Read Ireland Book Reviews, March 2001

Past and Present: History, Identity and Politics in Ireland by Brian Walker
This book takes a fresh look at how the siege of Derry, a significant event for unionists, has been celebrated over the last three centuries and assesses how the 1798 rebellion, an important episode for nationalists and republicans, has been remembered. The author examines changes in historical perceptions and sense of identity as revealed in the commemoration of St. Patrick’s Day, the Twelfth of July, the Easter Rising and Armistice Day in the period 19-1960. A final chapter explores how ideas of history have influenced the conflict in Northern Ireland.

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Understanding Corruption in Irish Politics by Neil Collins and Mary O’Shea
Irish politics has been in turmoil in recent years because of the scale and intricacy of political corruption being uncovered by parliamentary and quasi-judicial inquiries. There is genuine popular amazement and growing cynicism at the seemingly never-ending wave of scandal and attendant tribunals. To understand political corruption in Ireland, this book examines the concept within a political science analytical framework that allows both historical and international comparison. The authors challenge the current explanations of political corruption, particularly those that stress a turning point of the 1960s.

She Moves Through the Boom by Ann Maria Hourihane
Behind the triumphalist headlines of the Celtic Tiger, there are changes going on in Ireland - in the way Irish people work, talk, eat, even the way they think - that cannot be quantified by statistics nor squared with hollow clichE9s. This book is about these intangible changes and it paints a picture the newspapers and tourism propagandists are missing. The author talks to ordinary people about living in Ireland now - worshippers at a holy well, Mullingar wine traders, the organiser of a rural water scheme, working mothers, a Nigerian preacher, call-centre workers, teenaged removal men, and many others. These people aren’t talking about the boom; they’re living it, sometimes without even noticing, and they speak its language. This book presents an offbeat kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Ireland.

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Fork in the Road by Denis Hamill
This novel is a story of ill-fated loved amid the dangerous romance of Dublin and New York. The passion that blooms between Colin Coyne, a young American film-maker seeking aesthetic inspiration in Ireland, and Gina Furey, the stunningly beautiful, iron-willed denizen of Dublin’s gypsy criminal underworld, seems as unlikely as it is overpowering. Crossing barriers both social and physical, this novel is both a tragic love story and the riveting drama of one man’s heartbreaking journey from exhilaration to desolation.

Celtic Saints by Courtney Davis
This book is an intriguing representation of the lives and deeds of some of the venerable, sacred characters from the distant era of early Christianity. The author has the ability to stimulate, fascinate and inspire through his superb renditions of Celtic scenes and imagery. Full colour illustrations throughout.

The Celtic Image by David James and Courtney Davis
From the Celtic lands of Cornwall, Ireland, Brittany, the Isle of man, Wales and Scotland, the world of the Celts has numerous facets and beautiful images. This book describes and show graphically the wealth of motifs and the fascination of Celtic images, from the early artefacts of Celtic civilisation to a modern renaissance, and from both their pagan and then Christian traditions. There are wonderful descriptions and superb visual depictions of crosses, standing stones, carvings, craftsmanship, legend and religion - the very essence of the Celtic image. Full colour illustrations throughout.

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Bray in 1870 commentary by K.M. Davies
This is a high quality reproduction of Heffernan’s plan of Bray. A booming town in 1870, Bray was an expanding new resort offering seaside holidays and expeditions to the beauty spots of Wicklow. The journey from Dublin by train was still a novelty. The International Hotel in Bray was the largest hotel in Ireland and there were dances and concerts in the Turkish Baths assembly rooms. Heffernan’s delightful views recaptures the spirit of Bray when it was truly the ‘Brighton of Ireland’.

Faces by Pat Reid
Set in Dublin’s docklands, this is the story of the Portside community in the early days of the Celtic Tiger. It tells of Dommo Nevins and his well-intentioned attempts to free ‘the faces’ he sees trapped in the roof of the Tin Chapel. With the help of his godmother, Fran, a reluctant faith healer, and some long-time inhabitants of the Suicide Plot, Dommo also tries to save an ancient graveyard from Alan Roe, a property developer who seeks to destroy the Portside parish and all it stands for because of his fathers murder during the 1953 Hunger March in Dublin. In trying to do the right thing, Dommo and his uncle, Milo Gunnary, unwittingly release the fierce power of the faces on those foolish enough to borrow or buy one.

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Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas by David Murray
Famed as the most beautiful undergraduate in Oxford of his day and remembered as the lover of Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, or Bosie as he was always known, remains one of the most notorious figures in literary history. In this fascinating and passionate biography, the author explores fully , for the first time, the mass of contradictions that made up his life. A genius yet a failure through his tormented youth, Bosie’s deep and enduring friendship with Oscar Wilde continued throughout the trials and subsequent imprisonment of Wilde and on until his death in 1900. He became great friends with George Bernard Shaw and Marie Stopes and was associated with the Bloomsbury Group. His religious devotion increased as spiralling debts cut short his happiness. Soon battles with the remainder of the Wilde circle, his father-in-law, and indeed his libelling of Winston Churchill led to his own imprisonment, followed by a semi-reclusive state until his death in 1945. The author of this biography has secured the release of a Home Office file which was to be sealed until 43 which holds the key to Bosie’s state of mind while in prison and the only original workings of some of his best poetry. With the significant new material and fresh insights, the author portrays Bosie as an important poet whose tragedy extended far beyond his lover’s death.

Emerald Germs of Ireland by Patrick McCabe
In this book the reader meets Patrick McNab, forty-five years old, would-be ‘Cleaner’ or ‘Regulator’, maybe a serial killer - often to be found endlessly puffing smokes and propping up the counter of Sullivan’s Select Bar, or sitting on his mother’s knee both singing away together like some ridiculous two-headed human jukebox. Pat now spends many of his waking hours sitting by the window of his old dark house, watching videos and nibbling distractedly on pieces of toast, reflects on those long-gone days with his Mammy, fending off the persistent interferences of his small-town neighbors, the puritanical Mrs. Tubridy; that irascible seller of turf the Turf Man; Sergeant ‘Kojak’ Foley; and other unwanted snoops who will soon come to regret their inquisitive, nose-poking ways.

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Eager to Please by Julie Parsons
For twelve long years Rachel Beckett has been in prison for the murder of her husband, Martin. A murder she swears she did not commit. Twelve years with the haunting memory of her husband’s brutal murder. Twelve long years without her beloved daughter, Amy. And twelve years later Amy, now seventeen, does not ever want to see her mother again. But now Rachel is free. And she is ready to take revenge on the man she insists fired the fatal shots, her former lover, the man who framed her, who sent her daughter away.

Water, Carry Me by Thomas Moran
Una Moss grew up in Cobh, Ireland, with her grandda. Orphaned at an early age, she cannon remember the car crash that killed her parents - she can barely even remember their faces. But Una was happy in Cobh; she had a laugh with her best girls, ate the fish her grandda caught, took care of him when he came home drunk. Her friends and family gave her all the support she could ever want, and shielded her from the whispers which suggested her parents’ death had been less than accidental. And now she has gone to university in Cork. Her days and nights are filled with intense poetry readings, political debates, last-minute study. And she meets her first boyfriend, Aidan Ferrel, a young man from the North. Set against the backdrop of a beautiful but divided Ireland, this novel is a heartbreaking story by one of literature’s most acclaimed fiction writers.

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Across the River by Alice Taylor
This novel is a story of land, conflict and family traditions, and is a sequel to her best-selling ‘The Woman of the House.’ The story is set on the Phelan and Conway farms which stand in hostile confrontation across the river. The long dispute between the two families simmers, then explodes. Meanwhile, Martha Phelan is locked in stubborn conflict with her son, Peter. He wants to make changes in the way the farm is run, but she secretly plans quite different changes; the tension between then builds but is suddenly overtaken by the force of a greater problem.

Dancing Days by Anne Marie Forrest
Ana: a little girl intently dressing up in her old friend Celia’s jewels a young woman walking alone to church in her bridal gown a loving wife who suffers tragic loss but survives to travel to Africa and fall in love an ageing women who still has an eye for form and likes to take a risk, ride pillion on a motor-bike, sing in a woodland glade with a handsome gardener Ana has always depended on life’s unexpectedness. And when she retires, are her dancing days over? Hardly

Bunny Girl by Joan Conway
Ciara Bowe’s life is not in the best condition: no job, no boyfriend, back living with her mother in suburban Dublin. Enter John, Ciara’s ex-and-never-slept-with-him-boyfriend, who’s launching his new telecommunications company. He’s very interested in helping Ciara out of her predicament and into his bed. Laced with audacious with and pithy humour, this book is romantic, funny and full of joy.

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Onion Girl by Tina Reilly
Have you ever wondered what happened to that person you fancied when you were seventeen? Well, Meg and Jack are about to find out Meg: so quiet she’d make a funeral seem like a rave; and Jack: so out there he’s almost living in the future. They were once good friends - some might even say very good friends. Then Jack told Meg he’d keep in touch and never did. Now, ten years on, they’re virtual strangers. Only Jack wants to change that

Images by Rose Doyle
Bea Hennessy is a women of achievement - stunning, bright, expensive and in control - most of the time. She has survived a cruel childhood, a disastrous marriage, single parenthood and cut-throat betrayal in the art world. Now, Bea is about to have further proof that greed, ambition and lust are lived, and more than well, in contemporary Ireland. Because beautiful people do not always do beautiful things - even when they are lovers or family members.

A Drink with Shane MacGowan by Victoria Mary Clarke and Shane MacGowan
Through four years of remarkable, frank and intimate conversations, this is the first-person history of the anarchic rock legend Shane MacGowan, and of his long-standing relationship with the writer Victoria Mary Clarke. Born on a small farm in Tipperary, Shane won a scholarship to Westminister School, was rapidly expelled, became a ‘face’, and then grew to become one of the central figures at the birth of punk - and the hugely influential star of the Pogues. MacGowan’s music, innovative and powerful, is as distinctive as his chaotic, breakdown-scarred, alcohol-fuelled lifestyle. He continues to perform solo, in collaborations and with the Popes, his music part bar-room O’Riada, part Lou Reed, part Carolan, part Tom Waites. But as this book show, the inspiration for his artistry and beliefs is as varied as his range of mind - embracing Ireland, religion, his family, esoteric philosophy and history.

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The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland by Deaglan De Breadun
This book reveals how one of the world’s most ruthless and determined guerrilla organisations, the Irish Republican Army, came to put aside the gun and the bomb and make peace with its enemies. The author was well-placed to cover the evolution of the peace process. His narrative reads like a diplomatic thriller as he chronicles the extraordinary moves by the British, Irish and US governments to bring the IRA in from the cold and persuade the unionists to accept Irish republicans as partners in peacemaking. He describes the impact on the peace process of key personalities such as John Hume, David Trimble, Gerry Adams, Bill Clinton, Martin McGuinness, George Mitchell, Tony Blair, Mo Mowlam, Albert Reynolds, Bertie Ahern, Seamus Mallon and Peter Mandelson. A veteran Irish Times correspondent, the author charts the progress of the peace process from the late 1980s through the dramatic events of Good Friday 1998, to the long and agonising negotiations afterwards to implement the deal. The real inside story is told here for the first time by a journalist with unrivalled contacts.

Shamrock Tea by Ciaran Carson
This book is Carson’s most ambitious book to date. Like ‘Fishing for Amber’, it delights in stories and their meandering connections with an infinity of other stories. ‘The Arnolfini Portrait’ is at the center of the book, the great van Eyck painting of a merchant and his wife in the city of Bruges. Around the painting swirls a galaxy of esoteric and entertaining knowledge of saints’ days, herbal cures, animal symbolism, miracles and transformations. Shamrock Tea, the magical substance that allows people to experience the world with visionary clarity, can only be found by passing through the van Eyck painting into another world. The characters who bear this knowledge include a young boy called Carson, his uncle Celestine, his cousin Berenice, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Father Brown, and young Maeterlinck, the nephew of Maurice Maeterlinck, an art-dealer in the Flemish city of Ghent. Everything connects with everything else: one of the book’s presiding geniuses is Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed that you could read the world in a drop of water. Shamrock Tea is an homage to this idea, to an almost medieval sense of the unity of the world - what in other words we call magic.

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The Killing Kind by John Connolly
This is the third book in Dublin-born, John Connolly’s series featuring Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. The previous two books, ‘Every Dead Thing’ and ‘Dark Hollow’ were international bestsellers. In this new novel, nobody wants to believe that Grace Peltier committed suicide: not Curtis, her father; not former U.S. Senator Jack Mercier; and not private detective Charlie Parker, who has been hired to investigate the circumstances of her death. But when a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the final resting place of the Aroostook Baptists, a religious community that disappeared almost forty years earlier, Parker realises that their deaths and the violent passing of Grace Peltier are part of the same mystery, one that has its roots in her family history and in the origins of the shadowy organisation known as the Fellowship. For before she died, Grace Peltier stole something from the Fellowship, a relic capable of linking it to decades of violence and the slaughter of the Aroostook Baptists, and now someone has been sent to recover it. Lied to, intimidated and haunted by visions of a small, stray boy, Parker’s search for the truth behind Grace’s death draws him into a series of increasingly violent confrontations with the Fellowship’s enforcer, the demonic arachnophile known as Mr. Pudd. Aided and abetted by the genial killers Angel and Louis, Parker must descend into the depths of an underworld populated by dark angels and lost souls, a world where the ghosts of the dead wait for justice and the unwary are prey for the worst kind of creatures the killing kind!

My Dream of You by Nuala O’Faolain
Nuala O’Faolain’s autobiography, Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman, was a number one bestseller in Ireland for 26 weeks. This book is her first novel. Kathleen is a travel writer based in London. The office is the nearest thing she has to a home, and her colleagues to friends and a family. And then, on the brink of middle age, the props of her life fall away. She is faced with the frightening imperative of change. In her crisis she turns to a new kind of writing, and decides to investigate a story about a relationship so passionate that it burned its way across the barriers of class and culture; a true story she had long known in fragments - a scandal that become public when a wealthy Anglo-Irish landlord sought a divorce from his wife on the grounds of her adultery with one of the servants. The affair was played out in 1850s Ireland, against the background of a country devastated by the Famine. Kathleen is Irish herself, but she has not been back to Ireland for almost thirty years. Now, she travels to a remote part of the country to research the story of the lovers. Thus starts a journey that leads her not only into the historical past, but into a reconsideration of the family she fled years ago. And then she meets a lover of her own who presents her with a choice that could alter her life. As she moves towards her decision she calls on the strengths of her identity as a women, an Irish woman and a woman who is no longer young. And meanwhile, she brings the story of the long-ago lovers to a denouement as tender as it is tragic.

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The Last of the Irish Males by Joseph O’Connor
This book is the author’s grand finale to the hilarious best-selling ‘Irish Male’ series - one last look at the bitter-sweet realities that the Irish male encounters at home and abroad as the new Millennium rips up the rule book. His take on the times is as comical as ever, whether lost in the new Europe, undressing America, surfing the style-waves of the 21st century, tangling with the world-wide web, or pondering that deepest of philosophical questions - is football actually better than sex? From hopping and bopping in the traditional Irish night-club to swapping his gender in an Internet cybersex chatroom, from being New Lad to becoming New Dad, this is furiously funny, truly unforgettable stuff. While his Complete Idiot’s Dating Agency offers every Irish male a chance at romance, a special section for the sophisticated modern woman, The Irish Male: A User’s Manual might actually help to save many relationships - or at least keep them going until divorce gets cheaper.

The Heritage of Ireland edited by Neil Buttimer, Colin Rynne and Helen Guerin
This book is the first multidisciplinary approach to defining and describing Ireland’s rich and complex heritage and analysing its protection and management. It is presented in three main parts, each includes case studies illustrating issues highlighted: Natural, Man-Made and Cultural Heritage; Conservation and Interpretation; and Administration and Business. It also provides authoritative and detailed accounts of heritage legislation and EU institutions and directives dealing with heritage in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Its contributors include academics, professionals, and practitioners from Ireland, north and south.

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All Souls: Growing Up in Boston’s Irish Ghetto by Michael Patrick MacDonald
The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston’s working class Irish community, branding it a violent, racist enclave. But the threats - poverty, drugs, a shadowy gangster world - were real. The author of this memoir lost four of his siblings to violence and poverty. This book is his heart-breaking testimony to lives lost too early, and the story of how a place so filled with pain could still be ‘the best place in the world.’ It is a story of extraordinary characters like Ma, Michael’s mini-skirted, accordion-playing, usually single mother who cares for her children - there are eventually ten - through a combination of high spirits and inspired ‘getting over’. But it is also a tale of a place controlled by resident gangster Whitey Bulger, an FBI informant who ran the drug culture Southie supposedly never had. The result was a world primed for the escalation of class violence - and then, with deadly and sickening inevitability, the racial violence that swirled around force bussing. All but destroyed by grief and by the Southie code that doesn’t allow him to feel it, the author gets out. His work as a peace-activist, first in the all-Black neighborhoods of nearby Roxbury, then back to the Southie he can’t help but love, is the powerfully redemptive close to a story that leaves readers utterly shaken and changed.

The North from the Air by Esler Crawford
For centuries, the north of Ireland has attracted visitors eager to see for themselves some of the most splendid natural scenery in the world. The Giant’s Causeway, the Mountains of the Mourne, the Glens of Antrim, the Fermanagh Lakeland the list in inexhaustible. Lovely as these landscapes are from ground level, their impact from the air is truly breathtaking. In this book, one of Ireland’s leading photographers, who has been capturing these stunning landscapes for many years. This book contains 134 of his best aerial photographs to be published in volume form, and is unarguably one of the most beautiful books about the north of Ireland ever to be published.

The Celtic Tiger at Your Service: Professional Services to Multinationals by Brian Kearney
This is a readable, practical and educational book that makes a vital contribution in a very pragmatic way to the definition of what performance is all about in the service industry. It provides practical examples of fundamental principles and practices that were applied to start and develop Project Management, a successful international professional services firm. This book demonstrates how the key performance characteristics of quality service, innovative cost-effectiveness and experience-based learning on defining requirements combine to provide a ‘win - win’ solution for both customer and service provider.

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The Shores of Connemara by Seamas Mac an Iomaire
This book presents a wonderful description of marine life, not according to the norms and scientific natural history, but as the people themselves saw it. The author combines his own acute observations of nature with the rich maritime traditions and customs of the people of the Mainis to produce an informative, uplifting and original account of the sea life of the Irish Atlantic coast. The clarity and charm of his writing, so faithfully translated in this book will appeal to anyone fortunate enough to spend time walking or boating along the Connemara coast. The book is greatly enriched by the striking original illustrations of Sabine Springer.

Reading the Future: Irish Writers in Conversation edited by Cliodhna Ni Anluain
Who are the Irish writers working today who will be read in one hundred years? This was the question RTE Radio One put to an eclectic panel of critics, editors, teachers, a librarian, an actor, and a former government minister - avid readers all - who debated their selection over a period of several weeks. The result is an impressive - and controversial - list of twelve Irish men and women, adjudged to be among the finest living writers. Featuring nine in-depth interviews with Mike Murphy and three round-table discussions with fellow Irish writers and critics, this book is a unique freeze-frame of Ireland’s literary culture at the turn of the century and provides fascinating insights into the shaping influences on the lives, minds and working methods of twelve great writers. With an introductory essay by Declan Kiberd, consulting editor to the series, and a series of specially commissioned photographs, this book is an indispensable source for any reader of Irish literature. The selected writers are: John Banville, Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Thomas Kinsella, Michael Longley, John McGahern, Derek Mahon, Tom Murphy, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Edna O’Brien and William Trevor.

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The Celtic Book of Living and Dying: The Illustrated Guide to Celtic Wisdom by Juliette Wood
This illustrated collection of Celtic wisdom traces the span of life from birth to death and the life beyond: the Otherworld of marvels and puzzles. It displays a wealth of lore and literature, including timeless and profound poetry and epic battle scenes, to show the Celtic imagination at its most fertile. It conjures up the mystery and fascination of the Celts in more than 70 stunning colour artworks of symbols and patterns in Celtic style as well as photographs of evocative landscapes and the finest weapons, carvings and jewellery. It reveals the wisdom symbolised in Celtic myth - the hidden meanings behind tales of heroes, giants, fabulous creatures and journeys to magical lands. It illuminates the beliefs and practices of the Druids, and brings out the underlying spiritual significance of Celtic lore and myth.

A Sense of Place: Irish Lives, Irish Landscapes by Roslyn Dee and Gerry Sandford
In this captivating collection of works and images, thirty-five Irish men and women share personal impressions of one place, on the island of Ireland, of special symbolic relevance to their lives. Delving into that peculiar and highly individual relationship between person and place, these revealing interviews offer an array of perspectives on what makes somewhere special, and why. And through this insight into the particular, broader reflections often arise, on Irish society at large, both past and present, and on what lies ahead as Ireland moves into the new century.

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Through Streets Broad and Narrow: A History of Dublin Trams by Michael Corcoran
The last major tramway system in these islands to have its history recounted is that of Dublin. At its peak the system had a fleet of over 300 tramcars running on its unique 5ft 3in gauge tracks. From the 1870s through to the final abandonment of the tramways in Dublin in 1949, the tramcar was a vital part of the lift of the city. This book sets out the story of the growth and decline of the urban tramways of Dublin from the first horse trams of the 1870s through to the luxury cars of the 1930s. Contains numerous photographs throughout

The LMS in Ireland: An Irish Railway Pictorial by Mark Kennedy
On its formation in 1923, the London Midland and Scottish Railway inherited extensive interests in Ireland through two of its constituent companies. In 1903 it had purchased the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway, managing its network of both broad and narrow gauge lines in Ulster. In 1906 it expanded it Irish activities by purchasing the Great Northern Railway (Ireland), the 3ft gauge Donegal Railways. It built its own station in Dublin adjacent to its steamer berth at the North Wall and finance the building of the Dundalk, Newry & Greenore Railway and the development of the port of Greenore. This book explores these and many other aspects of the LMS in Ireland. Contains numerous black-and-white photographs throughout.

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