Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 338
The Cambridge History of Irish Literature (2 volume set) edited by Margaret Kelleher and Phillip O’Leary
Hardback; 225.00 Euro / 350.00 USD / 180.00 UK; 1400 pages
This is the first comprehensive history of Irish literature in both its major languages. The twenty-eight chapters in this two-volume history provide an authoritative chronological survey of the Irish literary tradition, both in Irish and English. Spanning fifteen centuries of literary achievement, the two volumes range from the earliest medieval Latin texts to the late twentieth century. The contributors, drawn from a range of Irish, British and North American universities, are internationally renowned experts in their fields. The Cambridge History of Irish Literature comprises an unprecedented synthesis of research and information, a detailed narrative of one of the world's richest literary traditions, and innovative and challenging new readings. No critical work of this scale has been attempted for Irish literature before. Featuring a detailed chronology and guides to further reading for each chapter, this magisterial project will remain the key reference book for literature in Ireland for generations to come.
The Sailor in the Wardrobe by Hugo Hamilton
Hardback; 21.00 Euro / 25.00 USD / 15.00 UK; 260 pages [Add To Basket]
Following on from the success of "The Speckled People", Hugo Hamilton's new memoir has at its heart the story of a summer he spent working at a local harbour in Ireland, at a time of tremendous fear and mistrust. Young Hugo longs to be released from the confused identity he has inherited from his German mother and Irish father, but the backdrop of his mother's shame at the hands of Allied soldiers in the aftermath of the Second World War, along with his German cousin's mysterious disappearance somewhere on the Irish West Coast and the spiralling troubles in the north, seems determined to trap him in history. In an attempt to break free of his past, Hugo rebels against his father's strict and crusading regime and turns to the exciting new world of rock and roll, still a taboo subject in the family home. His job at the local harbour, rather than offering a welcome respite from his speckled world, entangles him in a bitter feud between two fishermen - one Catholic, one Protestant. Hugo listens to the missing persons bulletins going out on the radio for his German cousin, and watches the unfolding harbour duel end in drowning before he can finally escape the ropes of history.
The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party 1916-1923 by Michael Laffan
Large Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 26.00 USD / 15.00 UK; 520 pages
Between 1916 and 1923 Ireland experienced a political, as well as a military revolution. This book examines how, after the Easter Rising of 1916, radical revolutionaries formed a precarious coalition with (relatively) moderate politicians, and offers a sustained analysis of the political organisation of Irish republicanism during a crucial period. The new Sinn Fein party routed its enemies, co-operated uneasily with the underground Irish government, which it had helped to create, and achieved most of its objectives before disintegrating in 1922. Its rapid collapse should not distract from its achievements - in particular its role in 'democratising' the Irish revolution. Its successors have dominated the political life of independent Ireland. The book studies in detail the party's membership and ideology, and also its often tense relationship with the Irish Republican Army. A final chapter examines the fluctuating careers of the later Sinn Fein parties throughout the rest of the twentieth century.
The Sea Cabinet by Catriona O’Reilly
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 62 pages [Add To Basket]
Caitriona O'Reilly's poetry is remarkable for its precise observation of the natural world. Her second collection, "The Sea Cabinet", broadens that clear-sighted vision in poems also haunted by history, consolidating the achievement of her prizewinning debut volume, "The Nowhere Birds." Her title-poem conjures the vanished world of the whaling industry, and serves as a starting-point for other acute meditations on natural and cultural obsolescence. Yet, the habitual concerns of the lyric self are present too, in poems which enact the dilemmas and anxieties of the individual amidst a rapidly changing environment. Caitriona O'Reilly's first collection "The Nowhere Birds" won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, given for the best book by any new Irish writer published in 2001: 'The most startlingly accomplished debut collection by any Irish poet since Paul Muldoon's "New Weather" in 1973' - Patrick Crotty, "Irish Times". 'Whether enthralled or appalled, she beholds and magnifies the world and its strange creatures (including ourselves) in poems that are formally versatile and linguistically copious' - Michael Longley. 'Although this book moves from childhood through adolescence and student travels to adult relationships, it charts this journey through a dream-world filled with natural imagery that either terrifies and repels, or that expresses libidinal desires intimately understood. At times eerie in their invocation of spiders, bats, and the claws of birds, these poems are drawn through such witch-like details to the edge of the known world, where they lift off into a surrealist vision of exemplary lyricism' - Selina Guinness, "The New Irish Poets".
Cease and Desist: Surviving the Might of the Largest Entertainment Corporation in the World by Denise Fitzpatrick
Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 16.00 USD / 9.00 UK; 250 pages
'The Disney Factor is what happens when the biggest entertainment corporation in the world decides that a couple of nobodies from Ireland constitute a threat to its billion dollar operation. That’s what happened to Francis, my husband, and me'. When Denise Fitzpatrick read the letter from the Disney corporation she knew it was all over. They were being sued. Disney was claiming ownership of a cartoon character, Piggley, that Denise had created as a little girl. But Denise wasn’t backing down, no matter that they were on the brink of bankruptcy, or that everyone said it was impossible for them to win, or that she had young children whose futures lay in her hands. From the glamour of the Cannes Television Festival to the humiliation of the bailiff arriving at the door, Denise tells the inside story of how an Irish pig unwittingly kicked off a remarkable legal battle between the Fitzpatricks and the giants of Disney.
The Faiths of Ireland by Stephen Skuce
Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 11.00 UK; 204 pages
As mosques and temples start to appear on Ireland's skyline, this book seeks to explain the faiths of these newcomers. Rather than simply repeating the beliefs of these people, the author delves into Ireland's recent and distant past to recapture the myriad stories of Irish interaction with Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists going back over a thousand years. The Irish dimension to the faith of the new religious communities is considered and the implications for a changing Ireland is addressed. This book is of importance to all who are interested in the areas of culture and religion in contemporary Ireland, to those who are students of religion, who are working with people of non-Christian faith and those who just want to know their new neighbours better.
Policing Northern Ireland: Conflict, legitimacy and reform by Aogán Mulcahy (University College Dublin)
Hardback; 24.00 Euro / 29.00 USD / 18.00 UK; [Add To Basket]
This important new book examines the issue of police legitimacy in Northern Ireland. Against the backdrop of political division and paramilitary violence, it analyses the means by which the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) sought the support of the communities most antagonistic to it – nationalists and republicans – and considers their responses to these various reform measures. The book traces the development of these issues across three distinct time-periods: the years of overt conflict (1968-94); the subsequent ceasefire period (1994-98); and the reform programme arising from the Patten Report and the transformation of the RUC into the Police Service of Northern Ireland (1998-2005).
It asks key questions about the nature and impact of police efforts to secure the support of nationalists and republicans: · what was the nature and rationale of the reform strategies implemented by the RUC? · how has the RUC portrayed itself in the positive terms that might secure public support? · how have nationalists responded to these initiatives? · what was the nature of the reform programme outlined in the 1999 Patten Report? · what impact has the establishment of the PSNI and the ongoing reform programme had on police-community relations? The book also makes a powerful contribution to wider current debates about police legitimacy in divided societies, police-community relations, resistance narratives, and the relationship between police reform and conflict resolution
Francis De Groot: Irish Fascist Australian Legend by Andrew Moore
Hardback; 30.00 Euro / 36.00 USD / 20.00 UK; 232 pages [Add To Basket]
Colonel Francis Edward De Groot was born in Dublin, Ireland on 24 October 1888, and died there on 1 April 1969. He served in the 15th Hussars on the western front in World War I, where he was awarded a ceremonial sword.
Moving to Australia, he joined a right-wing para-military organisation called the New Guard, which was politically opposed to the rather more left-wing government of the New South Wales Premier Jack Lang.
He came to fame when on 19 March 1932, he upstaged Lang at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Lang was about to cut the ribbon to formally open the bridge, when de Groot rode forward, drew his ceremonial sword and, reaching down from his mount, flamboyantly slashed the ribbon, declaring the bridge open "in the name of the decent and respectable people of New South Wales." He said this was in protest that Governor-General Isaacs was not invited to perform the ceremony.
Irish Fascist. Australian Legend is the first biography to be published of Francis De Groot. The handsome, enigmatic Irishman grew up in Dublin, a member of an elite Irish Huguenot family. Prior to World War One he worked as a merchant seaman, coal lumper and antique dealer. After serving on the Western Front, he returned to Sydney to manufacture reproduction furniture of the finest quality.
The Parting Glass: A Toast to the Traditional Pubs of Ireland by Eric Roth
Hardback; 30.00 Euro / 37.00 USD / 22.00 UK; 150 pages, full colour photos throughout [Add To Basket]
The Parting Glass is an inviting ramble through forty-three traditional pubs in the cities and countryside of Ireland. Some are historic taverns, others are more contemporary, but all convey the timeless feel and the flavour of the country. Roth's glowing, intimate photographs are accompanied by narratives of the places and their patrons by columnist Eileen McNamara, as well as a sprinkling of quotations.
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