Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 350
New Irish Fiction and Poetry
Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin
Hardback; 18 Euro / 23 USD / 13 UK; 310 pages
Colm Toibin's new and challenging collection of stories paint rich and textured portraits of individuals at different pivotal moments in their lives. In each case, Toibin shows how their relationship with either a mother or a son, or their relationship to their own role as mother or son, reveals something unique and important about them. The stories feature Ireland or Irish narrators, but they are also truly universal. In "Famous Blue Raincoat", unwelcome memories are stirred when a mother, once a singer in an Irish folk-rock band of some popular renown in the 60s, finds that her son has been listening to their old records - songs she hoped never to hear again. In "Water", a son buries his mother and goes out to a drug-fuelled rave on a remote beach outside Dublin. In the course of this one night, his grief and desire for raw feeling combine with exquisite and devastating intensity. At once beautifully playful, psychologically intricate, emotionally incisive, finely-wrought and fearless these stories tease out the delicate and difficult strands which are woven between mothers and sons. Sometimes shocking and always powerful, this masterful new collection confirms Toibin as great prose stylist of our time.
Matters of Life and Death by Bernard MacLaverty
Hardback; 19 Euro / 24 USD / 14 UK; 228 pages [Add To Basket]
A new book of stories from Bernard MacLaverty is a cause for celebration, but "Matters of Life and Death" is more than that, as it is - without question - the finest collection yet from a contemporary master of the form. Beginning with the sudden, nauseating terror of a family caught up in an explosion of shocking sectarian violence and ending with the white-out of an Iowa blizzard and a different kind of fear: the fear of displacement, erasure, of losing your way - and yourself - very far from home, "Matters of Life and Death" is a book about bonds and connections, made and broken, secret and known. In the extraordinary long story, "Up the Coast", a landscape painter discovers a place that makes her feel whole, finally, only to have that communion cruelly shattered by an arbitrary act of aggression - an act that will resonate through her work and her life from that moment on. Vivid, beautifully controlled and written with effortless skill and empathy, these stories are object lessons in the art of short fiction: the author's perfect eye and ear attending to every detail, every nuance of idiom and character, to remake the world for us, here on the page.
Gael by Judith Mok
Paperback; 13 Euro / 16 USD / 9 UK; 176 pages
A young violinist from a Jewish background falls hopelessly in love with an Irish painter called Gael. She leaves her aristocratic husband, marries Gael and they eventually move to Ireland with their son. But she is unprepared for a life of poverty, and struggles with the anti-Semitic sentiments she encounters. As Gael grows increasingly delusional and violent, she desperately attempts to maintain a semblance of normal family life while still pursuing her career. Gael is at once a moving love story and a brutal, sardonic portrayal of a destructive marriage that comes to a devastating end.
Scealta: Short Stories by Irish Women edited by Rebecca O’Connor
Paperback; 13 Euro / 16 USD / 9 UK; 170 pages [Add To Basket]
The short story is one of Ireland’s national treasures, and within these pages are some of its finest practitioners – from such established names as Julia O’Faolain, Claire Keegan and Christine Dwyer Hickey, to the exciting new voices of Judy Kravis, Eithne McGuinness and Cherry Smyth. Here we have stories of dysfunctional marriages, abnormal goings-on in rural outposts, urban alienation and kitchen-sink dramas. Issues of domestic violence, child abuse and abortion are laid startlingly bare. The stories are bold, unsentimental, often very funny and always deeply affecting.
Molly and the Cyclops by Ailbhe Keogan
Paperback; 13 Euro / 16 USD / 9 UK; 320 pages
In the Library District, publishing houses open telephone lines to coincide with the release of their most popular fiction titles. In the sheds scattered across the city, actors are employed to play characters featured in the selected titles; engaging the endless stream of callers at premium rates. The industry is home to a syndrome known as Trespassing, where actors ‘go over’ into character, sometimes never to be reclaimed.
C.W. Sisle’s In Search of Infinite Relief has not been in print for over thirty years. Its story lives on through a few surviving copies and the phoneline, manned by men employed to play the part of its passionate author. When the contract is sold and the phoneline is allocated to the brilliant but soulless Mr. ****, he begins to feel the temptation of Trespassing for the first time.
Molly is young, self-destructive and desperate to find happiness. She is given a copy of the book in a bar. Drunk, she begins a series of phonecalls with Mr. **** and a journey that will prove to have far wider effects than either of them can imagine.
This fantastical tale unfolds around the fate of a missing woman and child, leading to an exciting, if unsettling, denouement. Molly & the Cyclops is a daring and inventive debut; part urban fantasy, part thriller, it’s an episodic adventure that along the way riffs on the personal, the psychological and the spiritual.
Off the Edge: A Freefall Into Modern Irish Literature edited by Jason O’Toole
Paperback; 10 Euro / 13 USD / 7 UK; 240 pages
Comprising of twenty great short stories, Off the Edge is a freefall into modern Irish literature, exploring an eclectic range of themes that reflect the true diversity of Ireland in the 21st Century.
Selected Poems of Derek Mahon
Paperback; 13 Euro / 17 USD / 9 UK; 186 pages [Add To Basket]
Represented in all modern anthologies by his great poem on Irish history "A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford", Derek Mahon is regarded with Heaney and Longley as the leader of the resurgence of Irish poetry from the late 60s onwards. He writes lyric poetry of enormous wit, elegance and scepticism. Penguin published his first "Selected Poems" in 1990 - this new, expanded edition revisits the older work, but also contains important new work from his most recent volume, "Harbour Lights".
The Wind That Shakes the Barley: A Screenplay by Paul Laverty, Directed by Ken Loach
Paperback; 16 Euro / 19 USD / 12 UK; 162 pages [Add To Basket]
Ireland 1920. Workers from field and town unite to form guerrilla armies to face the ruthless ‘Black and Tans’ shipped from Britain to block Ireland’s bid for independence. Driven by a deep sense of duty and a love for his country, Damien (Cillian Murphy) abandons his burgeoning career as a doctor and joins his brother Teddy (Pádraic Delaney) in a dangerous and violent fight for freedom. As the freedom fighters’ bold tactics bring the British to breaking point, both sides finally agree to a Treaty to end the bloodshed. But despite the apparent victory, civil war erupts, and families who fought side by side find themselves pitted against one another as sworn enemies, putting their loyalties to the ultimate test.
Award-winning screenwriter Paul Laverty has written the screenplays for six Ken Loach films: ‘Carla’s Song’ (1996), ‘My Name Is Joe’ (1998), ‘Bread and Roses’ (2000), ‘Sweet Sixteen’ (2002) – winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2002 – ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ (2004) and ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’ (2006).
In addition to the screenplay, this publication features an introduction by Luke Gibbons (professor of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame and author of several books about Irish film and culture), together with essays by Kevin Rockett (associate professor of film studies at Trinity College Dublin) on film and the Irish struggle for independence, Donal Ó Drisceoil (author, lecturer in history at University College Cork and historical advisor on ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’) on the Irish War of Independence, Mike Robins (film-maker, teacher and author) on the work of Ken Loach, and Rebecca O’Brien, producer of ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’.
The book also includes an 8-page full-colour photo spread featuring 92 film stills by Joss Barratt from ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’.
No Paradiso by William Wall
Trade Paperback with Endflaps; 13 Euro / 17 USD / 9 UK; 192 pages [Add To Basket]
Contains stories that range in location between Ireland, Italy and the USA. Varying in structure, they explore themes of loss, love and language.
Paddy Maguire is Dead by Lee Dunne
Trade Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 9 UK; 388 pages [Add To Basket]
The novel Paddy Maguire is Dead by best-selling author Lee Dunne was banned by the Irish Censors in 1972. Now for the first time ever this controversial novel is available in Ireland - thirty-four years after it was deemed too indecent and obscene for the Irish reading public. Paddy Maguire is Dead is the continuation of Dunne's famous novel Goodbye to the Hill, which has been described by critics as a seminal novel of Dublin in the 1950s. Paddy Maguire is Dead is a semi-autobiographical novel about a Dublin writer's descent into alcoholism. It explores the harrowing effects this killer disease can have on the family unit and how it can destroy a man's career.
The Republican by TS O’Rourke
Trade Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 8.50 UK; 214 pages [Add To Basket]
The Republican - An Irish Civil War Story, is the latest novel from TS O'Rourke, one of Ireland's freshest names in crime and historical fiction. With the prospect of Civil War looming, Jack Larkin, a veteran of the War of Independence, is torn by his idealistic search for the 'True Republic', the love of his sweetheart and the memory of his dead father. Set in Dublin during the 1922-23 Civil War, The Republican examines the emotionally charged divisions that the Treaty with England created within the Republican movement and one man's desperate struggle to understand his decision to fight.
In the Wake of the Bagger by Jack Harte
Paperback with Endflaps; 10 Euro / 13 USD / 7 UK; 190 pages [Add To Basket]
This first novel from the pen of a master Irish storyteller has two circular narratives, one set in the 1950s, the other in the present day. At once a social document and a meditation on change, it is an enthralling story of the Dowd family who are uprooted from their home in Killeenduff, Co. Sligo, to re-settle as economic migrants in the Midlands, where the industrial development of the bogs is providing jobs and opportunities. The tension between the old traditional way of life and the first stirring of industrialization in rural Ireland is captured graphically. The story of the protagonist and his family is told with great warmth, but without sentimentality.
Gregory Carr, Bookseller
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