Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 412 - 26/27 April 2008
New Irish Fiction and Poetry
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 300 pages
I once lived among humankind, and found them in their generality to be cruel and cold, and yet could mention the names of three or four that were like angels. I suppose we measure the importance of our days by those few angels we spy among us . . .’
Roseanne McNulty, perhaps nearing her 100th birthday - no one is quite sure - faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital where she’s spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene. This relationship, guarded but trusting after so many years, intensifies and complicates as Dr Grene mourns the death of his wife.
Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges - of Roseanne’s family in 1930s Sligo - is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne’s story becomes an alternative, secret, history of Ireland. Exquisitely written, it is the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.
Taking Pictures by Anne Enright
Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 220 pages [Add To Basket]
The stories in "Taking Pictures" are snapshots of the body in trouble: in denial, in extremis, in love. Mapping the messy connections between people - and their failures to connect - the characters are captured in the grainy texture of real life: freshly palpable, sensuous and deeply flawed. From Dublin to Venice, from an American college dorm to a holiday caravan in France, these are stories about women stirred, bothered, or fascinated by men they cannot understand, or understand too well. Enright's women are haunted by children, and by the ghosts of the lives they might have led - lit by new flames, old flames, and flames that are guttering out.A woman's one night stand is illuminated by dreams of a young boy on a cliff road, another's is thwarted by a swarm of somnolent bees. A pregnant woman is stuck in a slow lift with a tactile American stranger, a naked mother changes a nappy in a hotel bedroom, and waits for her husband to come back from the bar.
These are sharp, vivid stories of loss and yearning, of surrender to responsibilities or to unexpected delight; all share the unsettling, dislocated reality, the subversive wit and awkward tenderness that have marked Anne Enright as one of our most thrillingly gifted writers. (Also available in hardback at 20 Euro)
Forgive & Forget by Patricia Scanlan
Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 394 pages
What happens when ex husbands start to fancy their first wives again? Can first wives forgive and forget when their husband has done the dirty on them? Connie Adams has to make choices. The lead up to her daughter's wedding has been utterly fraught. Debbie is absolutely adamant that she does not want her father, Barry, his glamorous second wife, Aimee or her stepsister, Melissa to attend. Barry is equally adamant that they will. But as Connie and Barry join forces to get things sorted sparks begin to fly...Few weddings go as planned especially when there is tension between families and the events that occur at this particular wedding will have far reaching repercussions that will leave their mark for years to come.
Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern
Trade Paperback – Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 375 pages [Add To Basket]
Lose yourself in the magical new novel from Cecelia Ahern - the No.1 bestselling author of PS, I Love You How can you know someone you've never met? Joyce Conway remembers things she shouldn't. She knows about tiny cobbled streets in Paris, which she has never visited. And every night she dreams about an unknown little girl with blonde hair. When she leaves hospital after a terrible accident, with her life and her marriage in pieces, Joyce moves back in with her elderly father. All the while, a strong sense of deja vu is overwhelming her and she can't figure out why! Justin Hitchcock is divorced, lonely and restless. He arrives in Dublin to give a lecture on art and meets attractive doctor Sarah, who persuades him to donate blood. It's the first thing to come straight from his heart in a long time. When Justin receives a basket of muffins with a note simply saying thank you,he is sure someone is playing a trick on him. But then a series of gifts begin to arrive. Intrigued and disturbed, Justin is determined to find out who is sending them. What he discovers will change his life forever.
Orpheus Rising by Colin Bateman
Large Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 376 pages
Michael Ryan was the author of a runaway bestseller, Space Coast", but its publication coincided with his wife's murder in a bank raid. Now he's back to face the ghosts of his past.Michael met Claire when she was dragging Paul de Luca, detective novel writer and owner of a porn shop, out of the sea after he'd lost his feet in a shark attack. Claire was living with local hard man Tommy, a Gulf War vet, at the time and Tommy was not impressed with Michael's interest in his girl. When Tommy leaves town to be a roadie for a band playing a six week stint on a cruise ship, Michael falls in love with Claire, they marry and he writes his novel. But then Claire is killed in the bank raid. Ten years later Michael returns to the scene of the crime to exorcise the ghosts of the past and try to write his second novel. But he discovers the grim truth behind his wife's murder and encounters the strangest of small-town behaviour...
Pusakis at Paros and other Stories by Miriam Gallagher
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 156 pages [Add To Basket]
From the magic of Greece, the wild Irish coastline and the excitement of Manhattan, characters meet and pass with unexpected consequences against the landscape of a world where cats roam, snakes slide and kestrels soar. Against the glittering blue backdrop of the Aegean, Nina's farmhouse in Greece brings more than she dreamed of, while on the island of Paros holidaymakers taste the joys of friendship, meet the pusakis, and savour the promise of a return visit. Further west, in an elegant house in Dublin, a new romance provides the menu for a special lunch as two friends exchange intimacies. Meanwhile, coastal improvements in Ireland's Co. Mayo cause excitement - and create unseen consequences - for the locals when they form a committee to plan their future prosperity. And even further, on the other side of the Atlantic, Angela relives her adventures in the Big Apple in the wake of Nine-Eleven, while Marsha discovers that an Easter break with her friends in New England has summoned nothing less than the snakes of Cotton Hollow. Miriam Gallagher's stories invite the reader into a wonderland infused with an almost primeval magic, where, playing out against backdrops both rural and urban, the complexities of modern relationships take on a shape which is, in turns, sharply comedic and gloriously tender.
The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories by Brian J. Showers
Hardback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 150 pages [Add To Basket]
The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories infests the author's Dublin neighbourhood with an authentic population of ghosts, ghouls and goblins. Brian J. Showers has filled each story with fascinating regional history, local atmosphere and architectural details that are clearly visible today. While this gives the stories a factual flavour, the supernatural twists and turns are entirely fictional. The result is a realistic yet deliciously spooky portrait of a neighbourhood that many in Dublin know well.
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 8 UK; 292 pages [Add To Basket]
One of the most vivid and realised characters of recent fiction, Willie Dunne is the innocent hero of Sebastian Barry's highly acclaimed novel. Leaving Dublin to fight for the Allied cause as a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, he finds himself caught between the war playing out on foreign fields and that festering at home, waiting to erupt with the Easter Rising. Profoundly moving, intimate and epic, A Long Long Way charts and evokes a terrible coming of age, one too often written out of history. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2005.
At a Time Like This by Catherine Dunne
Paperback; 10 Euro / 15 USD / 7 UK; 270 pages [Add To Basket]
Four women gather to celebrate their friendship. A quarter-century of intimacies shared, betrayals survived, differences reconciled. There is Claire, with her unsuitable men; she knows that life will never give her the one thing she has always wanted. Nora, the perfect housewife, has kept something hidden from her friends for over twenty-five years. Maggie has been unhappily married to Ray for longer than she cares to remember. And then there is Georgie, feisty and opinionated, who has had her own way more than is good for her. But tonight, the complex web of spouses, lovers and secrets that has bound them all together is about to unravel. And one of the four women plans not to be there. At a Time Like This, things can never be the same again ... "Dunne is such a gifted storyteller that she credibly recreates a world that pulls the reader in deep ..." - "Evening Herald".
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Paperback; 10 Euro / 15 USD / 7 UK; 256 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. Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2007.
The Poet’s Chair: The First Nine Years of the Ireland Chair of Poetry: John Montague, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Paul Durcan, with a foreword by Seamus Heaney
Large Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 8 UK; 264 pages [Add To Basket]
Celebrating nearly a decade of the Ireland Chair of Poetry, The Poet's Chair brings together public lectures given by the first three Ireland Professors of Poetry, John Montague, Nuala Ni Dhomnhaill and Paul Durcan, during their time in tenure.
From the challenge of translation and a turbulent Turkish odyssey to a vignette of literary Dublin during the early Sixties and incisive analysis of the work of Anthony Cronin, Michael Hartnett and Harry Clifton, this collection highlights the intellectual strength and diversity of Ireland's poetic elite and affirms the reputation of the Ireland Chair of Poetry as a vibrant and flourishing arena for the best thinkers of the island.
John Montague, the first holder of the Chair in 1998, is a poet and a highly regarded critic and prose writer. Nuala Ni Dhomnhaill, who held the post from 2001 to 2003, is a champion of the Irish language and has been widely translated into English by her peers. Paul Durcan, third holder of the chair, is a unique voice in Irish poetry as well as a skilled broadcaster and prose writer.
The Poet's Chair includes a Foreword by Seamus Heaney based on his remarks on the occasion of the first appointment, and an explanatory Afterword by Sir Donnell Deeny, founding chairman of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust.Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
Gregory Carr, Independent 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