About Town House & Country House

Town House and Country House is rapidly emerging as one of Ireland's leading publishers of fiction and non-fiction.

Town House is renowned for its exceptionally strong fiction list. The original publisher of Deirdre Purcell, Rose Doyle and Julie Parsons, Town House has gained a deserved reputation for discovering and nurturing the finest of writing talents in a host of diverse genres. With the stunning international success of novels like Purcell's Love Like Hate Adore (nominated for the prestigious Orange Prize) and Julie Parsons Mary Mary, new Town House writers are eagerly awaited.

This year, with the publication of Miss Harrie Elliot by Marian O'Neill ('beggars belief… so assured is the author's prose!' IRISH INDEPENDENT; hugely accomplished!' SUNDAY TRIBUNE) and Hush Hush by Gabrielle Mullarkey ('witty and irreverent' IRISH NEWS; 'gentle and funny' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT) Town House has demonstrated its commitment to as diverse a range of fiction as possible, from crime to romance, literature to comedy.

And in non-fiction, the strong public-service ethic shines through. This year alone will see a true once-off, when Town House publishes a complete history of the works of the OPW this century (Building for Government: The Works of the OPW, 1900-2000), while entomologists from the National History Museum offer a complete and comprehensive guide to Irish Indoor Insects. Already this year Douglas Gageby's timely account of the life of Sean Lester in The Last Secretary General has gained due praise ('Required reading' THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST).

This ethic follows through in the long established (and still going) Irish Treasures series, which allows the countries top academics the chance to offer succinct and accessible treatments of their specialist areas. From Irish High Crosses to Early Irish Furniture and Woodcraft the list is diverse and contains over 20 titles. 2000 sees the publication of Roger Stalley's Round Towers, and two other Treasures, Early Irish Communion Vessels and Crannogs.

The Town House non-fiction list has traditionally rewarded a broad cross section of the readership. Whether about music (Blooming Meadows, Fintan Vallely and Charlie Piggott) or sport (A Cut Above the Rest, Colm Keane), spirituality (Sources, by Marie Heaney) or literary history (Celtic Dawn, Ulick O'Connor), each book presents a serious and committed engagement with its subjects. And those titles are from this year alone…!

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Four Recent Titles:

The Courtship Gift By Julie Parsons

IR£12.99 Hardback

Courting Success…

When best-selling thriller Mary, Mary was released earlier this year in paperback, it consolidated its position as one of the most innovative and popular psychological thrillers in years. 'Makes Patricia Cornwell read like Paddington Bear' said the NEW YORK TIMES. Now author Julie Parsons is all set to repeat that success with her new book The Courtship Gift.

Yet, if Julie has more on her mind than this momentous publishing event, it is no surprise, because on the first of October she takes leave of Dublin for a month long trip to New Zealand and Australia.

Nothing remarkable in that, you might say. But Julie is returning to New Zealand for the first time since she left in 1963, at the age of twelve.

Julie has always said that she has very mixed feelings about visiting New Zealand as an adult. Her childhood memories of the years that she and her family spent in the small sea side village of Torbay after her father's disappearance at sea are very special to her. 'They are memories that have been untouched by any of the inevitable changes that have taken place in New Zealand since then', says Julie. Perfectly preserved in every detail, she has always been reluctant to tamper with them in any way.

But earlier this year the Listener Women's Book Festival in New Zealand, along with the Brisbane Writer's Festival in Australia, asked her to participate in their week long programmes. 'It was just the right time to ask me. I just said yes. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to go back, the perfect excuse.'

Her reluctance to go back is manifold. Her new book is just out; 'It's like abandoning the baby', she says. And Ireland has also become her home. 'When I first came here I hated it. It was like stepping out of the technicolour of New Zealand into the dull black and white of this alien place. You do settle in though, and I think after 30 odd years the culture shock has finally worn off. I love it here now.'

Her love of Ireland, and Dublin in particular, is a love that particularly benefits the reader. In The Courtship Gift, just as in Mary, Mary, Julie infuses those familiar place-names, the streets we've all walked down at one time or another, with a thrilling and uneasy menace.'I knew if I was going to write an Irish thriller, that that is what it should be-Irish and thriller in equal parts.'

There are those who say you can never go back, but with The Courtship Gift and her trip to New Zealand, this October Julie Parsons is going to give it a try…

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Guinness Times: My Days in the World's Most Famous Brewery

By Al Byrne

Launch of Al Byrne's Book

Old friends and colleagues turned out in force on Tuesday, October 5th, to drink a toast to Al Byrne. The drink was, of course, Guinness, and the book was Guinness Times, Al Byrne's timely account of Guinness 'from the inside'.

Al Byrne is frank in answering the inevitable question, 'why another book about Guinness?' 'Because I believe', he says, 'that one aspect of the whole Guinness story has never been written. There is little or no record of what it was like to work full-time at St James's Gate. There has been virtually no telling of the place itself…'

Al Byrne joined Guinness, at age 14, in 1938. Starting out as a 'boy' he was following in a well-established family tradition. But he was to break with tradition too, in becoming one of the first Catholics from a 'labourer' background to be promoted to management in the company.

Yet the story is not Al's alone. Gay Byrne, Al's brother and much missed face of RTÉ, says that 'it was my story, my family's story'. Becoming obviously emotional as he speaks, Gay remembers with great fondness the day Al was appointed to the top staff at Guinness: 'If there wasn't a brass band playing quietly in the background when the wonderful news was announced, there might as well have been. It was the proudest day in our family.'

The Byrne family was, and is, inextricably linked to 'The Brewery' as they called it. Al, Gay, and sister Mary, recall the Guinness hey-day with fondness and great regard, and are thankful for Al's poignant recreation of the old ways. 'We were steeped in Guinness all our lives', says Gay, 'this is a wonderful, wonderful book.'

In his lively and affectionate look at Guinness from an insider's perspective, Al Byrne recalls the company's hey-day, the forty years that witnessed profound change, change he chronicles with some regret even though he himself was part of it.

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Hush, Hush

By Gabrielle Mullarkey

IR£6.99 Paperback

Gabrielle Mullarkey's first novel was a long time coming. Now a regular short-story writer for Woman's Realm, Woman's Own, best, that's life!, Chat and Take a Break, her route to the writing life was anything but straightforward.

Born in Oxford of Irish parents, Gabrielle grew up in a typically large, typically noisy family. And there, in the south of England, began a sometimes humourous, always pertinent, journey of identity and belonging which comes full circle with the hilarious, richly comic Hush Hush.

Yet talking to this charming, confident and funny young writer, it is bizarre that identity was ever an issue.

It was though, says Gabrielle. She always knew her family was different. Quietly alienated as a child from the Englishness that surrounded her, she feels her parents gave her a difference she didn't always accept.

'They were very typically expatriate Irish. My mother was something of an apologist', she says. The subtlety of challenged identity enthralled her -- her mother's constant attempts to conform to English civility jarred with her enduring superstitions, her accent, her love of story-telling and remembering.

The expatriate's passion for the homeland never quite adds up, says Gabrielle. Her mother was astonished when she decided to return to Ireland, to live in 'that terrible country'. 'It's bizarre', she says. 'My mother would never come back… the ex-patriot gets a life and a means of expression abroad that makes it almost impossible to come home.'

But return to live in 'that terrible country' is exactly what Gabrielle did. And all for love… 'I was on holiday here about two years ago and I walked into a pub and just saw him standing there and that was it really'. As simple as that.

But were things always that simple? She feels she was always too young, or too earnest, or in too much of a hurry to enjoy the things she did, be they university or travel or work. But writing, and quietly rejoining a tradition of storytelling, allowed her to focus, to take the time that she needed.

That time was fruitful. Her subtle eye, the wittiness and truth of her writing owes something, she thinks, to the evasive Irishness of her childhood. And in Hush Hush this all-seeing eye delivers a powerful, hilarious account of what happens to anyone who doesn't know what they want, who they are… when the good life seems a long time coming.

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Sources: Letters from Irish People on Sustenance for the Soul

Edited by Marie Heaney

IR£10.99, paperback

Soul Food from Marie Heaney

What gives you spiritual sustenance? was the question Marie Heaney put to the contributors to her new book, Sources. A remarkable collection of reflections on the nature of spirituality, this book sets out to reveal its relevance for the individual, the place of spirituality in our lives as the new millennium dawns.

'There is a void created by a loss of faith and face in relation to traditional religion. Because of the crisis in traditional religion a lot of people do not know where to turn' says Marie.

When she asked the contributors what it was that gave them spiritual sustenance, she knew, even as she signed the letters, that this was a difficult request. 'As each answer came back, I became more aware of just how difficult my request had been. Some people wrote back that it was too personal or that they had difficulty with the printed word but what I found interesting was that even though it was difficult for people, no one trivialized it.'

Marie Heaney is very pleased with the reaction to Sources, and the diversity of response contained within. 'While the clergy offered orthodox religion as sources, there were a number of people who bared their disbelief and disillusion. But the variety and honesty of the response is nothing other than heartening and uplifting.'

Marie posted her letter to husband Seamus Heaney just as with all the others on her list, and received his response in kind. 'He was late though', she says.

And what would her choice have been, if she had been asked? 'Poetry, probably. Yeats. Poems rooted in nature.' With royalties going to Focus Ireland, for the homeless, this is a project she can be proud of. 'The wheel has come full circle and this book has become a source of spiritual sustenance for me.'

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© Joseph Hoban, Sales and Marketing Manager, TOWN HOUSE & COUNTRY HOUSE