Read Ireland Book Reviews, October 2000

The Whole Hog by Aidan Higgins
Donkey’s Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of these remarkable memoirs, of which this book now completes the Higgins Bestiary. This spirited and quirky penman has always set himself apart from the general grind of Irish writing and its set themes, to run along the line of the exposed nerve-system. No other Irish writer has been so obsessed with the terrain inconnu of lost or thwarted love as this odd-man-out. From salad love with Molly Cushen, to Philippa Phillips in the dunes, to a young American wife in Spain at the time of the Bay of Pigs, or a divorcee in Copenhagen, a tax inspectress in London, the Jacaranda Street tease in Johannesburg, the mirth is barely contained

A Message from Heaven: The Life and Crimes of Father Sean Fortune by Ailson O’Connor
When Father Sean Fortune committed suicide in March 1999, he left behind a poem that he had titled: A Message from Heaven to My Family. He also left behind many victims. Not least among these were eight young men who had come forward and made statements to the police about their sexual abuse. His death at the start of his trial meant that they will now forever remain the ‘alleged victims’ of Father Sean Fortune. On the long list of Irish paedophile priests Father Fortune occupies a pre-eminent position. Sexual abuse of children was his worst crime, but far from his only one. A master manipulator, capable of incredible charm, he left a trail of destruction in his wake. He lied, cheated, bullied and abused. He loved the limelight. His cunning kept him one step ahead of the pack. Some of his activities were so bizarre as to make them incredible. This book is the complete story.

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Black Cat’s Tales by Liam O Murchu
Following the best-selling memoir, Black Cat in the Window, the author returns to the emotional terrain of childhood, friends and relations, and religion. Then he flies the coop to a job in Dublin, the ever-intriguing world of public service, houses and neighbours. The reader is led to recognisable places with significant characters such as Yawl by the sea, special agent St. Anthony, Gerry the special bird, and Tiny, the giant of the Garretts. The author writes about these people as one of them, relating the high points of their threatened but tenacious odyssey. Later the slums and lanes are left for the upwardly-mobile world of middle-class moralities and notions. Here are the busy self-righteous, such as Mr. Crumm and his tap-mites, and innocents such as the young widower who fails to recognise his dead wife’s sister’s love for him until it is too late. Sharp, funny, sometimes unsettling, the author conjures up the past with convincing dialogue, wit and acute description. This is an intimate and sensitive portrayal of other people’s lives with their ambiguities and certainties, their comedy and tragedy.

Aloys Fleischmann (1910-92): A Life for Music in Ireland Remembered by Contemporaries edited by Ruth Fleischmann
Aloys Fleischmann was at the centre of music in Cork for over fifty years. He was a composer, professor of music, conductor, scholar and provider of classical music for his city. Of German origin, he grew up in two cultures in a decisive period of Ireland’s development. He spent two years doing postgraduate studies in Germany in the early 1930s; his experience of the ominous political and rich cultural life of Munich strengthened his desire to return to Ireland and help create a more vigorous and specifically Irish cultural life in the small city in which he was brought up. In this book many people describe aspects of Fleischmann’s work and the man as only they knew him. The articles include assessments of his thirty-year research project: Sources of Irish Traditional Music, of his compositions and of his writings on music education; former members of the Cork Symphony Orchestra and the Cork Ballet Company and participants in and organisers of the Cork Choral Festival write with humour and affection about the joys and crises involved with working with him; composers, performers, graduates, university colleagues, friends and family give accounts of the musician, the skilful campaigner, the gifted teacher, the troublesome employee, the selfless, kindly, often absent-minded and somewhat eccentric friend and relative.

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The Other Side of the Rainbow by Maire Brennan
Raised in County Donegal, Maire began her musical career with family band, Clannad, a venture that has earned her an array of hits, successful film scores and enviable collaborations over the last twenty years. Along with her sister, Enya, and the other members of Clannad, Maire has always fiercely guarded her privacy and, although the personal life of this remarkable artist was material for tabloid speculation in the early 1980s, she has valued the fact that her private life has largely remained distinct from her public persona. Now, with this compelling autobiography, she reveals her full story. The book is both charming and harrowing, intriguing and inspiring. Much more than a behind the scenes account of the rise of Clannad and Maire Brennen, this book is a story of a talented Irish family, the excesses of fame, the loss of self, and the hope of true love.

One Voice: My Life in Song by Christy Moore
Christy Moore is unquestionably one of Ireland’s finest and best-loved singers. At the heart of his unique autobiography are the lyrics of some 250 songs from Christy’s repertoire and career. He began writing down the lyrics of those songs most important to him and then alongside each one described their significance and the memories they evoked. Exploring different times and themes, he has woven together reflections and stories from every period of his life. Christy writes with the integrity, humour, warmth and passion which so characterise him as a performer. There is a rare honesty to his descriptions of the soaring highs and terrible lows he has experienced in his career, and an acute awareness of the pitfalls of fame. The many stories here are funny, touching and wonderfully candidabout his childhood, music, the people he has encountered, family, times on the road and off the road, his drinking days, and sobriety. His decision to retire from live performing is clearly understood from the frank and revealing diary pieces. The memories go where the songs lead him, and together they make up a vivid, extraordinary and absorbing insight into the life of a man who many regard as Ireland’s greatest musical icon.

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No Time for Innocence by Lee Dunne
Lee Dunne has spent most of his adult life as a writer. He burst to fame in the mid-sixties with his novel, Goodbye to the Hill. In this book he recalls his youth in Dublin, his overwhelming need to escape, his adventures abroad, including a hilarious stint as a ship’s steward, and his sudden celebrity as a novelist. But just as everything was coming up roses for him, he began a slow descent into alcoholism. His marriage broke up and his life gradually began to fall apart just when he should have been enjoying his greatest success. The book recalls all this without self-pity and with a wry self-understanding. It ends in the mid-1970s when the author, remembering a man well met on a Dalkey film set, makes a phone call which will help him turn his life around. This is a story of adventure, escape, success, disasterand salvation just in the nick of time.

William J. Walsh: Archbishop of Dublin, 1841-1921 by Thomas Morrissey SJ
Archbishop Walsh was the most publicly visible ecclesiastic in the Irish Church in the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century. In his many books and frequent letters to the newspapers he ranged over a wide area. Among other issues, he wrote on politics, economics, monetary matters, education, social questions, language, music, canon law, and theology. Walsh’s most important achievements were in his contribution to the consolidation of the modern Irish political system between 1885 and 1891: to land reform the cumulative effect of the Irish Land Acts between 1885 and 1910 owed much both to his analytical mind and his remarkable tenacity; and to education in its different levels but especially to his part in solving the University question. All his varied achievements as noted in this book which, taken in their entirety, were quite astounding. But his essential greatness is to be found in his determined quest for equality, without which, he understood, there was no dignity, or justice, or real freedom for the Irish people.

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Seaweed Monsters: In the Jaws of the Sea by Heinrich Becker
This book is a collection of stories and folklore about seaweed and its culture. For generations the people on the coastal fringes of Connaught have depended on seaweed for their livelihood. The harvest of this played a central role in their day-to-day existence. This collection of stories is told by the seaweed gatherers themselves in the 1930s and 1940s. It is an authentic record of the characteristics of a people whose way of life now exists mainly in memory. Disputes, laughter, death, drink, fairies, ghosts, mermaids, taboos and trickery all contributed to the culture of a people who lived at the mercy of the sea.

The Most Beautiful Villages of Ireland by Christopher Fitz-Simon
The most beautiful villages of Ireland are stunningly portrayed here in the author’s sensitive commentaries and Hugh Palmer’s remarkable photographs. Following the divisions of the four ancient provinces of Ireland, this book is a journey full of rural gems, some famous, others less so. Here are the coloured coastal villages of Cork, their vibrant houses sloping down to a sea which so many of their inhabitants crossed to found other communities in the United States; here are the stunning medieval churches of Roscommon and Galway; here, too, are the villages of Antrim, standing ruggedly in defiance of the northern sea. Complete with a practical guide to the most important markets, hotels, restaurants and historic sites of Ireland, this book is an unparalleled portrayal of the pastoral beauty of one of the most attractive countries in Europe. Contains 258 colour illustrations.

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Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition and Control by Dominic Bryan
This book is the first major study to single out the Orange Order for close scrutiny. The author explains why Orange parades are such a prominent feature of ethnic politics in Northern Ireland. He examines the structure and politics of the Orange Order, the development of loyalist bands, the role of social class in Unionist politics, and the anthropology of ritual itself. He takes as a starting point the controversy over the Drumcree Church parade in Portadown, and asks how a march of about 800 men can assume such importance. He then relates the current dispute over the right to march to the structure and historical development of Orangeism in Northern Ireland, and looks at the changing ways in which the parade rituals have been exploited or co-opted by specific groups and politicians at different periods. Particular attention is paid to the importance of the parades in the development of a Protestant ethnic identity in a community divided by both denomination and class. He concludes that parades are complex events which draw together diverse Protestant groups with equally diverse political and economic interests. This book is a fascinating study.

The Hidden Famine: Hunger, Poverty and Sectarianism in Belfast by Christine Kinealy and Gerard Mac Atasney
This is the first book to examine in detail the repercussions of the Famine in Belfast. Many historians maintain that, because Belfast was a thriving industrial base with a largely Protestant population, the impact of the Great Hunger in the north was minimal. Drawing on a wealth of original research, the authors challenge this view. The begin with an examination of Belfast prior to 1845, especially the poorest classes within the town. They assess the official response to the crisis by the British government, the response by the Protestant Churches in England and Ireland, and the part played by the local administration in Ulster. They examine the impact on Belfast of the 1849-50 cholera epidemic, the town’s recovery after the Famine, and the emergence of a new form of sectarianism among the business and landed classes.

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Celtic Theology: Humanity, World and God in Early Irish Writings by Thomas O’Loughlin
This book’s aim is to draw out some features of the ‘local theology’ as seen in some of the most famous Celtic authors and texts of the first millennium. It examines the theological framework within which St. Patrick presented his experience and looks at how the Celtic lands of Ireland and Wales developed a distinctive view of sin, reconciliation and Christian law which they later exported to the rest of western Christianity. It looks at writers like Adomnan of Iona and at Muirchu, who reflected on the meaning of the conversion of his people two centuries earlier. It surveys how they approached liturgy, sacred time and the Last Things. While aimed primarily at those interested in Christianity in Celtic lands, this book also fills a long-standing gap in the history of early medieval theology in the west.

A Dublin Memoir by Vincent Flood
This book is a short history of an ordinary ‘five-eight’ and his family, seen through the eyes of a child. Those joyful early years with grandparents and eccentric aunts, who in their own different way, contributed to making his childhood so wonderful. Those hungry war years, the pain of separation from his father, living conditions that were far from ideal. The unpleasant school days, where everyone suffered the same fate. A strong resilient mother, who in spite of the many ups and downs of life, managed to stay the Course, but only just. The scourge of T.B. that threatened, once again, to rob him of his birthright, that were all part of growing up in Dublin, during and after the last war.

The Golfer’s Guide to Ireland by Dermot Gilleece
This book is the most comprehensive guide to the golf courses of Ireland in existence. It includes easy-to-read summaries of 300 18-hole golf courses in Ireland complete with full directions on how to find them. It reviews over 80 golf courses by Ireland’s leading golf correspondent. It includes and introduction to golfing highlights and places of interest in the 32 Irish counties, as well as comprehensive information on where to stay, eat and drink close to each golf course. There is also a recommended itinerary of golf courses to play in Ireland which is ideal for planning and organising the perfect golfing visit to Ireland.

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The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism by Robert Kee
Ranging from the Protestant Plantations, through Wolfe Tone and the Great Famine, to the founding of the Fenian Movement and the Irish Free State, Robert Kee’s definitive, authoritative and comprehensive history of Irish Nationalism is masterly in its detail and judicious analysis. A classic in its field, this is an essential work for anyone attempting to understand the complex historical forces that have shaped Ireland.

Different Kinds of Loving by Kathleen Sheehan O’Connor
This novel is an engrossing, compelling story of misplaced and obsessional love. The long planned marriage of Sarah, eldest daughter of the Dunne family, is an occasion of joy, but behind the celebrations Patsy, her youngest sister, hides a secret love and deep passion. The setting of the novel swings from the beautiful countryside of Ireland’s south-east coast to the streets of London and the deserts of Kuwait. It is a story of human weakness, of pain and deception, or triumph over tragedy.

Them and Us: The Irish at Cheltenham by John Scally
This book is a behind-the-scenes look at the role played by the Irish in the world’s favourite race meeting, as jockeys, punters and trainers share their insights and humour. The book tells the stories of some of racing’s greatest champions and features exclusive interviews with trainers and jockeys. Specially revised to include a comprehensive review of the Millennium Festival, including Istabraq’s dramatic and historic victory, the book is packed full of reminiscences about memorable races and is essential reading for both Irish and non-Irish racing fans.

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The Gingerbread Woman by Jennifer Johnston
On a rainy afternoon on Killiney Hill, a young man walking, without his overcoat, happens upon a woman gazing out over Dublin bay, humming Shubert, standing perilously close to the edge. From their rather testy encounter develops a remarkable friendship which will enable each to face afresh their very different damaged pasts, and to look, however tentatively, towards the future. Clara speaks often to, and worries about, her mother, the jam maker, who irritates, yet also deeply affects her. Equally preoccupying are her emotional entanglementsperhaps rather foolish at her age. Lar, who has left the North, but cannot put his huge grief behind him, speaks only reluctantly to his parents: his pain is too great for words, for family. Jennifer Johnston, one of Ireland’s finest and most distinguished novelists, has written a wonderful portrait of two uncompromising individuals, of the loves they have lost, and of the troubled bond between parents and children.

Crazy Man Michael by Jim Lusby
The book is the fourth in the McCadden detective series. It centers around the Irish Minister for Justice who is about to reform the Murder Squad, an elite unit with exclusive responsibility for investigating homicides throughout the Irish state. Its first case is expected to centre on a cluster of unsolved murders of women, and DI Carl McCadden, currently stationed at Waterford, is hotly tipped to lead the new unit. Unfortunately, in the weeks leading up to this prestigious assignment an old acquaintance, an undercover copy named Rookie Wallace, turns up on McCadden’s patch in a bad state and with a bizarre storyand with the Special Branch on his tail. It’s obvious that he has stumbled into some heavy stuff, particularly when the official line turns out to be that Wallace has gone rogue, and thrown his lot in with the villains he was supposed to be infiltrating.

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Atalanta by Fred Johnston
This novel by a prominent Irish poet casts a magic spell of music and mythical love. It is meticulously crafted with taut prose and a pulsating story. The story focuses on a small town in Northern Ireland. Before the chill finger of the province’s violence touches the quiet fishing village of Ardreagh, life goes on, complete with Orange marches, as it has done for generations. But a storm is gathering. A bomb changes the village, and a local teenager’s fantasy world, forever.

Table Talk: Oscar Wilde edited by Thomas Wright
This book is the very first collection of Oscar Wilde’s spoken stories to appear in English. It contains unfamiliar tales, fascinating versions of Wilde’s famous plays and printed stories, and translations of several tales originally recorded in French. From letters, interviews and various other sources, the editor has painstakingly compiled this unique collection of previously unavailable material. Some of the stories are comic anecdotes and tales of fantasy based on Irish folk legends; others are audacious adaptations of Biblical tales. All are animated by Wilde’s irrepressible energy and sense of wonder, woven out of his powerful intelligence and his endlessly inventive imagination.

The Feng-Shui Junkie by Brian Gallagher
This is an amusing first-novel about relationships set in contemporary Dublin. A lemon-yellow Wonderbra is the last thing Julie expects to find hanging on the inside doorknob of her Dublin flat when she returns early from holiday. The evidence is clear: Ronan, her husband, is having an affair. Fuelled by anger, despair and drink, Julie embarks on a campaign of detection and revenge. Her first victim is Ronan’s beloved Porsche. Then, after she has identified the lovely golden-haired Nicole as her rival, a clandestine visit to her house not only provides useful information but ample opportunity to vent her wrath. An unexpected turn of events throws Julie and Nicole together.

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Broken Biscuits Don’t Count by Anne Schulman
Emma Green has it all: A luxurious Dublin city-centre apartment, a company car, a challenging job and an even more challenging credit card bill. A loving father, a group of quirky friends and a six-year-old romance keep her social life buzzing. Best friend and confidante Jo has moved to London but they deal with that by e-mailing each other regularly. Emma has the Celtic Tiger firmly in her grasp then it turns tail and bites her.

The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
In this novel we meet Rebecca Bloomwood. She’s a journalist. She spends her working life telling others how to manage their money. She spends her leisure time shopping. Retail therapy is the answer to all her problems. She knows she should stop, but she can’t. She tries cutting back, she tries making more money. But neither seems to work. The stories she concocts become more and more fantastic as she tries to untangle her increasingly dire financial difficulties. Her only comfort is to buy herself something. Follow her adventures as she tries to escape from this dreamworld, find true love, and regain use of her credit cards.

Shaken & Stirred by Colette Caddle
Businessman Doug Ryan had everything under controlbut he didn’t have a heart attack on his agenda. When it happens, his is not the only like shaken up. Pamela, his ambitious wife, lives in a perfect world. It is thrown into chaos when his illness stirs up new emotions and leads him to question his life and their future. Gina Barrett gets that promotion. Life could be blissif she could find a man who understood the meaning of the word ‘commitment’. Susie Clarke is over the moon when she lands the job of her dreamsexcept that she’s nineteen, pregnant, with the father fast becoming a distant memory.

That Girl From Happy by Judy May Murphy
Janie Jay Kelly has gone. Aimee, Sammy, Fat Molly and Boots are left at Happyeach with a void to fill. Against a backdrop of city life, the author, a native Dubliner, paints a fluorescent, tangy, grown-up alternative to the Wizard-of-Oz. Through a mixture of flashback, drunken revelation and confession, this book sweeps the reader along in a whirlwind of obsession, insecurities and gritty zest.

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Ellie by Jackie Mills
This is a funny and poignant thriller-cum-love-story. Ellie is facing her forties with a son who’s being bullied, a job that’s under threat, an ex-husband who calls her on the sly and elderly relatives rattling around the crumbling pile vainly trying to stay warm. When her boss is found hanging from the light fixture in his office, the local council decides to close the Blessed Oliver Plunkett Library where Ellie works and re-deploys its staff to other branch libraries. The council, however, has underestimated the resistance it will face from the local, mainly geriatric community. As the elder fight to save their library, Ellie learns to take a stand on the things that matter in her own life.

Celtic Saints: Passionate Wanderers by Elizabeth Rees
Throughout the Celtic world the legacy of the Celtic Saints remains visible today. Churches, place-names, carved inscriptions, healing wells and local traditions all stand as testament to those men and women who helped to establish the Christian Church. Using archaeological evidence and literary sources, the author presents the fascinating stories of some of the best known of the Celtic saintsSt Patrick and St Brigit in Ireland, St David in Wales, St Columba in Scotland and St Aidan and St Cuthbert in Northumbriaas well as those of lesser-known monks and nuns, missionaries and martyrs. From St Michael’s Mount, and the Kerry coast in the south-west of Ireland, through Wales with its great monastery of Llanilltud Fawr, to Iona and Lindisfarne in the north, the author traces the journeys of these early Christians, exploring the sites where they chose to live, pray and preachdramatic headlands, sheltered valleys, forest clearings, healing springs and peaceful lakeshores. Much of this landscape still remains, especially in the remoter parts of Britain and Ireland. In exploring these sites, the Celtic saints of legend are brought vividly to life and their continuing legacy is revealed.

Chronicle of Celtic Folk Customs by Brian Day
This book is a definitive guide to the Celtic folk customer of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. It encompasses details of every folk customer throughout the year. It features current Celtic folk festivals, including dates, starting times and directions.

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The Irish Ringfort by Matthew Stout
This book examines all aspects of the Irish ringfortstheir shape and size, their date and function with special attention to national distribution patterns. Reference to contemporary written sources brings to the fore the people who dwelt within ringforts and their relationship with neighbouring farmsteads and religious communities. This study focuses on the lives and material remains of people who are often neglected in historical studiesthe men and women who were not the kings and saints of official history. The book presents, for the first time, the newly available all-Ireland database of ringforts compiled by the Archaeological Surveys of the Office of Public Works and Heritage Society. Nation-wide patterns are illustrated through a re-examination of earlier studies. What emerges is a consistent pattern of settlement which illuminates aspects of Early Christian society, especially the relationship between individuals of varying status and the settlement determinants of both secular and ecclesiastical establishments.

Dublin Castle: In the Life of the Irish Nation by Peter Costello
This book is a comprehensive chronicle of the history and heritage of this famous site. It recounts the social, political and human events that have shaped the Castle and its importance to the Irish peoplefrom the arrival of the Celts and the Vikings to the Norman conquests and subsequent English invasion, right up to the present day. Studded with illustrations throughout, this insightful and fascinating book brings to life the various physical aspects of the Castle, together with the tales of heroism, adventure, tragedy and patriotism which surround its environs. This book provides not only a fascinating history, but also a guide to the Castle for the modern visitor.

Bloody Sunday in Derry: What Really Happened by Eamonn McCann
On 30 January 1972 the Parachute Regiment shot dead 27 unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry. Fourteen men and boys died on what has come to be known as Bloody Sunday. Twenty-eight years later, in March 2000, relatives of those killed, and the survivors among the wounded, were able to attend the opening of the Saville Tribunal and hear Christopher Clarke QC, Counsel for the Tribunal, say that this time, ‘the truth, the truth plain and simple’, would be unearthed and laid out for all to see. At the heart of this book are fourteen pieced about those who died. Each is an account by a relative, friend, neighbour or other associate of the dead person. There is also a compelling account of the events of the day and their aftermath, and a detailed analysis of the Widgery Report, which, it concludes, was the single greatest travesty of justice arising out of the Northern Ireland turmoil of the past three decades.

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Madeleine Sophie Barat: A Life by Phil Kilroy
Madeleine Sophie Barat was a Founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1800 and canonised in 1925. By removing the masks which hagiography and sainthood created around her, the author represents her as a religious leader, an educator and an individual of importance in the France of her times. Born in 1779 on the eve of the French Revolution, Barat was caught up in the movement to restore and recreate a society devastated by violence and war. This book tracks her development from her childhood through her leadership of a community of women devoted to education world-wide, to her death in 1865. Several profound movements in the 18th and 19th century marked her life, including the French Revolution with its consequent volatile political situations, as well as the tangled complexities of Gallicanism and Ultramontanism. This book also explores her spiritual journey, from her dark Jansenistic roots to her belief in a loving, warm and tender God, as expressed in devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Theirs Not to Do or Die by Tony Brehony
This book is the story of Jimmy O’Neill, a naEFve eighteen-year-old Irish boy who joined the Royal Navy on the outbreak of World War II. Like thousands of others, he was swept through the fiery holocaust, became a man and survived. Despite its background of war, this is a highly amusing tale in which the author skilfully weaves together diverse strands of historical fact and colourful fiction to produce a tapestry of bravery, terror and opportunism, laughter and tears.

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Oxford Concise Companion to Irish Literature by Robert Welch
This comprehensive guide spans sixteen centuries of the literature and literary culture of Ireland. From the ogham alphabet, developed in the 4th century, to world famous contemporary writers such as Seamus Heaney and Roddy Doyle, there is a wealth of information on writers and their works, movements, genres, topics, folklore, and historical, religious and cultural events. The book also includes a chronology of historical events, such as the Famine of 1845-1848, the founding of the Abbey Theatre, and the Easter Rising, that inspired many writers.

’Tis: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
The sequel to Angela’s Ashesfinally in paperbackneed I say more!

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