Add To Basket]
When decided to travel to Thailand, Paul Garrigan has every intention of drinking himself to death there. After a decade of alcoholism, he had destroyed his life and the lives of those around him and was ready to die. In Bangkok, however, he heard of Wat Thamkrabok, a Buddhist monastery in northern Thailand and offered radical treatment for alcoholics and drug addicts. Believing this to be his last chance, Garrigan decided to give it a try. Astonishingly, after a few months in the monastery, he was able to rebuild his life. This is his story.
The Rise and Fall of the Irish Pub by Robert Connolly
Large Format Paperback; 17 Euro / 22 USD / 13 UK; 250 pages [Add To Basket]
The Irish Pub: A time-honoured tradition whose origins are obscured in the mists of ancient times. For literally centuries this tradition saw very little change as generation after generation of Irishmen attended the local pub to drink, smoke, chat and generally escape from the trials and tribulations of life in an impoverished country on the outskirts of Europe. Remarkably, in a few decades all that has changed as the birth of the Celtic Tiger catapulted Ireland into world leadership in science and technology bringing with it unheard of wealth and prosperity. For the first time in its history an Irish Diaspora was reversed and young people returned home with a wealth of experience and innovative concepts. In a short time they transformed the local pubs from the dark and dreary to the bright and cosmopolitan and for awhile the pub trade rode the Celtic Tiger to similarly dizzying heights. Superpubs sprang up in the cities and were jammed to the rafters on the weekends with young people who had money to spend. Meanwhile, outside of Ireland the 'Traditional Irish Pub' became an international commodity recreated in cities and towns all over the world. Unfortunately, this meteoric rise was followed by an equally rapid descent as the combination of stricter drink-driving laws, the smoking ban and an economy that ultimately flamed-out brought the pub trade to its knees. "The Rise and Fall of the Irish Pub" is the story of that journey from dark days into glorious sunshine and back again into darkening shadows. Since the Irish Pub, like Ireland itself, is remarkably resilient and has prospered for more than two millennia, the author argues that it will undoubtedly be able to reinvent itself requiring further chapters in its long and glorious history.
Surfing Waves by Alastair Mennie
Paperback; 18 Euro / 24 USD / 13 UK; 208 pages [Add To Basket]
Becoming Europe's most successful and respected big-wave surfer is one thing. Coming from a small town in Northern Ireland to do so is another. This is Alastair Mennie's story...Surfing looks like fun. And it is. But in recent years, the world's so-called 'big wave surfers' have raised the bar to insane new heights. Put aside the Beach Boys and carefree, sunny California - a new breed of surfer is travelling to the ends of the earth in pursuit of waves the size of buildings. And among them, an unassuming 6ft 6' Irishman. Slater; Hamilton; Parsons; and, Gerlach - and now Mennie. For all of these men, the consequences are severe. The decisions in the water are life and death: '...the wave exploded on me, splitting my glass fibre helmet and ragdolling me for what seemed like an eternity in complete darkness...' Alastair, when things went wrong, Sligo, Ireland Dec 2009. This generation has witnessed a quiet revolution in Irish surf. Al Mennie personifies that picture. His is an honest and ego-free account of what it takes to surf waves that are big enough to sink ships. Before Mennie, Northern Ireland had no history of big wave surfing. He was the pioneer. The fact that he would become the first European to compete at the World Tow-In Surfing Championships in Chile makes his story all the more remarkable. This book tells of his big wave exploits at Half Moon Bay, Madeira, Nelscott in Oregon and Alastair's now infamous life-threatening encounter with 60 foot waves off the Sligo coast in the winter of 2009. Surf talk is cheap. In this book, the waves do the talking.
Vikings of the Irish Sea by David Griffiths
Large Format Paperback; 22 Euro / 28 USD / 19 UK; 160 pages [Add To Basket]
Vikings began raiding islands and monasteries on the Atlantic fringes of Europe in the 790s. The Irish Sea rapidly became one of their most productive hunting-grounds. Attacks, battles and destruction were accompanied by trade - in slaves, silver and fine objects. Vikings crossed and re-crossed the Irish Sea in search of land, wealth and power. Raids were followed by settlement, firstly in fortified camps, and later in towns, market enclaves and rural estates. Vikings came into contact with existing populations in Ireland, Britain and the Isle of Man. Viking paganism, demonstrated by spectacular burials, was gradually eclipsed by Christianity. By 1050, the process of assimilation was well under way, yet Viking influence and distinctiveness did not altogether disappear. This book takes the sea as its starting point, and looks afresh at the story of a supremely opportunistic people who left their mark in ways which still resonate today.
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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