Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 142
Autobiographies, Biographies and Memoirs
The Whole Hog by Aidan Higgins (Hardback; 16.99 IEP / 18.99 USD / 14.50 UK) [Add To Basket]
Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of these remarkable memoirs, of which this book now completes the Higgins Bestiary. This spirited and quirky penman has always set himself apart from the general grind of Irish writing and its set themes, to run along the line of the exposed nerve-system. No other Irish writer has been so obsessed with the terrain inconnu of lost or thwarted love as this odd-man-out. From salad love with Molly Cushen, to Philippa Phillips in the dunes, to a young American wife in Spain at the time of the Bay of Pigs, or a divorcee in Copenhagen, a tax inspectress in London, the Jacaranda Street tease in Johannesburg, the mirth is barely contained
A Message from Heaven: The Life and Crimes of Father Sean Fortune by Alison O'Connor (Paperback; 9.99 IEP / 12.50 USD / 8.50 UK) [Add To Basket]
When Father Sean Fortune committed suicide in March 1999, he left behind a poem that he had titled: A Message from Heaven to My Family. He also left behind many victims. Not least among these were eight young men who had come forward and made statements to the police about their sexual abuse. His death at the start of his trial meant that they will now forever remain the 'alleged victims' of Father Sean Fortune. On the long list of Irish paedophile priests Father Fortune occupies a pre-eminent position. Sexual abuse of children was his worst crime, but far from his only one. A master manipulator, capable of incredible charm, he left a trail of destruction in his wake. He lied, cheated, bullied and abused. He loved the limelight. His cunning kept him one step ahead of the pack. Some of his activities were so bizarre as to make them incredible. This book is the complete story.
Black Cat's Tales by Liam O Murchu (Paperback; 9.99 IEP / 12.50 USD / 8.50 UK) [Add To Basket]
Following the bestselling memoir, Black Cat in the Window, the author returns to the emotional terrain of childhood, friends and relations, and religion. Then he flies the coop to a job in Dublin, the ever-intriguing world of public service, houses and neighbours. The reader is led to recognisable places with significant characters such as Yawl by the sea, special agent St. Anthony, Gerry the special bird, and Tiny, the giant of the Garretts. The author writes about these people as one of them, relating the high points of their threatened but tenacious odyssey. Later the slums and lanes are left for the upwardly-mobile world of middle-class moralities and notions. Here are the busy self-righteous, such as Mr. Crumm and his tap-mites, and innocents such as the young widower who fails to recognize his dead wife's sister's love for him until it is too late. Sharp, funny, sometimes unsettling, the author conjures up the past with convincing dialogue, wit and acute description. This is an intimate and sensitive portrayal of other people's lives with their ambiguities and certainties, their comedy and tragedy.
Aloys Fleischmann (1910-92): A Life for Music in Ireland Remembered by Contemporaries edited by Ruth Fleischmann (Paperback; 15.99 IEP / 18.50 USD / 14.00 UK) [Add To Basket]
Aloys Fleischmann was at the centre of music in Cork for over fifty years. He was a composer, professor of music, conductor, scholar and provider of classical music for his city. Of German origin, he grew up in two cultures in a decisive period of Ireland's development. He spent two years doing postgraduate studies in Germany in the early 1930s; his experience of the ominous political and rich cultural life of Munich strengthened his desire to return to Ireland and help create a more vigorous and specifically Irish cultural life in the small city in which he was brought up. In this book many people describe aspects of Fleischmann's work and the man as only they knew him. The articles include assessments of his thirty-year research project: Sources of Irish Traditional Music, of his compositions and of his writings on music education; former members of the Cork Symphony Orchestra and the Cork Ballet Company and participants in and organisers of the Cork Choral Festival write with humour and affection about the joys and crises involved with working with him; composers, performers, graduates, university colleagues, friends and family give accounts of the musician, the skilful campaigner, the gifted teacher, the troublesome employee, the selfless, kindly, often absent-minded and somewhat eccentric friend and relative.
The Other Side of the Rainbow by Maire Brennan (Hardback; 16.99 IEP / 19.50 USD / 14.50 UK) [Add To Basket]
Raised in County Donegal, Maire began her musical career with family band, Clannad, a venture that has earned her an array of hits, successful film scores and enviable collaborations over the last twenty years. Along with her sister, Enya, and the other members of Clannad, Maire has always fiercely guarded her privacy and, although the personal life of this remarkable artist was material for tabloid speculation in the early 1980s, she has valued the fact that her private life has largely remained distinct from her public persona. Now, with this compelling autobiography, she reveals her full story. The book is both charming and harrowing, intriguing and inspiring. Much more than a behind the scenes account of the rise of Clannad and Maire Brennen, this book is a story of a talented Irish family, the excesses of fame, the loss of self, and the hope of true love.
One Voice: My Life in Song by Christy Moore (Hardback; 20.00 IEP / 23.50 USD / 16.50 UK) [Add To Basket]
Christy Moore is unquestionably one of Ireland's finest and best-loved singers. At the heart of his unique autobiography are the lyrics of some 250 songs from Christy's repertoire and career. He began writing down the lyrics of those songs most important to him and then alongside each one described their significance and the memories they evoked. Exploring different times and themes, he has woven together reflections and stories from every period of his life. Christy writes with the integrity, humour, warmth and passion which so characterise him as a performer. There is a rare honesty to his descriptions of the soaring highs and terrible lows he has experienced in his career, and an acute awareness of the pitfalls of fame. The many stories here are funny, touching and wonderfully candid - about his childhood, music, the people he has encountered, family, times on the road and off the road, his drinking days, and sobriety. His decision to retire from live performing is clearly understood from the frank and revealing diary pieces. The memories go where the songs lead him, and together they make up a vivid, extraordinary and absorbing insight into the life of a man who many regard as Ireland's greatest musical icon.
No Time for Innocence by Lee Dunne (Paperback; 9.99 IEP / 12.50 USD / 8.50 UK) [Add To Basket]
Lee Dunne has spent most of his adult life as a writer. He burst to fame in the mid-sixties with his novel, Goodbye to the Hill. In this book he recalls his youth in Dublin, his overwhelming need to escape, his adventures abroad, including a hilarious stint as a ship's steward, and his sudden celebrity as a novelist. But just as everything was coming up roses for him, he began a slow descent into alcoholism. His marriage broke up and his life gradually began to fall apart just when he should have been enjoying his greatest success. The book recalls all this without self-pity and with a wry self-understanding. It ends in the mid-1970s when the author, remembering a man well met on a Dalkey film set, makes a phone call which will help him turn his life around. This is a story of adventure, escape, success, disaster - and salvation just in the nick of time.
William J. Walsh: Archbishop of Dublin, 1841-1921 by Thomas Morrissey SJ (Hardback; 30.00 IEP / 36.00 USD / 26.50 UK) [Add To Basket]
Archbishop Walsh was the most publicly visible ecclesiastic in the Irish Church in the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century. In his many books and frequent letters to the newspapers he ranged over a wide area. Among other issues, he wrote on politics, economics, monetary matters, education, social questions, language, music, canon law, and theology. Walsh's most important achievements were in his contribution to the consolidation of the modern Irish political system between 1885 and 1891: to land reform - the cumulative effect of the Irish Land Acts between 1885 and 1910 owed much both to his analytical mind and his remarkable tenacity; and to education in its different levels but especially to his part in solving the University question. All his varied achievements as noted in this book which, taken in their entirety, were quite astounding. But his essential greatness is to be found in his determined quest for equality, without which, he understood, there was no dignity, or justice, or real freedom for the Irish people.
Seaweed Monsters: In the Jaws of the Sea by Heinrich Becker (paperback; 8.99 IEP / 10.50 USD / 7.50 UK) [Add To Basket]
This book is a collection of stories and folklore about seaweed and its culture. For generations the people on the coastal fringes of Connaught have depended on seaweed for their livelihood. The harvest of this played a central role in their day-to-day existence. This collection of stories is told by the seaweed gatherers themselves in the 1930s and 1940s. It is an authentic record of the characteristics of a people whose way of life now exists mainly in memory. Disputes, laughter, death, drink, fairies, ghosts, mermaids, taboos and trickery all contributed to the culture of a people who lived at the mercy of the sea.
Read Ireland Bookstore
392 Clontarf Road
Clontarf, Dublin 3
Ireland
Tel + Fax: +353-18-302-997
Customer Services Comments, Criticism and Questions
Subscribe to Read Ireland Book News - Our Free Weekly Email Newsletter