Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 302
Nineteenth-Century Ireland : A Guide to Recent Research edited by Lawrence Geary and Margaret Kelleher
Trade Paperback; 25 Euro / 31 USD / 17 UK; 340 pages
Interest in nineteenth-century studies has never been greater, and contrasts sharply with previous neglect of many aspects of that century's history and culture. These essays by leading scholars assess and interpret developments from 1990 onwards in the field of nineteenth-century Irish studies, and from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. The book covers political, social, religious and women's history and historical geography as well as anthropological and sociological studies of nineteenth-century Ireland. Further chapters cover nineteenth-century music, art history, literature in English, Gaelic culture and language and the Irish diaspora. This will be an invaluable research tool and reference book for many years to come. Contents: Preface - 1 Political history, Gearoid O Tuathaigh - 2 Social history, Gary Owens - 3 Irish women's history, Maria Luddy - 4 Religious history David W. Miller - 5 Historical geography, Matthew Stout - 6 Anthropological and sociological studies, Joan Vincent and Marilyn Cohen - 7 Literature in English, Sean Ryder 8 Gaelic culture and language shift, Niall O Ciosain - 9 Art history, Fintan Cullen - 10 Musicology, Harry White - 11 The Irish diaspora, Joseph Lee - Notes - Bibliography - Index
Murphy’s Revenge by Colin Bateman
Trade Paperback; 16.00 Euro / 20.00 USD / 11.00 UK; 300 pages [Add To Basket]
If you found the person who brutally murdered a loved one, what would you do? Forgive and forget? Or take the law into your own hands? Detective Martin Murphy is the law and he's back with a vengeance...Someone has started killing the killers - who just happen to have been under the surveillance of 'Confront', a support group for relatives of murder victims who believe that therapy comes through 'empowerment'. Suspecting the group of revenge killings, Murphy goes undercover and joins them. But it seems that 'Confront' have been doing their own detective work and before Murphy realises, the group is forcing him to face the harrowing events of his own past. Now Murphy must come to terms with the past whilst also bringing the killers' killer to justice. The only problem is he's starting to think that whoever's doing the killing may have a point. After all, revenge is sweet...isn't it?
The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan
Trade Paperback; 16.00 Euro / 22.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 520 pages
In 1798, Irish patriots, committed to freeing their country from England, landed with a company of French troops in County Mayo, in westernmost Ireland. They were supposed to be an advance guard, followed by other French ships with the leader of the rebellion, Wolfe Tone. Briefly they triumphed, raising hopes among the impoverished local peasantry and gathering a group of supporters. But before long the insurgency collapsed in the face of a brutal English counterattack.
Very few books succeed in registering the sudden terrible impact of historical events; Thomas Flanagan's is one. Subtly conceived, masterfully paced, with a wide and memorable cast of characters, The Year of the French brings to life peasants and landlords, Protestants and Catholics, along with old and abiding questions of secular and religious commitments, empire, occupation, and rebellion. It is quite simply a great historical novel.
A Day for the Fire and other stories by Maurice O’Callaghan
Paperback with audio CD; 14.00 Euro / 17.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 164 pages [Add To Basket]
This collection of ten short stories set in the deep south-west of Ireland introduces the writing voice of the acclaimed Irish director of the award-winning feature film, Broken Harvest. Powerful, tragic tales that collectively read like an epic Irish novel.
There You Are: Writings on Irish & American Literature and History by Thomas Flanagan
Hardback; 25.00 Euro / 32.00 USD / 17.00 UK; 485 pages
Thomas Flanagan became famous as the author of a trilogy of novels, starting with The Year of the French, about Ireland from the rebellion of 1798 to the civil war of the 1920s. But the novelist who began by reimagining the mental and physical world of eighteenth-century County Mayo had long been immersing himself, as a scholar, essayist, and reviewer, in the literature and history of his ancestral land.
In the nonfiction writings collected here, many of them unpublished in his lifetime, Flanagan brings what Christopher Cahill calls his "keen eye and strong gaze and sharp tongue" to reassessments of key figures of Irish culture. They range from Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, through W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Collins, to contemporaries and friends like Brian Moore and Frank O’Connor, and American Irish like the Molly Maguires and the director John Ford.
Flanagan probes the tragically intertwined origins of celebrity and literary modernism in the careers of Irish-American writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill, and John O’Hara. He reflects on what his own novels have taught him about the possibilities of historical fiction. And his thoughts on Irish-American identity sum up the long-pondered mixture of experience and scrutiny he brought to his heritage.
Witty, lively, and learned, this collection reveals that Thomas Flanagan was not only as a master of the historical novel but a writer who meditated broadly and deeply on the Ireland he once described as "a complex, profound, historical society, woven of many strands, some bright and some dark."
A Stay in a Sanatorium by Zbynek Hejda translated by Bernard O’Donoghue
Paperback with endflaps; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages [Add To Basket]
Hejda is among the select Czech authors and poets who were banned from publishing in their homeland during the Communist era. If there is little hope in his work, there is yet much humour and tenderness. Dreams, erotica, the pain of aging and nostalgia for the dead are frequent themes in this selection of translations. The poems are arranged chronologically, drawing on fifty years’ writing, and representing Hejda’s many styles and themes in verse and prose-poems, memoir, satire and surrealism.
A Visit to the Clockmaker by Kristin Dimitrova translated by Gregory O’Donoghue
Paperback with endflaps; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages [Add To Basket]
Dimitrova exploits quirky, often dark, humour, intelligence, irony, wit, dialogue, in a low-key minimalist, frequently open-ended, style. Constantly reversing expectations, hers is a refreshing poetry of sharp individuality.
After the Raising of Lazarus by Ileana Malancioiu translated by Eilean Ni Chuilleanain
Paperback with endflaps; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages [Add To Basket]
In these poems the oldest Romanian peasant traditions, and the realities of earth and the body, are unsettled and retold in apparent simplicity. Here is a port who is at times a tragic satirist, at times charged with prophetic responsibility for the articulation of joy, indignation and despair in images of biblical intensity, against the nightmare background of her country’s history in her time.
Shade by Neil Jordan
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 310 pages [Add To Basket]
Ireland, 1950. Nina Hardy wakes in the big house where she grew up. Now aged fifty, she has returned to the fading beauty of her old home, and its unkempt gardens, its views of the wild Irish Sea, and its long-buried memories. With her childhood friend George, she is seeking peace from a turbulent world. But by the end of the day, a brutal crime will have been committed, which will alter their lives forever. As Nina tries to make sense of everything that has happened, a remarkable story unfolds – a story of a childhood, of extraordinary friendships, and of a war. With wonderful characters, full of passion and drama, Shade is an unforgettable novel that will make great holiday reading.
Hero Town by Bryan MacMahon
Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 16.50 USD / 9.50 UK; 250 pages [Add To Basket]
Here is Hero Town lives Peter Mulrooney, forty years old, forty years young; an unhitched pedagogue teetering on the edge of fulfilment. Hero Town lies in the middle of nowhere, the centre of everywhere. Its citizen s quarrel, grovel and intrigue; succeed and fail in lovemaking. If a man raises his head in pride, they lower it; if he lowers it, they raise it. In this novel Bryan McMahon `pulls the doings of his own small community through the senses to issue throug h the fingertips onto the paper where it can be reconstructed by the reader.`
Gregory Carr, Bookseller
Read Ireland
392 Clontarf Road
Dublin 3
Ireland
Tel + Fax: +353-1-853-2063
Customer Services Comments, Criticism and Questions
Subscribe to Read Ireland Book News - Our Free Weekly Email Newsletter