Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 308
1972: A Novel of Ireland’s Unfinished Revolution by Morgan Llywelyn
Hardback; 25.00 Euro / 33.00 USD / 18.00 UK; 365 pages
The Irish Century series is the narrative of the epic struggle of the Irish people for independence through the tumultuous twentieth century. Morgan Llywelyn's magisterial multi-novel chronicle of that story began with 1916, continued in 1921 and 1949 and now continues with 1972.
In 1972, Morgan Llywelyn tells the story of Ireland from 1950-1972 as seen through the eyes of young Barry Halloran, son and grandson of Irish revolutionaries. Northern Ireland has become a running sore, poisoning life on both sides of the Irish border. Following family tradition, at eighteen Barry joins the Irish Republican Army to help complete what he sees as 'the unfinished revolution'.
But things are no longer as clear cut as they once were. His first experience of violence in Northern Ireland shocks and disturbs him. Yet he has found a sense of family in the Army which is hard to give up. He makes a partial break by becoming a photographer, visually documenting events in the north rather than physically taking part in them. An unhappy early love affair is followed by a tempestuous relationship with Barbara Kavanagh, a professional singer from America. Events lead Barry into a totally different life from the one he expected, yet his allegiance to the ideal of a thirty-two county Irish republic remains undimmed as the problems, and the violence, of Northern Ireland escalate. Then Barry finds himself in the middle of the most horrific event of all: Bloody Sunday in Derry, 1972.
Barefoot in Mullyneeny: A boy’s Journey Towards Belonging by Bryan Gallagher
Hardback; 20.00 Euro / 26.00 USD / 14.00 UK; 230 pages [Add To Basket]
Barefoot in Mullyneeny is Bryan Gallagher's evocative tale of a childhood remembered through the people and landscape of Fermanagh, near the beautiful shores of Lough Erne in Ireland. Bryan chronicles a time when all the big boys went to school in bare feet and secretly watched the Saturday night bands and dances in halls lit by Tilley lamps; where it was known to be nothing less than the biblical truth that if you put a horse-hair across the palm of your hand when you were about to be punished at school, the cane would split in two.
Gallagher's writing will touch the hearts of those who long for the innocence of childhood and the simplicity of an era long past. Whether relating tales of murderous bicycle chases through the darkened streets of Cavan, of ghosts and fairy forts or the anguish of emigration, this remarkable memoir vividly recreates life in rural Ireland in the 1940s and 50s.
For those who thought that life in Ireland was one of the poverty and misery of James Joyce or Frank McCourt, Barefoot in Mullyneeny offers a view of the Ireland of yesteryear that combines the touching, homely nostalgia of Nigel Slater's Toast and Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie with a humorous optimism that is unmistakably Ireland at its best.
Utterly Monkey by Nick Laird
Trade Paperback with endflaps; 15.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 345 pages
Danny Williams is a young litigator in a top city law firm. He is talented, home-owning, in the process of becoming single, and thoroughly sick of his demanding job and his boss. Work's only consolations are glimpses of the beautiful trainee Ellen and the neurotic behaviour of his colleague Albert. One average Wednesday night an old schoolfriend Geordie Wilson arrives at the door of his stylish flat. On the run from a loyalist militia, whose funds he has nicked, Geordie brings everything that Danny thought he had left behind and dumps it on his smart London doorstep.
Taking place over an intense and gripping five-day period – set in both London and the fictional town of Ballyglass – the novel deals with love and sex, violence and friendship, the estrangements of the modern workplace and the inflated cost of jelly beans in posh hotels.
Utterly Monkey is a wonderfully touching, hilarious and ultimately redemptive novel about aspirations, belonging, loyalty and, most importantly, getting the girl.
A Game with Sharpened Knives by Neil Belton
Trade Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 325 pages [Add To Basket]
In 1939, the life of an Austrian physicist was saved by a revolutionary whose own sentence of execution had been commuted almost twenty years earlier. The physicist was Erwin Schrödinger, charismatic winner of the Nobel prize for Physics in 1931, forced to flee when the Nazis entered Austria; the revolutionary was the Irisch Fuhrer, Eamon de Valera. These are the extraordinary facts behind this extraordinary fiction.
Murder is in the air, and on the sea beyond the mouth of the river Liffey. German bombs are dropping, accidentally it is reported, on Dublin. In 1941, Ireland is a country not truly at peace, either with Germany, or with its neighbour across the Irish sea, or in fact with itself. Erwin Schrödinger, bohemian intellectual and emotional enigma, is living in cramped exile in the village of Clontarf on the outskirts of Dublin, with his wife, his lover and their child.
A Game with Sharpened Knives is the story of a man foundering on his own desires, a man who often finds it easier to say nothing, for no one in the tense and impoverished city of Dublin is quite what they appear. The first language of this country, as Erwin's Irish lover tells him, is silence. From the winner of the Irish Times prize, a first work of fiction, and a truly magnificent novel.
From Dun Sion to Croke Park: The Autobiography of Micheal O Muircheartaigh
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 260 pages
One day in 1949, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh took part in a competition at Croke Park for an Irish-language commentator’s job. He was just eighteen and had never seen a hurling match in his life, but he got the job, and the rest is broadcasting history. In From Dún Síon to Croke Park, Micheál tells the story of his life and sporting times in his own words. Whether describing the farm where he grew up, the school where he learned to play Gaelic football, the majestic technique of Christy Ring, or the form of one of his greyhounds, Micheál’s prose shimmers with his legendary wit, grace and precision.
A Bit on the Side by William Trevor
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 244 page
A Bit on the Side is William Trevor’s first collection of stories since the award-winning The Hill Bachelors was published in 2000. Tender, touching and beautifully humane, the dozen new stories contained here explore the subject of adultery, and tell of secret passions, domestic infidelities, office romances, and the broken and unbroken rules of love.
Dublin by Edward Rutherford
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 820 pages [Add To Basket]
Edward Rutherfurd's great Irish epic reveals the story of the people of Ireland through the focal point of the island's capital city. The epic begins in pre-Christian Ireland during the reign of the fierce and powerful High Kings at Tara, with the tale of two lovers, the princely Conall and the ravishing Deirdre, whose travails echo the ancient Celtic legend of Cuchulainn. From this stirring beginning, Rutherfurd takes the reader on a graphically realised journey through the centuries.
Through the interlocking stories of a powerfully-imagined cast of characters - druids and chieftains, monks and smugglers, merchants and mercenaries, noblewomen, rebels and cowards - we see Ireland through the lens of its greatest city.
Gregory Carr, Bookseller
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