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Read Ireland Book Reviews, October 2003
Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution
by David Fitzpatrick
Along with his close comrades Michael
Collins and Eamon de Valera, Harry Boland was probably the most influential
Irish revolutionary between 1917 and 1922. His sway extended to almost
every aspect of republican activity. Already prominent as a hurler before
1916, he was convicted and imprisoned after an energetic Easter Week.
He subsequently became Honorary Secretary of Sinn Fein, T.D. for South
Roscommon in the First Dail, President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s
Supreme Council, and a republican envoy in the United States between May
1919 and December 1921. He broke with Collins over the Treaty, but became
chief intermediary between the factions. Early in the Civil War, however,
he was killed by National army officers in the Grand Hotel, Skerries.
Boland’s influence was the product of charm, gregariousness, wit and ruthlessness.
After his rebel father’s early death, Boland’s mother raised him in a
spirit of intransigent hostility to Britain. Yet he was also stylish,
cosmopolitan, and humane. His celebrated contest with Collins for the
love of Kitty Kiernan is perhaps the most intriguing of all Irish political
romances. Attractive yet elusive, his personality helped shape the Irish
revolution. This biography draws upon documents in Irish, British and
American archives, including his American diaries and thousands of letters
to, from, and about Boland. Extensive use has been made of family papers
and de Valera’s vast archive on the Irish campaign in America. These and
other recently released documents illuminate the inner workings of Irish
republicanism, and the critical importance of brotherhood in the revolution.
As an oldfashioned republican and advocate of ‘physical force’, Boland
is still venerated as a martyr by revolutionary republicans. Yet, in his
conduct, he practised the ambiguities associated with Sinn Fein in today’s
Northern Ireland. Doctrine was subordinated to the twin quests for republican
unity and political supremacy, entailing reiterated compromise, systematic
duplicity and mastery of propagandist techniques. If his outlook seems
archaic, his practice was astonishingly modern.
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Hard Shoulder by Peter Woods
When McBride, a young Irishman, leaves
County Monaghan for the building sites of London, and the Germany, he
is confronted by a harsh new world and the volatile men who have mastered
and mythologised it. Quickly overwhelmed by the unrelenting quest for
work and love, he soon finds himself enslaved to the road ahead, embittered
by the cold comforts of its hard shoulder. But when he eventually returns
to London, the limits of the heavy digger’s life, its quixotic pursuit
of the Big Money, its illusory horizons, are brought shockingly and suddenly
home. This novel is the story of countless unheard voices, transfiguring
the haunting experiences of Ireland’s unconsidered exiles into a tale
of intense colour and vibrancy.
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Big Fat Love by Peter Sheridan
The nuns at the convent of the Good Shepherd
in Dublin’s North Wall certainly are not ready for Philo. And on a quiet
Sunday evening they find their peace shattered by an insistent knocking
on the heavy front door and there she is feeling like Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music with now here else to go. Weighing in at 240 pounds
and covered in tattoos, Philo doesn’t look much like Julie Andrews. And
with her penchant for smoking, swearing and eating, she’s hardly an ideal
candidate for the sisterhood. But Philo is desperate. She’s on the run
from her husband, Tommo, and she needs refuge. The good sisters take her
under their wing, and before long she finds a new selfconfidence, and
a new role at the centre of the beleaguered community. With a heart as
big as her waistband, there’s plenty of love to go round, but Philo knows
that, sooner or later, she will need to face up to the cracks in her own
life her wayward husband and son, the dark secret she’s been running from
for as long as she can remember. At the core of this warmhearted and poignant
novel is the oncethriving docks community where the author grew up. This
story is a celebration of the people who once lived there, and a protest
at the official neglect that led to its demise.
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The Encyclopedia of Ireland:
Brian Lalor, General Editor
The Encyclopedia of Ireland is the most
comprehensive singlevolume reference work ever published about Ireland.
Meticulously detailed, it is a treasure store of information, education,
entertainment, and enlightenment. Its range is astounding as it covers
the entire spectrum of Irish achievement in all fields of human endeavour
throughout recorded history. The conventional subjects are all here: literature
and language, history, geography, economics, sociology, the arts and music.
But other subjects, often neglected in Irish reference books, are also
given their due place, such as science, engineering, astronomy and sport.
With more than 5000 original articles written by 950 different contributors
and over 700 illustrations, mainly in colour, The Encyclopedia of Ireland
is unique. Unique in scope, in conception, in ambition, in execution,
in the vast array of facts that it contains, in the distinction of its
design, in its total commitment to quality there is no book about Ireland
remotely like it. This book should be in every home within the country,
and in every home throughout the world where Ireland is a ‘place that
matters’. It is the only reference book about Ireland anyone will every
need.
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The Woman’s Daughter by
Dermot Bolger
Born in secret, the woman’s daughter has
spent her life hidden in a bedroom, gaining only a tenuous idea of the
world outside her window through her mother’s nightly tales of Dublin’s
factories and ballrooms in the 1960s, of the time when the family first
came to the new suburb on the back of a swaying lorry, and of the incestuous
love which led to her clandestine existence. But, unknown to the woman,
her secret is just one in a long line kept hidden in the place, and as
the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, the pattern of previous
lives is slowly revealed. This novel is perhaps Bolger’s most extraordinary
and has been described as a ‘wild frothing poetic odyssey 85 a brilliant
and ambitious piece of writing.’ Originally published in 1991
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The Journey Home by Dermot
Bolger
When Francis Hanrahan, the shy child of
grey suburban streets, meets Shay, an older, wilder image of himself,
he is quickly cast out into nighttime Dublin a world of drugs, corruption
and allnight drinking sessions in bars and snooker halls. But behind their
friendship looms the shadow of the two Plunkett brothers (a government
minister and a property developer) whose greed and desire threatens them,
and Cait, the teenage girl they befriend. Is this a dangerous, thrilling
existence or a perilous path to adulthood? One of the most controversial
of contemporary Irish novels, The Journey Home is Bolger’s most uncompromising
book. Originally published in 1990.
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My Left Foot by Christy
Brown
Christy Brown was born a victim of cerebral
palsy. But the helpless, lolling baby concealed the brilliantly imaginative
and sensitive mind of a writer who would take his place among the giants
of Irish literature. This book is Christy Brown’s own story. He recounts
his childhood struggle to learn to read, write, paint and finally type,
with the toe of his left foot. In this manner he wrote his bestseller,
Down All the Days. My Left Foot was made into a major and critically acclaimed
film starring Daniel DayLewis. Originally published in 1954.
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The Hard Life by Flann O’Brien
Into the household of the fractious Mr.
Collopy come two orphaned boys, Manus and Finbar. While Mr. Collopy is
engaged in humanitarian work on behalf of women to establish ladies’ lavatories
in Dublin the boys grow up amidst the odour of good whiskey and bad cooking.
The elder brother Manus proves himself a master of business. From teaching
people by post to walk the tightrope, he graduates to enlightening the
world at his ‘London University Academy’. As Mr. Collopy travels to Rome,
to enlist the help of the Pope, Finbarr watches and waits 85 This classic
of modern Irish literature was originally published in 1961.
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Various Lives of Keats and
Chapman and the Brother by Flann O’Brien
The cream of Flann O’Brien’s comic tourdeforce,
the Keats and Chapman stories began in O’Brien’s column in the Irish Times.
He called them ‘studies in literary pathology’ monstrously tall tales
that explore the very limits of the shaggy dog story. As one critic wrote,
they will accumulate the fantasy to the point of sadism, and then cash
home with the flat, desolating pun. The Brother is one of O’Brien’s funniest
creations. He is the archetypal Dublin man an authority on every one of
mankind’s ills, from the common cold to the court case. Forget the experts,
the Brother knows best Originally published in 1976.
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Nothing Green: A Memoir
by Evelyn Doyle
Evelyn Doyle’s first book her account
of her childhood, and of the historic legal battle her father fought to
regain custody of his children became a worldwide bestseller, and her
experiences inspired Pierce Brosnan’s film. This book continues the story;
it is every bit as compelling and touching as its predecessor. For, in
spite of their muchpublicized legal victory, times are hard and Evelyn
returns to the same grinding poverty. When ‘new mammy’ Jessie’s relationship
with her father becomes strained, the twelveyearold girl increasingly
finds herself the brunt of their criticism and dissatisfaction. And matters
don’t improve when the family moves to England to find work. Part memoir,
part social history, set against a vivid backdrop of 1960s Dublin and
England, Evelyn’s remarkable journey takes the reader through her adolescence,
working in Woolworths and as a weaver in a mill in Yorkshire, explaining
her repeated attempts to run away. Her inexplicably troubled relationship
with Jessie casts a long shadow over her life until the story’s unforgettable
denouement. A poignant and uplifting memoir.
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Spike Milligan: The Biography
by Humphrey Carpenter
Irelandborn Spike Milligan became a genius
of British comedy. For five decades he was to be one of the UK’s most
influential comics and inspire enormous affection in his many listeners,
viewers and readers. In this book the author draws on Spike’s own writings
and on those closest to him to chart the life of this most complex man.
He uncovers a personality that could be as difficult, contradictory and
misanthropic as it was passionate, sensitive and inspired. The first significant
tragedy of Spike’s life came at the end of an idyllic childhood when he
moved to the foggy, Depressionridden London. The author traces the roots
of the manic depression that was to keep so firm a hold on Spike to his
war experiences in early adulthood. He brings vividly to life the era
of the 50s which gave rise to the biggest voice in comedy with ‘The Goons’
and, with the help of neverbeforeseen letters from Spike to his producers,
follows his endlessly stormy relationship with the BBC. Revealed here
are the extramarital relationships that he carried off in parallel with
his three marriages. The picture that emerges is seldom straightforward,
but the author has created a spellbinding portrait of this tortured genius.
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Leaves from the Fig Tree
by Diana Duff
Raised by her eccentric grandparents at
Annes Grove in County Cork, an Irish stately home famed for its beautiful
gardens, Diana Duff grew up in an enchanted world of family ghosts, buried
treasure and banshees. Hers was a magical childhood, filled with a wealth
of fascinating characters: Doyle, the diminutive and belligerent stablehand,
GreatUncle Beresford, who conversed with God in the bath, and the redoubtable
Molly O’Reilly, cook, housekeeper and the heart of the household. At the
age of 18, Diana left Anne grove in search of the excitement, glamour
and heady freedom of 1950s Kenya. After working as a standin for Grace
Kelly, and as a short stint as a nurse, she married an office in the Colonial
Service and they moved to an isolated house in the heart of Kikuyuland
at the height of the bloody Mau Mau rebellion. On the move again in the
60s, Diana and her family relocated to Tanganyika, where she founded the
first mixedrace nursery school in East Africa before a transfer of power
saw the family shifting to a South Africa cruelly divided by apartheid.
An utterly beguiling memoir.
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Irish Pages: The Justice
Issue edited by Chris Agee
Irish Pages is a Belfast journal combining
Irish, European and international perspectives. It seeks to create a novel
literary space in Northern Ireland adequate to the unfolding cultural
potential of the new political dispensation. This issue contains: Poem
& Essay by Wendell Berry; Today Was the 11th of December by Samuel
Menashe; The Diarists (extract from a novel) by Francis Harvey; Prose
and Three Poems by Seamus Heaney; Six Poems by John F. Deane; Three Poems
by Gerard Smyth; One Poem by Connie Roberts; Portraits of Artists by John
Minihan; Our Cosmic Habitat by Sir Martin Rees; Three Poems by Eamon Grennan;
Twelve Poems an Prose by Michael Longley; Punishing Horses by Robert Zaller;
Four Etchings by Alfonso Monreal; Last Stand in the Kalahari by Mogetsk
Kaboikanyo; Dante’s Inferno (extract from a new translation) by Ciaran
Carson. In Homage: W.G. Sebald: The Marienbad Elegy (a final poem) by
W.G. Sebald; Redundant Epitaphs by Michael Hamburger; A Parting from Max
Sebald by Hans Magnus Enzenberger; A Mystery and a Confession by Tess
Jaray. Two poems by Angus Calder; The Stepinac File by Chris Agee; Sarajevo
Poems by Vojka Djikic and Marko Vesovic; The Wasteland by Christian Salmon.
From the Irish Archive: Five Essays by Eoghan O Tuairisc; A Poem by Greg
Delanty; Ag an Staisiun (short story) by Micheal O Conghaile; Three poems
by Cathal O Searcaigh; a Poem by Ted Deppe; The Braan Salmon and Six Poems
by Kathleen Jamie; The Prospect of Cornucopia by Simon Fairlie. The Publishing
Scene: Doom and Expertise by Chris Arthur; Dot.com Lite by Andrew Crumey.
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Unfinished Ireland: Essays
on Hubert Butler edited by Chris Agee
Hubert Butler (19001991), Kilkenny manofletters,
remains a largely undiscovered treasure of Irish literature. Proud of
his Protestant heritage while still deeply committed to the Irish nation,
he sought in his life and writing to ensure that Ireland would grow into
an open and pluralistic society. Widelytravelled, Butler wrote on a great
variety of subjects both within and outside Ireland, not least concerning
his experience of the Balkans, which remains deeply relevant to the recent
history of the region. With unfailing prescience, he also wrote on topics
as diverse as the Irish Saints, archaeology, local history, the AngloIrish
Big House, the Irish Literary Revival, nationalism, Partition, Mitteleuropa,
Stalinism, and the Holocaust. An early exponent of ecological perspectives,
his abiding themes are a faith in the local; a belief in the value of
the small nation; the dangers of globalization and mass communications;
and the enduring search for humane community amidst ‘the civilisation
of the anthill.’ In October 2000, The Hubert Butler Centenary Celebration
became the first conference devoted to the life and work of his extraordinary
Irish countryman, European and citizen of the world. In the historic venue
of Kilkenny Castle, writers, friends and family met for a weekend of reflection,
reminiscence, conversation and debate. Out of this remarkable gathering
comes this book which brings together, in original or revised form, all
nineteen of the keynote contributions to the conference, as well as a
selection of historic photographs and two comprehensive bibliographies.
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Drawing Support 3: Murals
and Transition in the North of Ireland by Bill Rolston
This longawaited third volume of photographs
of political wall murals looks at the period 19962003. The book covers
both loyalist and republican murals 114 in all, reproduced in full colour.
The murals reflect the period leading up to the Good Friday Agreement
and what the author calls ‘the frustrating politics of transition’. The
themes of murals in Republican areas include political prisoners, sectarian
harassment, memorials around the 20th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strikes,
the RUC?PSNI and British Army, plastic bullets and international security.
Loyalist murals also cover memorials, as well as the peace process, mythology,
loyalist military groups, territory, Ulster Scots history and culture,
and Royalty. In this collection the author also includes a number of unique
photographs of murals from inside the Hblocks taken shortly before the
prison’s closure.
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Celtic Wisdom by Carl McColman
This book is a comprehensive guide to
all aspects of Celtic Wisdom. It covers: the spiritual history of the
Celts, from ancient shamans to renowned druids to modern neopagans; the
magical realm of spirit otherwise known as the otherworld; the mysticism
of the natural world, from standing stones to holy wells; and why myths
and stories are so important to the Celtic tradition. It also explains:
the Seven Dimensions of Celtic Wisdom; the central place of nature in
Celtic tradition; Tools and rituals for the practicing Druid; Gods and
Goddesses of the Irish and continental Celts; The citizens of the world,
including faeries and ancestors; the grail: the ultimate symbol of the
mystical quest; the Ogham: divination of the sacred trees; the Wheel of
the Year: Celtic spirituality through the seasons; Celtic virtues: holiness,
hospitality, honour and heroism (and humour)
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Patrick Kavanagh: A Life
by Antoinette Quinn
Seamus Heaney has coupled Patrick Kavanagh
(190467) with W.B.Yeats as the two most important figures in twentiethcentury
Irish poetry. Patrick Kavanagh was born in County Monaghan, the son of
a cobblercumsmall farmer. He left school at thirteen but continued to
educate himself, reading and writing poetry in his spare time. In 1929
he began contributing verses to the Irish Statesman and was soon publishing
in Irish and English journals. His first collection, Ploughman and Other
Poems, appeared in 1936 and was followed by the autobiography The Green
Fool (still available in paperback) in 1938. In 1939 he moved to Dublin
where he spent the rest of his life as a freelance writer. He first emerged
as an important literary voice with his long poem, the Great Hunger, in
1942. Other collections and the novel Tarry Flynn (also still available
in paperback) appeared in the following decades to growing critical acclaim.
Kavanagh was also part of the social and literary Dublin for almost thirty
years in the company of a gifted generation of writers, among them Flann
O’Brien and Brendan Behan. His position in the history of Irish poetry
is secure. This biography traces his life and work in a comprehensive
and accessible manner, and is essential reading for all interested in
Irish poetry.
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Joe Cahill: A Life in the
IRA by Brendan Anderson
Born in Belfast in 1920, Joe Cahill has
been an IRA man all his life. ‘I was born in a united Ireland,’ he says.
‘I want to die in a united Ireland.’ This ambition has motivated his entire
life. It has been a life of imprisonment, of hunger strikes, of being
on the run, in safe houses, in action, and latterly in talks and negotiations.
IRA activists rarely, if ever, speak about their lives or their organization;
but in this book Cahill gives his full and frank story, his viewpoint,
his experiences from Northern Irish prison cells of the 1940s when the
birch and catoninetails were still in use, to the corridors of power in
Washington DC when the Good Friday Agreement was being negotiated. Sentenced
to death in 1942, he describes how he prepared to meet his fate; though
reprieved, he remembers vividly the awful day when his cellmate and close
friend was executed. He tells of the visit he made to Colonel Gaddafi
to smuggle arms and ammunition, and the fateful voyage of the Claudia;
Bloody Sunday and the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin; the highdrama
helicopter escape of IRA prisoners from Mountjoy Jail. He reveals how
he rose through the ranks of the IRA and the circumstances of his deportation
from the United States. This is the story of an extraordinary journey,
Cahill’s own life mirroring the growth, changes and development of the
republican movement as a whole through more than sixty years of intense
involvement.
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W.B. Yeats: A Life Vol.
II The ArchPoet by R. F. Foster
The acclaimed first volume of this definitive
biography of William Butler Yeats (now available in paperback) left him
in his fiftieth year, at a crossroads in his life. The subsequent quartercentury
surveyed in this book takes in his rediscovery of advanced nationalism
and his struggle for an independent Irish culture, his continued pursuit
of supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary
marriage, and a series of tumultuous love affairs. Throughout he was writing
his greatest poems: ‘The Fisherman’, and ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ in
their stark simplicity; the magnificently complex sequences on the Troubles
and Civil War; the Byzantium poems; and the radically compressed last
work some of it literally written on his death bed. The drama of his life
is mapped against the history of the Irish revolution and the new Irish
State founded in 1922. Yeats’s many political roles and his controversial
involvement in a rightwing movement during the early 1930s are covered
more closely than ever before, and his complex and passionate relationship
with the developing history of his country remains a central theme. Throughout
this book, the genesis, alteration, and presentation of his work (memoirs
and polemic as well as poetry) are explored through his private and public
life. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats’s friends, lovers, family,
collaborators and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding
energy, artistic commitment, and verve. Yeats constantly recreated himself
and his work, believing that art was ‘not the chief end of life but an
accident in one’s search for reality’: a search which brought him again
and again back to his governing preoccupations, sex and death. He also
held that ‘all knowledge is biography’, a belief reflected in this study
of one of the greatest lives of modern times.
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Hope and History: Making
Peace in Ireland by Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams has brought the oldest revolutionary
movement in Ireland on an extraordinary journey from armed insurrection
to active participation in government. An author as well as an activist,
he brings a vivid sense of immediacy and a writer’s understanding of narrative
to this story of the triumph of hope in what was long considered an intractable
bloody conflict. He conveys the tensions of the peace process, the sense
of teetering on the brink, and he has a sharp eye and acute ear for them
humorous foibles of political allies and enemies alike. He reveals previously
unpublished details of the peace process: secret contacts with the Catholic
Church; the inside story on the covert talks between republicans and the
British government; the IrishAmerican role and meetings in the White House;
the importance of the South African role; differences within republicanism
and the emergence of dissidents; the breakdown of the first IRA cessation.
He speaks candidly about being shot, and discloses details of his discussions
with the IRA. He details for the first time ever the secret talks to reinstate
the IRA cessation, involving Irish, British and US governments, the IRA
leadership and then opposition leader Tony Blair; and he describes the
making of the Good Friday Agreement, what was agreed and what was promised.
He paints revealing portraits of the other leading characters in the drama
that was acted out through ceasefires and standoffs, discussions and confrontations.
Amongst these are Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, Mo Mowlam, Martin McGuinness,
Albert Reynolds, Bill & Hilary Clinton, Jean Kennedy Smith, David
Trimble, John Hume, Nelson Mandela, John Bruton and Charles Haughey. As
the preeminent republican strategist of his generation, he provides the
first authentic account of the principles and tactics underpinning modern
Irish republicanism. And in a world where peace processes are needed more
urgently than ever, this book provides a template for conflict resolution
processes internationally.
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The Dublin Review Number
12 Autumn 2003 edited by Brendan Barrington
This issue contains: Colm Toibin: Emmet
and the historians; What we do with photographs by Brian Dillon; Anne
Enright: Holles Street Revisited; Diarmaid Ferriter on the Bureau of Military
History; ‘A Member of the Public’ by Judy Kravis; David Wheatley: Somewhere
between Coolock and Donaghmede; Stories by Anthony Caleshu and Tom Lee.
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The Poet and the Piper
by Seamus Heaney and Liam O’Flynn
27 poems, read by Seamus Heaney, with
musical accompaniment by Liam O’Flynn on Uilleann pipes, Rod McVey on
Harmonium and Stephen Cooney on guitar. Includes: Digging, Bogland, At
the Wellhead, The Otter, The Yellow Bittern, The Tollund Man, Midterm
Break, Clearances 3, Clearances 5, Two Lorries, A Call, Seeing Things
Section 3, St. Kevin and the Blackbird, the Annals Say, Postscript. Liner
essay by Ciaran Carson.
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Into the Quiet Stream:
Selected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Combining the poetry of W.B. Yeats, the
sounds of nature and a range of traditional Irish airs, Ernie Lyons and
Tony Deffely present some of Yeats’s best loved poems in a haunting and
evocative way. The poems are embedded in the relaxing and dramatic natural
and musical sounds of old Ireland. Poems included are: The Stolen Child,
To a Child dancing in the Wind, He hears the Cry of the Sedge, September
1913, Down by the Salley Gardens, Never Give all the Heart, Red Hanrahan’s
Song about Ireland, Ephemera, The Lake Isle of Inishfree, Politics, The
Wild Swans at Coole, The Song of Wandering Aengus, Easter 1916, He wishes
for the Clothes of Heaven, The Cap and Bells, The White Birds, The Host
of the Air, Under Ben Bulben. Presented by Ernie Lyons and Tony Deffely.
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