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Irish Emigrant Book Review, No.93 (Apr 2003)
When Twilight
Comes by Roger Derham
Roger Derham’s thriller is not a book to be read in an idle moment, nor
while distracted by sun or airport noises. The underlying theme of a mystical
secret from the East, a secret brotherhood dating from the dawn of time
and leading to the possibility of world control lies at the heart of the
intrigue. On a more topical and more easily assimilated level, the narrative
follows the fate of Michael Mara as his discovery of an organism which
will inhibit the development of cocaine threatens the livelihoods of some
of the world’s more unsavoury characters. On the one hand “When Twilight
Comes” operates on the level of a standard thriller with the usual ingredients
of subterfuge, kidnappings, high-tech equipment and violent deaths, while
on the other it explores the deeper meaning of life. This is undertaken
on a personal level, in the lives of Michael and his wife Caroline, and
on the universal level of the philosophy of the Voices, a series of seven
stones whose guardianship has been handed down through the centuries from
their dispersal from the mountain regions of Afghanistan. The importance
of these stones, or of that which is inscribed on each, is manifested
in the lengths to which some of the characters will go in order to gather
them all together. The one who is successful in harnessing the power of
The Voices, and we are left ultimately unsure as to this success, will
control time, that which is left when all else is destroyed. It is in
the intertwining of the two strands, the concrete world of the drugs industry
in the days preceding the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001,
and the metaphysical world of The Voices, that the author presents us
with a challenging task, but it is a task worth pursuing in this immensely
readable, if somewhat mystifying, novel.
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Terms and Conditions
by Peter Benjamin
The theme of Peter Benjamin’s novel, pharmaceutical espionage, has become
a popular one in contemporary thrillers. The world of the major drugs
companies is inextricably linked with that of high finance and it is where
the two meet that financial analyst Joe Grace finds himself caught up
in the greed and callousness that characterise much of the industry in
Benjamin’s portrayal. He has constructed his book in a series of very
short chapters, a device which adds to the increasingly fast pace of the
action. It’s not all shady characters and violence, however, as the romantic
involvement of Hanny is a subsidiary thread which exercises the mind of
Joe almost as much as the problem of keeping one step ahead of those who
are determined to put an end to him. It has to be said, however, that
there are one or two occasions when the Hanny-Joe subplot lacks credibility.
The storyline centres on the elusive cure for AIDS, with an ideological
research scientist disappearing and the search for him taking Joe across
two continents. In doing so the author has successfully illustrated the
divergent worlds of Wall Street high finance, the Chechen mafia of Moscow
and the altogether more laid back and comparatively secure world that
is Ireland at the beginning of the 21st century. Joe, Dublin-born but
a long-time resident of New York, is drawn into the search through financial
constraints, and the help he receives from one or two trusted colleagues
is in sharp contrast to the self-serving behaviour of other acquaintances.
And a personal slant is given to his quest both by the inclusion of a
brother affected by the disease and by one of his own, very vividly described,
experiences. This is a well-written and enjoyable insight into the murky
world of profit versus health.
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Allegations
of Love by Kevin Brophy
In this story of love and revenge Kevin Brophy appears to be setting out
a map of Galway with all the familiar names and places in an attempt to
preserve it before the developers change it forever. For the reader with
a knowledge of the city the details can be a distraction on the one hand,
but also serve to bring to life the love and torment of Dan Best whose
shattered life takes him to London before he settles back in his native
place. There is an underlying sadness to much of this novel, the sadness
of broken relationships, of illness and of death, and this is in stark
contrast to the warmth and promise of the relationship between the young
Dan and Jean, his first love. His reaction when this falls apart forces
Dan into exile, an exile in which he is rescued from despair and self
pity by Elizabeth, the woman he marries and who gives him his only daughter,
Beatrice. The structure of the novel sandwiches the London years between
Dan’s early life in Galway, a childhood spent looking after greyhounds
with his father, whom he idolised, and his return as a successful writer
who is told that he is terminally ill. It is this news that prompts him
to gain his revenge on the man on whom he blames all his troubles, and
a chance encounter with a young girl in the doctor’s surgery who has suffered
at the hands of the same man gives him the opening he is looking for.
It is to the credit of the author that the narrative does not descend
into triteness; rather Dan’s coming to self-knowledge, his reflection
on the way he has treated people and the way life has treated him, give
depth to what might have been a tale of little consequence. The characters,
both living and dead, are many-layered with both good and evil in all
of them, and Kevin Brophy has succeeded in bringing Dan, through a series
of startling revelations, to a kind of final contentment.
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The Orange Mocha-Chip
Frappucino Years by Paul Howard (Review by Fiola Foley)
Inspired no doubt by the success of his “Sunday Tribune” articles under
the same pseudonym of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, Paul Howard has extended his
articles to book magnitude and what results is an entertaining novel which
inadvertently turns a mocking finger on itself. Paul Howard’s (alias Ross
O’Carroll-Kelly) “The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappucino Years” could read like
your typical pool-side novel, or it could be taken more to heart. It has
all the literary genius of a children’s Ladybird book, but cannot be entirely
disregarded as Howard’s mockery of a social class in metropolitan Dublin
is far too smart. He gives us the option to delve deeper and read his
novel as a satiric mockery of an emerging youth in Ireland which lacks
the focus, individuality and motivation to achieve anything except riches.
Adapting a writing style similar to Irvine Welsh, with an onomatopoeiac
Dublin accent, Howard facilitates the readers’ recognition of the narrator,
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, a spoilt middle-to-upper class college drop-out,
stereotypical of his generation. Ross’s time is preoccupied with rugby,
female conquests, verbally and mentally abusing his parents, and making
money. Bored and self-obsessed, and constantly looking for diversion,
he shuns all responsibility except to himself and adding to his CD collection
(entirely comprising stolen CDs from each girl he has slept with). However
as the novel progresses we see a more mature Ross emerging, resulting
from a meeting with his ex-girlfriend Sorcha (for whom he still holds
a torch) and, eventually, a reconciliation with his parents. The humorous
dialectic of this novel will have you chuckling throughout, but do as
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly does, don’t take it too seriously.
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Maire Mhic Giolla
Íosa Beatháisnéis - by Ray Mac Mánais (Review
by Nollaig Ó Gadhra)
Ireland and Irish historical research has been fortunate to date in that
nearly all of our seven presidents since 1938 have had extensive autobiographical
or biographical material placed in the public arena. It is interesting,
too, that in the case of the first three presidents, Hyde, Ó Ceallaigh
and De Valera, the key publications about their lives were published in
the Irish language. This latest book about the current Uachtarán
na hÉireann, Professor Mary McAleese, is clearly in the same general
tradition, but it is different in that it concentrates on her younger
life and family background and stops abruptly as soon as she takes up
office. It is, therefore, something of a personal narrative about the
life and times of an outstanding member of the Belfast Catholic community
in the second half of the twentieth century who was intelligent, able
and ambitious and who used her brains and the democratic nature of the
UK educational system to reach the pinnacle of achievement in the conservative
law area at TCD and Queen’s University. The bright wee girl from Ardoyne
also had other advantages of course. Her wonderful parents, and the strong
family background of most Belfast Catholics, especially in those “minority”
communities who were struggling upwards but were under pressure. Ms McAleese
also had the advantage of being a person who seemed to be prepared to
try almost anything and see if she could make a go of it - from ladies’
football to broadcasting, even to engaging in politics, so why not be
President of Ireland? The great strength of this book by Ray Mac Mánais,
an Ardoyne man who became Irish language tutor to Mary McAleese once she
became President, is that the author had full access to the president
and to her private papers and diaries, and has had the ability to transfer
these into a brilliantly dynamic and readable account that is both reliable
and balanced. There may inevitably be a strong emphasis, as a result,
on family background and Mary McAleese’s youth. But in everything from
the account of her stormy romantic affairs to the way she organised her
election nomination effort within Fianna Fáil, the book has the
ring of truth and authenticity. Personally I found the account of her
turbulent times within RTÉ in the early 1980s, when the H-Block
hunger strikes had the nation in crisis, the most interesting because,
as an occasional participant in RTÉ current affairs programmes
myself I was aware of patterns and, to a lesser extent, the rows within
unions and interest groups in RTE. There are other themes in this book
also that will, no doubt, be of interest to the general public; the way
in which Ms McAleese became involved with the Catholic hierarchy in their
preparation for the New Ireland Forum in 1984, for example which, given
the recent controversies about the way the President received communion
in the Church of Ireland, must only lead us all to hope that she will
engage in the publication of a second volume in the future, covering her
period as Ireland’s First Citizen.
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The End of Irish
Catholicism? by D. Vincent Twomey SVD
The author, a teacher of moral theology at Maynooth, has set out to examine
the state of the Catholic Church in Ireland at the beginning of the 21st
century, a church which he describes in one context as “a minority in
an alien environment”. He examines the way in which the people of Ireland
more or less passively accepted the changes brought about by the Vatican
Council, changes which effectively “dismantled their own deeply cherished
version of Catholicism”. In doing so he also takes a sideswipe at the
members of the clergy, apparently without aesthetic taste, who altered
irrevocably the interiors of some fine churches. In examining a number
of possible causes of the perceived crisis in the Church in Ireland today,
D. Vincent Twomey cites the way in which Ireland lost its ability to celebrate
feast days, a loss brought about by the essentially Puritan ethos of the
Church in the 19th century. In doing so he gives a number of examples
of Continental celebrations of religious feast days which differ markedly
from the more low-key events in this country. Other contributory factors,
according to the author, are the unwieldy diocesan structure and the mostly
negative influence of the media, for whom he holds little respect. In
fact he states unequivocally that “the Irish media can be described as
the most hostile media in the developed world”. A further goal for the
Irish Church is the regaining of both its secular and divine voices, to
put forward its views “to address publicly the aimless drift of modern
Ireland” and “to forge the mother-tongue of the majority into a theological
idiom”. The worth of the Irish missionary movement, the resurrection of
the monastic ideal and the establishment of a mature relationship between
Church and State are all put forward by Vincent Twomey as essentials in
the saving of the Irish Catholic Church for future generations. In an
Appendix he examines the role of theology in Ireland, a country without
a theological tradition and whose education system still lacks a basic
grounding in the subject. In relation to this he also deplores the abandonment
of the teaching of the classics in our schools, depriving any future seminarians
of a basis for their studies. And the reduction in the number of seminarians
he attributes to a crisis of faith rather than a crisis of vocations.
Vincent Twomey has covered a wide range of topics in his search for an
answer to the question of the title, and at times seems preoccupied with
the downside of the Church in Ireland, but this attitude is belied by
his introduction, in which he states, “Today’s crisis, I am convinced,
will in time yield a new flowering of Church life in a new environment,
that of modern Ireland...”. He has also achieved one of his main aims
in writing this book, to provoke debate and discussion, which it undoubtedly
will.
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The Irish Women’s
Movement by Linda Connolly
In her comprehensive guide to the women’s movement in Ireland, “from Revolution
to Devolution”, Linda Connolly covers the entire spectrum from the “first
wave” feminism of the late nineteenth and early 20th century with such
luminaries as Constance Markievicz and Louie Bennett, to the establishment
of Women’s Studies Programmes in our universities during the 1980s and
1990s and the current debate as to the preferability of gender studies
or equality studies. The establishment of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association
and the Irish Housewives Association led on to the more politically involved
“second wave” feminist movement of the 1970s, with the Irish Women’s Liberation
Movement and the First Commission on the Status of Women, set up by the
then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, in 1970. The success of this period in the
Irish feminist movement was influenced by the amount of media coverage
it attracted, in particular an appearance on the Late Late Show and the
extensive publicity given to the “contraceptive train”. One of the conclusions
reached by the author is that the success of the feminist movement has
impacted more strongly in practical solutions to situations such as physical
and sexual abuse and the availability of contraception, but in gathering
together all the strands of the story she has left the way open for further
study and discussion. A total of seventy-seven pages comprising Appendices,
a Bibliography and an Index attests to the meticulous research undertaken
by Linda Connolly in the writing of this volume.
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Journeying Towards
Reconciliation by Ruth Patterson
Using stories from Scripture as her basis, Ruth Patterson has set out
a programme of prayer and meditation to serve as a guide to the people
of the North on their path to reconciliation. The author was the first
woman in Ireland to be ordained and is the director of Restoration Ministries.
This work has given her an insight into the difficulties experienced by
those attempting to achieve peace in their own lives, and prompted the
writing of this book. In an early chapter she says, “There is a silent
scream rising from the heart of this island that needs to be voiced, heard,
named and acknowledged” and it is this she is trying to address to lead
the way to reconciliation within the individual and with the broader world.
The book has an introduction by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and is interspersed
with inspirational poems, prayers and songs to underline the message in
each chapter.
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Readers Digest
Illustrated Guide to Ireland
This updated edition of the 1992 publications makes a perfect introduction
to the attractions of Ireland as a place to visit, rather than providing
detailed information. Covering the entire country in its 350 pages and
with an extensive array of photographs, the book is easily navigable given
its detailed index and thumbnail descriptions of interesting sites. A
typical example would be the entry for the area around Lough Derg in Tipperary
which features a map, four photographs, descriptions of some of the notable
venues in the area and a short list of other places of interest. The page
also includes a short paragraph on noted physicist and Nenagh native J.D.
Bernal, and this particular feature, on a person or artefact associated
with the area, is common to many of the sections. Though most of the photographs
have survived the intervening years since the first publication, some
appear a little dated, particularly the picture of Traveller children
in a gaily painted wagon and the shawled women of the Aran Islands. However
this is a minor criticism of a volume which will appeal to both resident
and visitor for its succinct information and variety of photographs.
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Values &
Ethics Ed. Harry Bohan & Gerard Kennedy
This is a collection of lectures delivered at the 2002 conference held
at the Céifin Centre, an international centre for Social Change
based in County Clare. Chaired by John Quinn, the conference heard from
Bishop Willie Walsh on the loss of trust which has emerged from the findings
of the tribunals and the revelations of clerical abuse, and his belief
that both Church and State must make a new beginning to rebuild that loss.
Former athlete Gerard Hartmann, whose career was cut short by an accident,
talks of the need for heroes in the lives of each one of us, and Harvard
Professor Robert Putnam emphasises the compelling need for connectiveness
in our lives, for both our spiritual and physical wellbeing. Other contributors
are Tony Fahey, Lorna Gold and John and Peter Abbott.
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The Colour
of Rain by Alex Skalding
In this “quest” story for ten to fourteen-year-olds Alex Skalding has
combined mystery, adventure and humour into an absorbing tale. The six
intrepid children who attend the same school in County Cork live in a
world of changing climate and the ultimate horror of a total lack of colour.
They have to travel to the Faery World to collect the seven colours of
the rainbow, a series of journeys fraught with danger from monsters, ancient
peoples and animals. Bull Sheehan narrates the story as he and Samuel
Kitangiri, Mickey Malone, Kegs Murphy, James Kirby, Cissy Hourihan and
Sheevra Devine set out on their quest. The book is also peopled with a
range of delightfully eccentric characters including a television commentator
known as Katie Allteeth and Puffer Penhaligan, the mysterious man from
Cornwall who directs the gathering of the colours. While the storyline
follows the convention of supernatural mysteries, a modern note is struck
by the vital part played by mobile phones and in the way in which the
author has captured the essence of the language used by children in the
21st century. The codes and spells, the journeys and obstacles have been
illustrated throughout the book and in a series of Appendices, giving
“The Colour of Rain” an appeal beyond the stated age range of the reader.
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The Big Brother
by Stephanie Dagg
Part of the Panda Series for beginner readers, “The Big Brother” addresses
the difficulties posed when a new baby arrives into the family. But interestingly
Stephanie Dagg has focused on young Dara’s worries that he won’t know
how to be a big brother, and the book recounts his efforts to learn before
the baby is born. With amusing illustrations by Alan Clark and a puzzle
to solve, this is a book which will be both helpful and entertaining for
young children.
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Just Joshua
by Jan Michael
Herself no stranger to being different, owing to her parents’ peripatetic
lifestyle, Jan Michael has written a perceptive story for older children
which explores the nature of difference and the effect it has on both
adult and child. Joshua lives in a small village where all the men are
fishermen except his father, who is the village butcher. This is one factor
that sets him apart from his peers but there is also an underlying suspicion
that his father is hiding an even more drastic difference, an affinity
with the “mountain” men rather than his fellow-villagers on the coast.
Although in an African setting, the story is universal in its treatment
of prejudice, ignorance and fear which lead to great sadness but ultimately
to an acceptance by Joshua that it is possible to retain one’s difference
and still be accepted as a member of the community. This is a sensitive
handling of a difficult subject for many young people in Ireland today.
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