Read Ireland Book Reviews, September 2001

Ivana Bacik
Esmond Birnie
John Bradley
Nicholas Canny
Callum Coats
Colin Coulson-Thomas
Denis Cronin
Jim Gilligan
Elizabeth Healy
Jim Herlihy
Karina Holton
Brian Keenan
Maria Kelly
Declan Kiberd 2
Stephen Livingstone
Edna Longley
Thomas McCarthy
Laurence McKeown
John Montague
John Mooney
Caitlin O’Connell
Patrick J. O’Connor
Peter O’Connor
Juliette Wood

Company: A Chosen Life by John Montague
This book is the first volume of John Montague’s memoir. It gives an evocative account of a phenomenally vibrant era in poetry and letters. Separated from his own family at the age of four in the 1930s, John Montague threw himself into the literary life of 1950s Dublin and Paris as into the arms of a surrogate family. Basking in the freedom of the bohemian world, the ghosts of the great poetic figures who populate this book include Samuel Beckett, a friend and neighbour in Paris for a decade, and in Dublin, the ‘inspired lunatic’ Brendan Behan, and Mrs. Yeats.

[ top ]

Making Ireland British 1580-1650 by Nicholas Canny
This book is the first comprehensive study of the settlements implanted by Ireland by English and Scottish people during the years 1580-1650. The arguments advanced by successive political figures in favour of a plantation policy for Ireland are examined, as are the responses which this policy elicited from the several segments of the population of Ireland. Attention is also given to practical considerations that have had a bearing on colonisation schemes in all places and at all times: staking a claim to resources, recruiting suitable settles, and fashioning a new society and economy. The book opens with an analysis of the writings of Edmund Spenser, the most articulate sixteenth-century zealot for plantation. The author contends that the policies of all subsequent sponsors of plantations, ranging from King James VI and I, the Strafford, to Oliver Cromwell, were measured against his Spenserian yardstick. The book culminates in its Irish, British, and Continental European contexts, and it shows how this eruption steeled Cromwell to engage in one last attempt to make Ireland British.

[ top ]

Atlas of Irish Place Names by Patrick J. O’Connor
This atlas provides a guide to accessing the place names of Ireland. The townland pattern and the townland names form in the most intimate and defiant terms the basis of the identity of modern Ireland. It is how natives and newcomers alike know, or get to know, the country. The names, as ever, carry charge, cadence and meaning. And the name elements, when mapped, chart the nature of the land, or our precursor’s ideas of it, what they wanted from it and could actually achieve with it. At best we may encounter in the aggregates of mapped items a ‘geophony’, a showing forth of the earth. At the least we will elicit the distributional evidence, activate culture clues over time and space, and suggest the parameters of regionalism. Altogether over 50,000 symbols take the representational form of a paper landscape in this book.

The Dublin Metropolitan Police by Jim Herlihy
This book is a complete alphabetical list of the officers and men of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, 1836-1925. Evil Empire: John Gilligan, his Gang and the Execution of Journalist Veronica Guerin by Paul Williams Ruthless godfather John Gilligan controlled a colossal drugs empire and a mob of gangland’s most dangerous criminals. Violence and the threat of murder kept terrified witnesses silent and other gangsters in fear. Gilligan thought himself untouchable and above the law - until his gang crossed the line by executing crime reporter Veronica Guerin. This book tells the chilling inside story of Gilligan’s rise to power, his savage gang and the truth about the horrifying murder that shocked the Irish nation and indeed the world. Revealed for the first time, too, is the intense behind-the-scenes drama of the dedicated police squad who waged an unprecedented four-year war to smash ‘Factory’ John’s evil empire.

[ top ]

Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners Long Kesh 1972-2000 by Laurence McKeown
The author of this book was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1977. In 1981, he joined the Hunger Strike led by Bobby Sands and refused food for 70 days until he fell into a coma. He went on to spend a total of sixteen years in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. During that time he was at the centre of protest and struggle against the British government’s attempts to criminalise republicanism and destroy commitment to the republican ideal. In this book he records the experiences of himself and twenty-four other leading republicans. The prisoners span the period from the early 1970s until the closing of the H-Blocks at Long Kesh in 2000, following the provisions for the release of political prisoners which formed part of the historic Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Beyond the Mist: What Irish Mythology Can Teach Us About Ourselves by Peter O’Connor
In this book, the author shows how ancient mythology can be used to understand the universal themes and conflicts that have beset human beings throughout time. From gods and goddesses such as Dagda and Morrigan, to the Fenian and Ulster Cycles and the heroic stories of Cu Chulainn, the author explores the world of Irish mythology and its relevance today. Full of fascinating insights, this book introduces the reader to all the richness and magic of Irish mythology, and shows how it can be mined for the wisdom it provides for contemporary life.

[ top ]

Living Energies new edition by Callum Coats
This book is subtitled: An Exposition of Concepts Related to the Theories of Viktor Schauberger. Why are so many species of plant and animal life disappearing? How it is that Earth is losing more fresh water than it is producing? What are the effects of chlorination and fluoridation of water? This answers to these and many more pressing environmental questions are to be found in this remarkable book - the first in-depth examination of the life and work of the brilliant forester, scientist, and pioneering inventor, Viktor Schauberger. Schauberger’s insights into Nature pivoted on the essential characteristics of water as a living and pulsating substance that energises all of life, both organic and inorganic. He was passionate about forestry and warned how deforestation would deplete the world of water and soil fertility, causing deserts and climate chaos. With his ground-breaking concepts on energy, biomagnetism and the true function of trees, he showed how a world that exploited its resources rather than cherishing them was doomed to destroy itself.

[ top ]

The Celts: Life, Myth and Art by Juliette Wood
This book showcases the art of the Celts in all its glory, from exquisite gold jewellery to spectacular decorated weapons of war. It presents a superb pictorial record of the Celts, with specially commissioned artworks and over 100 magnificent full colour photographs. It illustrates the full splendour of Celtic manuscript illumination and the astonishing intricacy of knotwork and other patterning. It reveals, with full commentary, the broad repertoire of Celtic symbols and motifs - from solar spirals to the salmon of prophecy. It provides a fascinating and authoritative text to accompany the rich treasury of images.

[ top ]

Irish Classics by Declan Kiberd
In this ambitious survey of the enduring Irish classics - works that stay fresh and challenge every generation - the author offers his readers something original: a brilliant and accessible discussion of the greatest works since 1600 in the two languages that have shaped one of the world’s most vibrant literary cultures. Each chapter is devoted to the art of a single writer, and usually focuses on an outstanding representative text. The book opens with a meditation on the fall of the bardic order as part of the catastrophe that engulfed traditional Irish society after the Elizabethan and Cromwellian wars. Irish poets encountered modernity as a cataclysm, and were forced to respond to it by using traditional forms in novel and radical ways, at once conservative and revolutionary. The author argues that his formal tension has remained one of the most distinctive characteristics of literature produced in Ireland. He is equally at home discussing the mordant poetry in the Irish language, and his account of the great elegy, ‘The Lament for Art O’Leary’ is a tour de force. And his chapters on lesser known writers will be a revelation to many readers. The book closes with a moving and daring coda on the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and the claim that the seeds of the Agreement ‘were sown in the works of Irish literature’; for as the author argues, ‘an unprecedented knowledge is possible in zones where cultures collide.’

[ top ]

Irish Fairs and Markets edited by Denis Cronin, Jim Gilligan and Karina Holton
This book is the first major study of buying and selling at local level in Ireland. The contributors analyse different aspects of the exchange and sales of goods at fairs, markets and shops from the middle ages to the present day. Assemblies at fairs and markets brought together people from very different social backgrounds and played an important part in shaping local society. Town met country, farmer met trader, and the influences of the wider world were introduced into the local culture. These essays highlight the diversity of the Irish local experience in trading and make a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the evolution of Irish society.

A History of the Black Death in Ireland by Maria Kelly
In this book, the first full-length study of the Black Death in Ireland, the author goes in search of the Great Pestilence whose consequences are often obscured by the intricate and tumultuous history of the time and the paucity of contemporary records. Drawing on a wide range of sources, both Irish and European, the author traces the progress of the plague throughout Ireland, examines how the people reacted to this invisible killer, and accesses its legacy in the troubled conditions of medieval Ireland.

[ top ]

Literary Tour of Ireland by Elizabeth Healy
This book is a delightful Irish journey enriched and transformed by the oral and literary traditions of Ireland’s landscape. W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory are the readers’ guides to the Sligo hills and their mystical presences. We meet Synge in Wicklow and O’Flaherty on the Aran Islands, O’Connor in Blarney Street, Cork and John Hewitt at him home on the Antrim coast - a host of voices, including Ireland’s greatest tale of all, the ancient Tain. Belfast greets the reader in the poetry of Ciaran Carson, and the footsteps of Seamus Heaney bring us around Mossbawn. We view the villages where Goldsmith gambled and drank away his youth, and befriend the penniless poets of ‘Hidden Ireland’ whose exquisite Irish verse is still echoed in modern song and story. In Dublin are Wilde, Shaw, and Swift, O’Casey, Joyce and Beckett - pouring words upon the cityscapes. Finally, the reader enters Healy’s own beloved Liffey, plurabella, to complete a rewarding and exciting travelogue.

[ top ]

Gangster by John Mooney
In the summer of 1996, the Irish journalist Veronica Guerin was assassinated because of her investigations into organised crime in Ireland. This book recreates the story behind her murder while chronicling the life of the man charged with her killing, John Gilligan. Written from an inside perspective, the book is a fine piece of investigative journalism - uncompromising in its exposure of Gilligan’s life, his meteoric rise in the Irish underworld, his personality and his blatant disregard for law and order - and it forms an intriguing and menacing story. This book is the definitive account of how a criminal organisation, headed by a brutal and unscrupulous leader, can ride roughshod over society’s moral and civil codes.

Shaping Things to Come: Strategies for Creating Alternative Enterprises by Colin Coulson-Thomas
This book is a futuristic, cutting-edge appraisal of what organisational development in the early years of the new millennium will be life. Its importance for the business market of the twenty-first century cannot be overestimated. The author suggests that rather than organisations becoming even more depersonalised, technological advance will enable more intimate, interactive and iterative relationships, and certainly more individual and inner growth and development than has previously been experienced.

[ top ]

Voyage of the Hougoumont and Life and Fremantle: The Story of an Irish Rebel by Thomas McCarthy
Fennell Like many 19th century Irish immigrants, Thomas McCarthy Fennell arrived in the United States to start a new life. Unlike other Irishmen, however, Fennell arrived on America’s West coast by ship. He was a thirty year-old ex-convict recently released from an Australian prison. As a condition of his release he could not return to his native land. His crime? Treason, or as the Crown’s trial judge put it: ‘compassing’ against Queen Victoria. In the tumultuous 1860s, Fennell organised Fenians - the Irish-American Nationalists who sought by force to rid Ireland of Britain’s dominance. He fought and was wounded in the 1867 Uprising, hardly a footnote in history, yet England’s Prime Minister Gladstone would refer to it as ‘the first streak of dawn.’

An Irish Murder: The Legacy of Tarring Cottage by Caitlin O’Connell
In this novel, Irish detective Rupert Dunne lives a divided existence between a big city career in Dublin and lesser policing matter at home in County Cork. Now estranged from his English wife and at a personal impasse, he finds himself contemplating the possibilities of early retirement. However, the usually peaceful countryside of Cork has other things in store for him. This book is the first in a projected series of murder mysteries set in current day Ireland.

[ top ]

Towards a Culture of Human Rights in Ireland by Ivana Bacik and Stephen Livingstone
Two leading civil liberties advocates, Ivana Bacik in Dublin and Stephen Livingstone in Belfast, look at the state of human rights in their respective jurisdictions. Professor Bacik, Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College, Dublin, looks at the impact of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into Irish law on the rights to silence, freedom of expression and equality and the rights of the family, immigrants and children and asks will it generate a ‘culture of rights’ in the Republic. Professor Livingstone examines the human rights provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, and outlines the challenges which still face the implementation of an effective rights culture in Northern Ireland.

Multi-culturalism: The View from the Two Irelands by Edna Longley and Declan Kiberd
Two of Ireland’s most outspoken critics and cultural commentators put forward views on the contrasting directions in which the two societies on the island are moving. Professor Longley asks whether Northerners will increasingly identify with Northern Ireland as a shared point of reference. Will they develop a more flexible sense of their relations with the Republic and a post-devolution Britain? Professor Kiberd asks whether a newly prosperous and confident Republic is genuinely embracing multi-culturalism. Is it moving towards a post-nationalist society which commits its citizens to a truly pluralist vision? What does it mean to be Irish at the turn of the twenty-first century?

[ top ]

Can the Celtic Tiger Cross the Irish Border? By John Bradley and Esmond Birnie
One of the Republic’s outstanding economists, John Bradley, and the prominent Unionist politician and economist, Esmond Birnie, debate to what extent Northern Ireland can learn from the phenomenon of the ‘Celtic Tiger’. Professor Bradley asks what lessons the North can take from the success of the Republic’s economic planning, and whether it makes sense for the island to trade and seek investment as one unit in a globalised economy. Dr. Birnie asks if the lost level of trade and economic interchange between the two Irish economies is really that abnormal in European terms, and whether a successfully co-ordinated island economy is possible in two separate political jurisdictions.

Turlough by Brian Keenan
While held hostage by fundamentalist Shi’ite militiamen in the suburbs of Beirut, Brian Keenan was visited and sustained by the presence of Turlough O’ Carolan - the legendary blind Irish harper of the 17th century. This novel is thus a re-creation of an extraordinary historical story and a personal debt repaid. It is also, obliquely, a parallel life - another life imprisoned, shaped by the dark. Narrated largely by O’Carolan from his deathbed, and through the recollections of those closest to him, the novel powerfully brings to life a lost Ireland of famine and disease, eviction and oppression. Stalking through the broken and dispossessed comes Turlough O’Carolan, the musical prodigy, blinded by smallpox and now an itinerant harper, lauded by the aristocracy and a hero to his people. His Rabelaisian desire for drink and women is counterpointed by his artistic struggle towards the great music and some kind of inner peace. Driven by demons and dreams, riven by contradictions, Turlough emerges as a great man, full of frailty: a blind man afraid of the dark. A panoramic picaresque, rich with the textures and smells of rural Ireland and peopled by a host of angels and devils, this novel is a remarkable historical journey, and a huge imaginative feat. This book was our Book of the Month - Fiction for October 2000.

[ top ]