Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 285
Fiction and Poetry
Havoc, in its Third Year by Ronan Bennett
Trade Paperback; 17.50 Euro / 21.50 USD / 12.50 UK; 244 pages
England in the 1630s – an unsettled country in turbulent times. People are gripped by fear: fear of crime, or foreign invasion, of Catholic conspiracies, of the vagrant poor. In a town in northern England, a group of Puritan reformers tightens its hold on the lives of its inhabitants.
John Brigge is the local coroner, a respected man who wants nothing more than to work his farm and be with his wife, now expecting their first child. But when he is called to investigate an infanticide, Brigge finds himself drawn unwillingly into a vicious power struggle. Katherine Shay, a fiery Irishwomen, stands accused of killing her baby. The Puritan faction demands her immediate execution. Brigge suspects their haste has little to do with justice. What are they hiding? Does he really want to know? Against a background of looming crisis, Brigge struggles between his desire to protect his family and the need to see justice done. And he is haunted by the mystery of Katherine Shay.
Powerful, dramatic and utterly gripping, this is a superb novel, justly long-listed for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Its canvas is large, its characters full-blooded, its atmosphere apocalyptic. Like the best historical novels, it vividly captures the period yet resonates with the present. (Also available in Hardback at 27 Euro)
Lost Fields by Michael McLaverty
Trade Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 211 pages [Add To Basket]
Originally published in 1941, this is a classic Irish novel from an acknowledged master. Like the caged lark, Mrs. Griffin feels out of place in the overcrowded house in the back streets of Belfast. Unemployment has brought her son Johnny and his family to the brink of eviction and it is only by giving up her home in the country and moving in with the family that she can give them a chance of survival. The consequences of the grandmother’s harsh uprooting reverberate throughout the novel, and as relationships within the family change and develop, her sacrifice brings both tragedy and, unexpectedly, redemption. Written in prose as ‘sinewy as a wintry oak’, this novel is a powerful and unsentimental account of working-class life in 1930s Belfast, where the struggle to survive is offset by the beauty and joy of the natural world.
Collected Short Stories of Michael McLavery
Trade Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 295 pages
With an Introduction by Seamus Heaney. Michael McLaverty, one of Ireland’s most distinguished short story writers, painted with acute precision and intensity the northern landscapes of his homeland – lonely hill farms, rough island terrain and the tight back streets of Belfast. Focusing on moments of passion, wonder or bitter disenchantment in lives that are a continuous struggle towards the light, these stories, in the compassion of the tone and the spare purity of the language, are nothing short of masterly. This collection is a fitting celebration of an Irish writer who has been compared to Chekhov.
Ambush by Paul Carson
Trade Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 374 pages [Add To Basket]
Scott Nolan enjoys a flourishing career as a doctor, a rising media profile as a persuasive campaigner against drug abuse, and a beautiful new wife. But one wintry Dublin morning Scott’s life is changed forever when contract killer Sean Kennedy and his team of assassins attempt a daring double ambush on Ireland’s anti-drugs minister and his medical spokesman. The attacks end in chaos, leaving a trail of destruction and death. Scott vows revenge. But how can one man take on Ireland’s notoriously ruthless drug barons? Desperate to claim back his life and find the killers, Scott enters an uneasy alliance with his wife’s brother, Detective Mark Higgins. Doctor and detective then embark on a highly controversial international covert mission to track down the leader of the murder gang. Using secret US army interrogation compounds and breaking almost every law in the land, the duo finally close in on their target. As the novel moves towards it violent climax, the author takes the reader on a white-knuckle ride of treachery, double-crossing and murder in this powerful thriller.
The Fox’s Walk by Annabel Davis-Goff
Paperback; 12.50 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.50 UK; 319 pages
It is 1915 and eight-year-old Alice Moore has just been left in the care of her autocratic grandmother at Ballydavid, a lovely old house in the south of Ireland. At first lonely and homesick, Alice gradually becomes involved in the lives of a Catholic boy who she hero-worships, a psychic countess down on her luck, an admired governess, and colourful neighbours. In the background is the Great War, and in Ireland there is the threat of revolution. While the family mourns an uncle killed in France, blood is spilled closer to home. As tensions mount, Alice must choose between her heritage of privilege, her growing moral conscience, and the demands of the future. This is a gently compelling read, rewarding and sharply observed.
Wings Over Delft by Aubrey Flegg
Paperback; 8.00 Euro / 10.00 USD / 5.00 UK; 205 pages [Add To Basket]
Winner of the 2004 Bisto Book of the Year Award, Ireland’s most prestigious award for children’s literature. As the daughter of a wealthy Dutch family, Louise Eeden knows that certain things are expected of her. When her father commissions a famous artist to paint her portrait, she reluctantly agrees. But lately things have started to move too fast in her life. Somehow everyone believes she is engaged to Reynier DeVries; she is chaperoned and protected, a commodity to be exchanged in a marriage that will merge two respected pottery businesses. In the studio with Master Haitink and his gangly apprentice, Pieter, Louise unexpectedly finds the freedom to be herself. But someone has been watching her every move, and her deepening friendship with Pieter has not gone unnoticed. Behind the scenes, a web of treachery and deceit is gradually unraveling, leading to a brutal and shocking confrontation. Suitable for 13 to 17 year-olds.
New and Renewed: Poems 1967-2004 by Brian Lynch
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 12.50 USD / 7.00 UK; 110 pages [Add To Basket]
Acclaimed by Samuel Beckett and praised by Richard Ellmann, Brian Lynch is one of Ireland’s leading poets and dramatists. This selection of new and revised work has the stamp of a major voice: simple, unadorned, aware of the constrictions and the free play of language.
An Arid Season: New Poems by Michael D. Higgins
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 12.50 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages [Add To Basket]
This book is the distillation of over ten years’ work. Inspiring and evocative, this collection is reflective of the changes that were taking place, not just in the poet’s life, but also in the world at large.
The Pickening Boy by Sebastian Barry
Paperback; 9.00 Euro / 11.00 USD / 6.00 UK; [Add To Basket]
Born in Dublin in 1955, Sebastian Barry’s widely acclaimed plays include The Steward of Christendom and Our Lady of Sligo, while his novels include The Engine of Owl-Light and Annie Dunne. This new collection, his first since 1989, marks a welcome return to poetry. It is a poignant yet joyful suite of poems.
The Chosen Moment by Dermot Bolger
Paperback; 9.00 Euro / 11.00 USD / 6.00 UK; [Add To Basket]
Although better known as one of Ireland’s leading novelists and playwrights, Dermot Bolger has always been first and foremost a poet. This collection contains poems that celebrate both ordinary and extraordinary moments within a life and reflect the diversity that has been the hallmark of this most distinctive author.
Taking Time Out: Poems in Remembrance of Madness by Thomas Krampf
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 102 pages [Add To Basket]
Whereas much of Thomas Krampf’s earlier work had a distinctly urban flavour, this book is an attempt to deal with madness and its ramifications, both past and present. This is not a comfortable book, there are poems in it such as ‘Brain Disease’ which take the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer as subject matter, and which remain somewhat disturbing to the poet himself. And yet in poems, Such as ‘Bestiality’ and ‘The Man with the Black Nuclear Handbag’, madness is not without its own point of view, and its own (sometimes not so gentle) sense of humour. There are also poems that attempt to resolve any tendencies toward violence and self-destruction, that the author himself might have experienced. And in doing do, to help explain some of the personal, political and spiritual aberrations of the psyche, that might be so prevalent in our society today.
Dark Pool by Ben Howard
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 82 pages [Add To Basket]
Taking its title from the root meaning of Dublin, the poet’s fifth collection of poems probes the provenance of naming. Ranging in locale from eastern Iowa to County Clare, these poems endeavour to call the things in this world by their rightful names. Whether the object of contemplation by a vanished Dublin bookshop, a bronze cast of Abraham Lincoln’s hands, the month of February, or a son’s twenty-first birthday. Howard’s poems seek wholeness amidst flux and fragmentation. Grounded in contemplative detachment, they cast a clarifying light on contemporary life.
Refuge at DeSoto Bend by Eamonn Wall
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 80 pages [Add To Basket]
Eamonn Wall possesses a bright eye for detail – a preacher on a plaza in New Mexico, a juke box in a Courtown café, the arrangement of objects in a window in County Sligo, pine needles covered in snow in South Dakota – and it is frequently from these visual images that the poems in this fourth collection take flight. More than anything else, this collection celebrates the joys and heartaches spent intensely in the light. One of the make striking themes is migration and the search for material and emotional shelter and refuge in unfamiliar locations. The poet observes and describes a complex world; he listens and records for the reader some of the resonant truths this bright light reveals about nature, family, memory, hunger and public and private life in contemporary Ireland and America.
Dublin Review 16, Autumn 2004 edited by Brendan Barrington
Paperback; 7.50 Euro / 10.00 USD / 5.00 UK; 126 pages [Add To Basket]
Contents: The Shadow Line by Amit Chaudhuri; Not Guilty? By Edna Longley; Sisters by Martin Malone; If a guy doesn’t think this is fun … by Molly McCloskey; Giddiness and desperation by Brian Dillon; Nooteboom’s Hotel 2 by Cees Nooteboom; On a Tightrope by Catriona Crowe; Sabbath by Kathleen Jamie
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