Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 400 - 12 January 2008
The 'Best' Books of 2007!
2008 marks my 14th year selling books over the Internet (and my 32nd year in the ‘book trade’) and I am also celebrating the 400th Issue of Read Ireland Book Reviews. And I want to take this opportunity to thank you personally for your support, without which this venture would not be viable. I am compiling a ‘customer comments’ page and would appreciate your comments to include on it and any criticisms or suggestions for improvement in the service. I wish you a Happy New Year and look forward to serving your Irish book requirements in 2008 and beyond!
Non-Fiction
Temples of Stone: Exploring the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland by Carleton Jones
Hardback; 28 Euro / 38 USD / 19 UK; 334 pages
Dolmens and burial chambers dot the Irish countryside and fascinate all. Once dismissed as `rude monuments' shrouded in mystery, fresh archaeological interpretations provide new ways of understanding these ancient structures. Who were the megalith builders? Why did they heave these massive stones on top of one another? What can these evocative monuments tell us about how their builders understood the world and their place in it? How did the monuments alter ancient people's experience of place and time? What rituals took place in and around these monuments? Were drugs and hallucinations part of the rituals engaged in? How were the giant megaliths erected? And finally, why did people stop building them? Insights and answers to these questions are presented in a fully-illustrated popular format. All key sites in Ireland are discussed. 100 `Sites Worth Visiting' are listed in a final chapter with photos, maps, and detailed directions for visiting each site.
Judging Dev by Diarmaid Ferriter
Hardback; 40 Euro / 60 USD / 30 UK; 396 pages, with black-and-white photos throughout [Add To Basket]
Eamon de Valera has often been characterised as a stern, un-bending, devious and divisive Irish politician. But how valid is this caricature? In "Judging Dev", Diarmaid Ferriter re-examines de Valera's life and legacy. It contains an in-depth analysis of the impact of de Valera and includes many previously unpublished key letters, documents and photographs from the National Archives of Ireland and the UCD Archives to chronicle the extraordinary career of the most significant politician of modern Irish history and his role in the history of the Irish state.
Dublin An Urban History: The Plan of the City by Niall McCullough
Hardback: 50 Euro / 75 USD / 38 UK; 225 pages, hardback, illustrations c.400 b/w photographs, maps, plans, drawings
Although one of Europe’s largest cites in the 18th century, Dublin has never been harvested for its potential contribution to the history of European urbanism. This book is about its physical structure – an analysis of the underlying skeleton that may release an understanding of its urban and architectural tradition. It is an exploration of the city plan over time, how early delineations and marks of movement of ownership become layered tissues of meaning, part geography, part intent, a constant struggle for rational expression against conflicting aspirations that can be clearly read. The greatest expression of this palimpsest remains the Georgian city plan, which can be understood as a series of semi-autonomous classical fragments adjusted to an underlying medieval and geographical structure. This lavishly illustrated book by one of Ireland’s leading architects, is a much expanded version of a book with a similar title published in c.1989. This new edition will appeal to all those interested in the architecture and history of the city.
Author: Niall McCullough is a partner in McCullough Mulvin, a leading firm of architects.
The Insider: The Belfast Prison Diaries of Eamonn Boyce, 1956-62 edited by Anna Bryson
Hardback; 40 Euro / 56 USD / 28 UK; 480 pages [Add To Basket]
"Treason Felony" dates back to the Young Irelanders of 1848. In December 1954, for his part in an arms raid on Omagh army barracks, Dublin man Eamonn Boyce was convicted on three counts of this archaic offence and sentenced at the Belfast Winter Assizes to twelve years' imprisonment.Defying the strict rules of the prison, he maintained a journal from December 1956 to September 1962.Against the odds the manuscript has survived. Written in Irish, it is a reflective account of his daily lot (prison regime; IRA command structures; education; relations with his fellow prisoners and staff). It is an insider's perspective on the unfolding IRA campaign gleaned from newly arrived prisoners, secret correspondence with the IRA and the latest news reports on a smuggled and cleverly hidden transistor radio. Within the bleak confines of Crumlin Road prison he set down hopes, dreams and fears. The diary became an indispensable tool to keep human dignity alive.
The Making of the Irish Constitution 1937 by Dermot Keogh and Andrew McCarthy
Hardback; 30 Euro / 40 USD / 20 UK; 510 pages
This meticulously researched book draws on extensive primary sources to put the Irish constitution in a clear historical perspective. Using accessible language, the authors examine the political context of the conception of the constitution in 1930s Ireland against the background of constitutional developments since the foundation of the state. They follow its passage through the drafting process, identifying and clarifying the precise roles of legal, administrative and religious personnel who contributed to the making of this final and extremely important document, which defined the nature of the modern Irish state.
Achill Voices by Robert Redmond
Trade Paperback; 20 Euro / 28 USD / 14 UK; 120 pages, with full colour photos throughout
Achill Island, off the coast of County Mayo, is a beautiful island renowned for its sandy beaches and dramatic sea cliffs. Increasingly popular with both Irish and overseas visitors, Achill is accessible from the mainland yet remote enough to remain unspoilt. "Achill Voices" features photographs taken by the author and tales collected from inhabitants that combine to create a fascinating book, appealing to island citizens and visitors alike.
Follow Me Down to Dublin: The City Through the Voices of Its Peoples by Deirdre Purcell
Hardback; 25 Euro / 35 USD / 18 UK; 264 pages, with black-and-white photographs throughout [Add To Basket]
In the course of conversation, she learns how her birthplace is viewed and remembered by a host of Dubliners -- from broadcasters to shop workers recalling showband days; by the city's writers, actors, historians and, most tellingly, her ordinary folk who, with wit and fondness, share far from ordinary reminiscences, Here are images of the clip-clop of Guinness drays, of thronged and opulent Corpus Christi processions, of penitential but sociable rounds of The Seven Churches on Holy Thursdays, of Jewish tailoring houses, of the gentle self-sufficiency of the Dublin Protestant -- and of an intimate, impenetrable lingo spoken and understood only by those in the city's retail trade. In words and pictures, we learn about the closure of the fabled Frawley's of Thomas Street -- a hugely emotional event for the staff and its heartbroken customers -- about the ballroom of romance in the Broadway Cafe in O'Connell Street, about the blowing up of Nelson's Pillar and the devastating fire in Power's Distillery, about Moore Street then and now, about the spread of the city into the 'new Dublins' of Finglas, Crumlin and beyond.Dubliners featured include Dermot Bolger, Catherine Hogan, Peter Sheridan, Ronan Sheehan, Geraldine Plunkett, Aidan Mathews, Pat Liddy, Larry Gogan, Bernard Farrell, Deirdre McQuillan and Kevin Hough, all of whom agree that what makes the city special is the indomitable spirit of the Dubliner. Follow Me Down to Dublin is a book to be savoured by Dublin's natives, her 'blow-ins', and by all who have enjoyed even a passing acquaintance with Anna Livia and her court.
Contested Island: Ireland 1460-1630 by S.J. Connolly
Hardback; 55 Euro / 85 USD / 42 UK; 424 pages [Add To Basket]
Between the 1460s and the 1630s Ireland was transformed from a medieval into a modern society. A poor society on the periphery of Europe, dominated by the conflicts of competing warlords- Irish and English- it later became a centralised political unit with a single government and code of laws, and a still primitive, but rapidly developing, market economy. These changes, however, had been achieved by brutal wars of conquest, while large scale colonisation projects had created lasting tensions between old inhabitants and recent settlers. At the same time the great religious divide of the Reformation had introduced a further source of conflict to Ireland, dividing the population into two hostile camps, while at the same time giving it a new and dangerous role in the conflict between England and its continental enemies. Against this confused and constantly changing background, individuals and groups had repeatedly to adapt their customs and behaviour, their political allegiances and aspirations, and their sense of who they were. A long and complex story, with many false starts and numerous dead ends, it is the story of the people who became the modern Irish.
Luck and the Irish: A History of Change 1970-200 by R.F. Foster
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 30 Euro. Read Ireland Special Price: 25 Euro / 34 USD / 17 UK; 228 pages [Add To Basket]
From about 1970, Irish history moved into a fast-forward phase. Roy Foster's new book looks at the roots of the changes which came with an almost completely unexpected wave of prosperity. With sympathy, astringency and humour, he examines the upheavals in economics, North-South attitudes, international relations, demography, gender roles, sexual mores, culture and religion which accompanied the boom, as well as the significance of such emblematic characters as Mary Robinson, Bob Geldof and Charles Haughey. "Luck and the Irish" also discusses the themes of corruption, scandal, New Age Celticism, popular culture and the occasional retreat into reactionary attitudes that followed the liberalization, enrichment and marketing of the New Ireland: and what these transformations mean for Irish history in the long run.
Dublin: A View from the Ground by Neil Hegarty
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 30 Euro. Read Ireland Special Price: 25 Euro / 33 USD / 16 UK; 330 pages [Add To Basket]
Dublin is one of only a handful of cities that holds international appeal and influence - a fact made more unique because its fame is based almost exclusively on cultural output. Dublin may not have an instantly recognisable building or landmark, but ask a listener to come up with images of Dublin and the results flood in: Molly Malone, a cold pint of Guinness, a late-night pub session. Neil Hegarty examines this legacy of Dublin's 'cultural capital' to bring the city, and its people, to vivid life. A rich story encompassing art, literature, architecture, politics and more, Dublin follows a general chronology, but the chapters are organised around themes - crime and punishment, power and rebellion, urban calamity (fire, flood, disease), the sacred and the profane - that occur and recur throughout the city's history.Larger historical trends - the effects of the city's Penal Laws, the establishment of a Catholic middle class, the dizzying pace of change in the wake of the Celtic Tiger's economic reforms - are seen through the experiences of leaders and pioneers, as well as that of ordinary citizens, to create one of the most wide-ranging and nuanced portraits of Dublin ever published
The High Crosses of Ireland: Inspirations in Stone by Elinor D.U. Powell
Trade Paperback; 25 Euro / 35 USD / 18 UK; 190 pages, with full colour photos throughout [Add To Basket]
“Those great stone crosses standing out in Ireland’s countryside are the country’s greatest contribution to world sculpture, and contain the largest amount of religious carving preserved anywhere in Europe from the last quarter of the first Christian millennium. They are found in what are now churchyards, but were once monasteries of piety and peace which spread Ireland’s zeal for learning and scholarship across the European continent. These crosses stand as elegant monuments to a high civilisation, and their shape with the characteristic ring around the head became such a potent nationalistic symbol in the mid-nineteenth century that it was used for grave memorials on both sides of the Atlantic for those who wanted to identify themselves as Irish. . . .
The glory of Dr Powell’s book is that it allows us to stand, figuratively, in front of these High Crosses, to look in wonder at their varying shapes and sizes, and admire the quality of master carvers’ work of a thousand years ago. . . . It has been a great pleasure for me to re-live visits to these crosses through Dr Powell’s admirable and often atmospheric pictures, and I hope her sense of wonderment and delight will be communicated through them to the many readers of this truly remarkable volume.” — Dr Peter Harbison, Honorary Academic Editor of the Royal Irish Academy, from the Foreword.
Sean MacBride: A Life by Elizabeth Keane
Hardback; 25 Euro / 36 USD / 18 UK; 310 pages [Add To Basket]
Sean MacBride (1904-1988) was at different times the Chief of Staff of the IRA, a top criminal lawyer, Irish Foreign Minister, and a founder of Amnesty International, of which organisation he was chairman from 1973 to 1976. He is the only person to have won both the Nobel Peace Prize (1974) and the Lenin Peace Prize (1977). He was Secretary General to the International Commission of Jurists and United Nations Commissioner for Namibia with the rank of Assistant Secretary General. He was born in Paris in 1904 and spoke with a heavy French accent all his life. His father was John MacBride, one of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin. His mother was Maud Gonne, the beauty whom Yeats regarded as his lost love.MacBride's life fell into three parts: youthful revolutionary, culminating in his leadership of the IRA; conventional politics in middle age; followed by his later career as international statesman and human rights activist. MacBride was a figure of national and international importance, one of the most distinguished Irish people of the twentieth century. In Elizabeth Keane, he has found a biographer who surveys his life and times with scholarly authority and assurance.
Fiction and Poetry: 2008
Ireland’s Other Poetry: Anonymous to Zozimus edited by John Wyse Jackson and Hector McDonnell
Hardback; 25 Euro / 36 USD / 18 UK; 440 pages [Add To Basket]
"Ireland's Other Poetry" accompanies the reader on a memorable journey through a country full of unexpected curiosities. Contributors range from Jonathan Swift to Shane McGowan, with others along the way such as Flann O'Brien, George Bernard Shaw and Seamus Heaney - and visitors like John Betjeman - but the book also rediscovers the work of many anonymous or neglected poets, humorists and lyricists.Among the anthology's almost 400 entries, readers will find verses on food and philosophy, on Guinness and ghosts, on war, on murder, on lighting a match. Masterpieces of wordplay and parody rub shoulders with sporting songs, advertising jingles and lyrics from the theatre. There is nonsense verse and satire and stage Irish buffoonery, there is religious propaganda, doggerel, music-hall bawdry, and good honest abuse - some of it decidedly politically incorrect.Irish verse has needed a shake-up for years. Since W.B. Yeats and his Celtic Revival, anyone daring to be funny has been written out of the story.
Barnacle Soup and other stories from the west of Ireland by Josie Gray, with Tess Gallagher
Gift Hardback; 18 Euro / 24 USD / 12 UK; 146 pages, with woodcut illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
Ireland is known throughout the world for its rich and vibrant storytelling. Josie Gray is a proud inheritor of this tradition, a yarn-spinner whose evocative and authentic stories are steeped in the rural west of Ireland community to which he belongs. Beautifully crafted, subtly paced, and richly textured, Gray's stories vividly and affectionately bring to life a disparate cast of characters and recreate the fabric of their everyday lives. Disputes, laughter, courting, death, drink and general all-round skulduggery are the order of the day as Gray skilfully weaves together myth and fact, truth and near-truth. Captivated by these tales, acclaimed poet Tess Gallagher worked with Gray to give his oral stories written form. The result is a stunning collection that preserves the intimacy, melody and rhythm of Gray's voice.
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 260 pages [Add To Basket]
The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn’t the drink that killed him – although that certainly helped – it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother’s house, in the winter of 1968. His sister Veronica was there then, as she is now: keeping the dead man company, just for another little while. The Gathering is a family epic, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright’s unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations – starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman – showing how memories warp and family secrets fester. This is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars. The Gathering sends fresh blood through the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. As in all Anne Enright’s work, fiction and non-fiction, this is a book of daring, wit and insight: her distinctive intelligence twisting the world a fraction, and giving it back to us in a new and unforgettable light.
Foolish Mortals by Jennifer Johnston
Hardback; 20 Euro / 29 USD / 14 UK; 250 pages [Add To Basket]
All families are complicated, but some are more complicated than others. And Christmas can only make matters worse. After Ciara's estranged father is nearly killed by his second wife in a car accident - or was it an accident? Ciara begins, gingerly, to reenter his life. As her troubled family gather for the holidays, is it too much to hope that they begin to find peace at last? Of course it is. With cross-dressing twins, new loves and an unpredictably monstrous matriarch, Christmas was never going to be easy. But it proves both more disastrous and happier than any of them could have guessed.
Creatures of the Earth: New and Selected Stories by John McGahern
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 28 Euro. Read Ireland Book Review Special Price: 22 Euro / 28 USD / 17 UK; 408 pages [Add To Basket]
When the collection was first published in 1992, the "Sunday Times" said 'there is a vivid pleasure to be had in the reading of these stories', while for Cressida Connolly in the "Evening Standard" 'these wonderful stories are sad and true...McGahern is undoubtedly a great short story writer'. Many of the stories here are already classics: "Gold Watch", "High Ground" and "Parachutes", among others. McGahern's spare, restrained yet powerfully lyrical language draws meaning from the most ordinary situations, and turns apparently undramatic encounters into profoundly haunting events: a man visits his embittered father with his new wife; an ageing priest remembers a funeral he had attended years before; a boy steals comics from a shop to escape the rain-bound melancholy of a seaside holiday; and an ageing teacher, who has escaped a religious order, wastes his life in a rural backwater that he knows he will never leave.
Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 26 Euro. Read Ireland Price: 21 Euro / 30 USD / 15 UK; 236 pages [Add To Basket]
'No matter what,' Julia had said, aware then of what was coming, 'let's always play cards.' And they did; for even with her memory gone, a little more of it each day — her children taken, her house, her flowerbeds, belongings, clothes — their games in the communal drawing room were a reality her affliction allowed.
A husband sits in Harry's Bar in Venice, thinking of his wife — lost to him now — whose plea has brought him back to one of their favourite haunts. On another table, a young couple quarrel. Cheating at Canasta is the title story of William Trevor's new collection, his first since the highly acclaimed A Bit on the Side (2004), and its themes of missed opportunities, the inevitability of change and the powerful but fragmentary quality of our memories are entirely characteristic of his unparalleled oeuvre.
Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne
Trade Paperback; 14 Euro / 19 USD / 10 UK; 400 pages [Add To Basket]
Twenty-first-century Dublin was chic, seductive, and affluent. At the glittering heart of the city is Anna Kelly Sweeney, a moderately successful writer, who lives in exclusive south Dublin with her wealthy property developer husband Alex and her son Rory. Thus insulated from harsh and unpleasant realities, Anna's life is spent in the endless round of launches, lunches and opening nights that makes up the city's literary scene. But Anna is not happy. Sensing the emptiness of her existence, she falls for the handsome but irresponsible Vincy and prepares to abandon home, husband and son for the dream of an all-conquering love. Anna's life is in crisis, and as events unfold, her sense of herself as both a woman and a writer is shattered. Self-consciously echoing and drawing on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's ambitious new novel uses the story of Anna as a critique of Irish society in the twenty-first century. Set largely in Dublin and Kerry, Ni Dhuibhne weaves Anna's story together with that of Leo, Kate, Gerry and a cast of other characters, to create a rich tapestry, a web of stories through which to explore, amongst other things, family and marriage, the materialism of Irish society and culture, the relationship between the urban and the rural, the role of the writer and of writing, and the search for purpose, meaning and spirituality in modern Irish life. Panoramic, strikingly original and compulsively readable, "Anna Kelly Sweeney" is a modern-day morality tale, an intelligent, funny, critical but always fiercely humane insight into contemporary Irish culture and society.
The Fifty Minute Mermaid by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, translated from the Irish by Paul Muldoon
Trade Paperback; 14 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 164 pages [Add To Basket]
This extravaganza of marvellous tales conjures a biography of mermaids and, in patterns of sometimes startling sounds and images, traces the fate of their race. It follows the paths and portals to another world, Land-Under-Wave, the realm of myth, imagination and the psyche. It is a book in touch and tune with the wellsprings of poetry.
Neither ‘believing nor disbelieving’, sometimes insouciant and always wideranging, The Fifty Minute Mermaid is a book of accumulating force and subtle consonance. Paul Muldoon’s generous surrender to Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s poems supports José Saramago’s adage that the author with his or her language creates a national literature. World literature is created by translators. (also available in hardback, priced at 20 Euro)
Somewhere the Wave: new poems by Derek Mahon with drawings and watercolours by Bernadette Kiely
Hardback; 120 Euro / 175 USD / 80 UK [Add To Basket]
Ten new poems – one of Derek Mahon’s ‘interim’ collections – conjure the world of Coleridge’s life, Brian Moore’s Belfast and the plays of Ibsen and Chekhov. They range from Italy to Goa to the American South. With the formal art of a master, they are sure to delight the author’s admirers. This handsome edition features pencil drawings and full colour reproductions of watercolours by Bernadette Kiely specially created in response to this new work. 500 copies are numbered and signed by the author. 450 copies only are for sale. Printed on Rives Artist and hardbound in linen with blind embossed title and in a Pergamenata wraparound. Somewhere the Wave is the second title in a new series. The first, The Riverbank Field by Seamus Heaney (and Martin Gale), was oversubscribed on publication. This book will be an instant collectors’ item and significantly increase in value.
36pp Hardback Publication date: 29 November 2007
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (aka John Banville)
Hardback; First Printing; First Edition; Signed: 50 Euro / 65 USD / 32 UK - (Also Available: Trade Paperback Edition; Unsigned 14 Euro) [Add To Basket]
The first novel in a compelling crime series based in Dublin from the pen of 2005 Man Booker Prize winner John Banville. In the Pathology Department it was always night. This was one of the things Quirke liked about his job . . . it was restful, cosy, one might almost say, down in these depths nearly two floors beneath the city’s busy pavements. There was too a sense here of being part of the continuance of ancient practices, secret skills, of work too dark to be carried on up in the light. But one night, late after a party, Quirke stumbles across a body that shouldn't have been there . . . and his brother-in-law, eminent paediatrician Malachy Griffin – a rare sight in Quirke's gloomy domain – altering a file to cover up the corpse's cause of death. It is the first time Quirke encounters Christine Falls, but the investigation he decides to lead into the way she lived – and the reason she died – disturbs a dark secret that has been festering at the core of Dublin's high Catholic society, a secret ready to destablize the very heart and soul of Quirke's own family . . .
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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