Read Ireland Book Reviews, October 1997

Children of “The Troubles”: Our Lives in the Crossfire of Northern Ireland by Laurel Holliday
In this remarkable book, the author presents a moving and powerful collection of young people’s struggles throughout three decades of violence in Northern Ireland. In personal stories, poems, and diaries, Irish writers share for the first time their memories of growing up during “the Troubles.” More than sixty Catholic and Protestant children, teenagers and adults chronicle their tragic, poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes bitter coming-of-age experiences in the war zone of Northern Ireland. from the bomb-devastated ruins of Belfast to the terrorist-ridden countryside. For the first time in 30 years there is some hope for an end to the murders and bombings that have killed more than 3,100 people and wounded more than 40,000. But the ravages of war remain indelibly etched on the minds and souls of the generation known as children of “the Troubles.”

The Boss: Charles Haughey by Joe Joyce and Peter Murtagh
Of Charles Haughey’s three periods as Taoiseach between 1979 and 1992, none was more eventful or more controversial than his nine months in office in 1982 which sowed the seeds of his eventual downfall. This book is a detailed account of that time which broke new ground when first published in 1983, has become a classic book about Irish politics and was voted by Irish politicians as the best ever Irish political book in a 1996 booksellers’ survey. Now that Haughey’s political career is being reassessed after his exposure as a liar at a judicial tribunal, this book is more than ever essential reading. With a new introduction by the authors and a foreword by broadcaster and author John Bowman, this book must be read by anyone who wants to understand the political career of Charles Haughey and the atmosphere of charisma and menace that marked his periods in power.

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Celtic Pilgrimages: Sites, Seasons and Saints by Elaine Gill and David Everett
The significance of Celtic traditions and the association with pilgrimage and its destinations were vital to our ancestors, and the Celtic saints and sites in particular were - and still are - especially important. This fascinating book explains all the aspects of Celtic pilgrimage. The sense of adventure into the unknown, intrinsic to Celtic myth and legend, will make the reader want to visit many of the places in Ireland, Britain and Brittany described here. Divided into thirteen sections, equivalent to the weeks between the four major festivals of the Celtic calendar, but adapted for modern readers using the twelve calendar months, this book is both practical and inspiring. The text is enhanced by the magnificent illustrations of celebrated modern Celtic artist Courtney Davis.

The Lost Distilleries of Ireland by Brian Townsend
Ireland’s distilling heritage is richer and more varied than Scotland’s and yet it is the later Celtic country which now boasts the greatest concentration of whiskey-making infrastructure in the world. In this book, whiskey historian and journalist Brian Townsend takes the reader on a journey to the last vestiges of what was once the greatest whiskey-producing country in the world. In so doing, we not only share a nostalgic experience with him but also learn many of the reasons as to why the Irish whiskey industry declined so rapidly and with such catastrophic results. The vast distilling complexes which grew up in Dublin in the 18th and 19th centuries such as Bow Street, Thomas Street and John’s Lane are revisited and vestiges of them all are to be found, albeit many of them sad and pitiful. In rural Ireland, Brusna Distillery (better known as Locke’s) looks more hopeful with sympathetic owners who would like to re-establish distilling there again. Lesser-known distilleries such as Birr in County Offaly, Nun’s Island in County Galway and Comber in County Down are also detailed. A picture emerges of an island once awash with distilling plants but which now can only boast activity at Midleton in County Cork, Old Bushmills in County Antrim and at Cooley Distillery at Dundalk. The answers to Ireland’s decline in distilling heritage are to be found in the pages of this book which looks at over 25 of the larger concerns that managed to survive through the better part of the 19th century until succumbing to the inevitable in the 20th. Also, information on some 15 largely forgotten concerns such as Burt, Westport, Shee’s and Dodder Bank is published, much of it for the first time. This book is a tribute to all those who once stoked the furnaces in the kilns, charged the stills, collected the spirit and who helped make Irish whiskey the most popular drink in the world. Contains numerous black-and-white photographs.

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An Irish Boyhood by William Magan
Here is social history come alive in a charming account of a boy’s intimate impressions and recollections of Irish life 80 years ago, the first in a trilogy of collected memoirs of William Magan’s long, eventful life. A kaleidoscope of memories emerge, viewed like an old sepia film, suffused in the wonderment of childhood. The ordered life of a privileged Ascendancy family - joyous sibling games and pastimes, the intriguing remoteness of parents, the beloved and indispensable Family governess “Minnar”, nights hiding under the bedclothes as the Dublin express thundered by or moments spend straddling the front wall to watch in mute wonder the Bible-black solemnity of passing funerals. This book lovingly recreates this bygone era amid a wider world of turmoil and violence as both the Great War and the struggle for Irish independence took their toll. Heart-warming and eloquent, the memories evoked are an unmissable delight.

The Star Factory by Ciaran Carson
In this highly original prose book which combines autobiography, oral history and reportage, the author takes the reader on a journey through his own memories of growing up, and through the divided city of Belfast. This meandering and haunted memoir is structured by stories that weave in and out of each other. Carson touches everywhere on associations with his own past and with the history of the city; mad coincidences open new ‘wormholes of memory’, detours lead into danger and revelation. He understands the beauty of abandoned factories, old radios, stamps, films, trams and railways, faded photographs, and the myth of the Titanic, the differences between the English and Irish languages (he grew up in an Irish-speaking family), his father’s voice, and even of the brooding waste ground between the Catholic Falls and the Protestant Shankill.

The Grand Irish Tour by Peter Somerville-Large with Photographs by Mark Fiennes
The author’s ‘grand tour’ was a slow wander around Ireland during the course of a year. This book is its record. In it he has evoked the landscapes and townscapes, the people, and the different memories that make up Ireland. He weaves together an opinionated, vivid, wonderfully sharp eye-witness impressions as he takes the reader through Killarney and Cork, Limerick and Galway, Killala and Sligo, Drogheda and Wexford, Ballyshannon and Bushmills, Downpatrick and Antrim. The author has an ideally acute eye and ear for the Irish peculiarity or charm or disagreeableness. The book is funny, touching, beautifully descriptive, eccentric; it contains numerous black-and-white photographs: a classic!

Heritage of Ireland by Brian de Breffny
In this book the author traces the history of Ireland, covering the island’s geological origins and earliest known settlers, the Norman invasions, Cromwell’s conquest, the rise of Nationalism, emigration to America, Sinn Fein and modern industrial Ireland and her place in Europe. The author’s knowledge of the changing social and religious life of the Irish people, their writings, their building and their crafts, makes this book much more than a history, and enables the reader to gleam a colourful and intricate understanding of a fascinating land. The book is richly illustrated with 16 pages of colour photographs and 100 black-and-white illustrations and photographs.

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Dismantling Mr Doyle by James Ryan
On the surface, the Doyles are the archetypal Irish family - loving, secure, traditional. They have their small rebellions, but somehow power still remains firmly in the hands of Mr. Doyle, a benign patriarch controlling all their lives. But in the world outside, things are changing, the old order is being dismantled and the traditional roles the Doyles have always accepted are finally being challenged. Right at the heart of the Doyle household, threatening their own miniature universe, sits a revelation that will throw them unwillingly and inexorably into the conflict. To avoid becoming casualties, each of them must change, and some will survive better than others. This is a novel about the intricate nature of the parent/child relationship which will strike a chord with anyone who has ever loved a parent and sometimes wondered why!

Oscar Wilde by Vyvyan Holland
In this book, Vyvyan Holland, the son of Oscar Wilde, gives the reader endearing glimpses of the private man, as well as the public figure. A legendary figure of his generation, Oscar Wilde rapidly become the most successful playwright and the most celebrated wit in the English-speaking world. However, his downfall from being the darling of the salons to an object of the most viscious calumny was not only a remarkable cause celebre but also a pitiful tragedy. The book contains 146 black and white photographs and illustrations.

Nighthawk Alley by Anthony Glavin
Street-wise and often very funny, this novel is the story of Mickey McKenna, a Dublin-born mechanic who dislikes cars, puzzles over people, loves his garden, and takes a drink. After thirty years in America, he is contentedly ticking over towards retirement at his garage across the river from Boston. But when he hires Fintan, a young Donegal mechanic, and Lionel, a black Vietnam veteran, dope-smokers with earrings both, accepted boundaries begin to blur. Watching Fintan’s struggle to find a foothold in the States - the same struggle he faced year before - Mickey is suddenly forced to re-examine his life, both as an American and an Irishman. A beautifully paced eulogy to oil changes and Cadillacs, this novel is also an extraordinary portrait of displacement, identity and bigotry, a beguiling study of hootch, fan belts, and the pursuit of happiness.

Great Irish Legends for Children retold by Yvonne Carroll
A delightful collection of traditional Irish legends including much-loved favourites such as Oisin, The Brown Bull of Cooley and the Giant from Scotland. Six beautifully illustrated legends, simply retold, for children of all ages to enjoy and remember.

Saoire by Padraig Standun
The latest novel by the candid priest (in Irish). Tomas O’Grainne feels a fatherly obligation to give advise to his daughter Rosemarie on noticing the interest she is generating amongst the young men of Crete during their foreign holiday. Predictably she backlashes by reminding him of his desertion of her mother in favour of Stephanie, his new lover. This sparks a conscience crisis in Tomas which ruins the holiday for all three. Ceapann Tomas O Grainne gurb e is dual do comhairle a lease a chur ar a inion de bharr na speise a leirionn Romeos oga Hersonisis na Creite i Rosemarie. Gan de fhreagra aici sin ar an sceal ach treigean a mathar, agus Stephanie, an leannan is deanai aige, a chasadh lena hathair. Spreagann se sin aothu coinsiasa in intinn Thomais a chuireann an tsaoire ghreine o mhaith orthu triur.

The Chieftains: The Authorised Biography by John Glatt
Since their humble beginnings in the folk clubs and bars of Ireland in the early Sixties, the Chieftains have built a worldwide reputation and following based on their brilliant musicianship, their rediscovery and reinvention of traditional Irish music, and their own original music and Oscar-winning soundtracks. This authorised biography is the first intimate and comprehensive history of the group. Based on exclusive and extensive interviews with all the band’s members, with their families and friends, and with many of the international superstars who have recorded with them, this revealing book tells their own story for the first time, with insight, wit and charm. It has not always been easy: for a long time they struggled to make an impact in the wider world of popular music, and there have been several personnel changes over the years. But the strugglle has paid off, and the band’s present line-up is now able to enjoy the fruits of its work and the joys of its music. This history of The Chieftains over the last 35 years is the history of Irish music, and the story of how an unlikely group of enthusiasts came together to resuce some of the world’s most beautiful music from near extinction, brought it to an audience of millions, and became acclaimed stars in their own right. Their story is a fascinating one, told in their own inimitable voices in this book.

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An Irish Voice: The Quest for Peace by Gerry Adams
This book provides a unique insight into the Irish peace process. It is a revealing chronicle of political events and an insight into the private life of its author who is President of Sinn Fein and a Westminster MP for West Belfast. It includes some surprisingly light and humorous moments. Consisting of selected articles from his regular column in the New York newspaper, The Irish Voice, these writing possess a remarkable immediacy. From talks with John Hume in 1993, through the IRA cessation, President Clinton’s visit to Northern Ireland, the bombing of Canary Wharf, right up to the restoration of the present IRA cease-fire, Gerry Adams gives an absorbing firsthand account.

The Woman of the House by Alice Taylor
Alice Taylor is the author of To School Through the Fields and a series of other best-selling memoirs of Irish country life. This is her first novel. Rural life is evoked with humour and humanity in this exceptional novel, a moving story of land, love and family. Generations of Phelans have occupied Mossgrove, working hard on their well-tended farm, improving the land and the livestock. They have played their part in the social life of the small cluster of farming families around, surviving a feud with unscrupulous neighbours. But suddenly and unexpectedly the farm comes under threat from within, and the family is torn asunder. Set in the early 1950s, the novel explores the passions, the struggles, the joys and the trials of a life lived close to the earth.

Classic Celtic Fairy Tales by John Matthews
Nothing better exemplifies the world of magic and Celtic tradition than its fairy tales, and in this collection John Matthews has brought together some of the best of these stories, following in the tradition of the great 19th-century collectors such as Joseph Jacobs, W.B. Yeats and Jeremiah Curtin. This book contains a veritable treasure trove of material, much from forgotten archives in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. While fairy tales and their equivalent occur in all cultures throughout history, the Celtic tradition speaks especially of a universal humanity, and of a oneness with land, time and nature that we seem to have lost over the last hundred years. The current revival of interest is matched by a seeking for deeper understanding, both of self and of place in the universe. These tales and their lessons are wonderful in introducing the simple yet magical aspects of truth - entertaining, amusing and teaching all at the same time. The author has supplied a full background and explanation for each story and from renowned authority and writer R.J. Stewart there is a thought-provoking Foreword. With the superb colour illustrations provided by noted artist Ian Daniels, this book is a fitting addition to the wide range of titles on Celtic and other mythical and legendary topics available.

The Wondrous Land: Fairy Faith in Ireland by Kay Mullin
Dr. Kay Mullin, a clinical psychologist by profession, was introduced to the world of faery by Spirit channelled through a medium. She was told that it was her task to help to open the doorway between mankind and the faery kingdom. That revelation led, after considerable resistance, to Kay undertaking extensive research in Ireland, collecting stories both old and new, not just from books, but from people who not only know of faeries, but see and hear them too - in the land so long associated with them. The result is this book, leading the reader to discover the elemental powers of Ireland. The text is complemented with lyrical poetry from Irish seer Gabriel Rosenstock, and exquisite drawings by Cormac Figgis. The faery faith is real, alive and growing!

Monica Carr’s Country Diary edited by Mairead McGuinness
Mary Norton was born on a farm in Dunlavin, Co. Wicklow on 28 August 1922. She spent a large part of her early years farming the family’s mixed farm until, in the 1950s, her “Country Diary” appeared in the Farming Independent under the pen-name of Monica Carr. Those who delved into her “Country Diary” each week did so for the way she portrayed farming and rural Ireland in less hectic times and for her absolute delight in its simplicity. Monica Carr captured the atmosphere of another era. She warmed readers’ hearts with her tales about a day at the mart with husband Tom, or about the antics of the noisy inhabitants of the rookery close to the farmyard. Her grandmother Carr’s recipes (for everything from a cure for chilblains to the most delicious plum jam) were very popular features of her weekly column. Her words brought back memories to those who came from farming stock and, for those who did not they gave a delightful picture of country times, nature and how farmers manage through good times and bad. This compilation of Monica’s evocative “Country Diary”, by Mairead McGuinness, editor of the Farming Independent, will bring great pleasure to those who have loved her column over the years. It will also help the Irish Cancer Society to provide care and support for people with cancer in communities all over Ireland.

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Rebels and Informers: Stirrings of Irish Independence by Oliver Knox
This book is a brilliant portrait of a key moment in history when Ireland embarked on the struggle for independence. The year 1998 is the bicentennial of the bloody end of the first great revolutionary republican movement in Ireland. This book looks again at that movement’s heroes and villains, and at the similarities and differences between the situations then and now. The Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast, and its first members were for the most part highly educated men of Protestant and Presbyterian stock. Imbued with the hopes and learning of the 18th century Enlightenment, their dream was to bury the religious divisions of the island, end the rule of the ‘antiquated and corrupt Ascendancy’ centred on Dublin Castle, and sever all connections with England. From the first, the Society was riddled with informers. Most of the Society’s leaders were scattered or banished, and endured picaresque sojourns in France and America. Wolfe Tone, its proto-martyr, his panache and gaiety undimmed, conspired in Paris during the early Napoleonic Wars in the hope that Ireland’s independence might be won with the help of a French invasion. The quixotic Hamilton Rowan, disenchanted by Robespierre and the Terror, comforted his exile by boating in the marshes of the River Delaware. Drennan, pious coiner of the phrase ‘Emerald Isle’, retreated into patriotic poetry after a near-fatal trial for sedition. Of the book’s four principal rebels, Lord Edward Fitzgerald gave the movement, as it headed towards the doomed rebellion of 1798. flourished of romantic but hopelessly inadequate leadership. The author draws freely on the journals and letters of the four principal rebels, and their voices reach us with marvellous freshness and immediacy. Combining an ancestral interest in Irish history with a novelist’s sensitivity to character and motive, he brings his protagonists vividly before us as they experience conspiracies, trials, betrayals, flights, wild Atlantic crossings, the scoldings of long -suffering wives, the ironic perceptions of well-rewarded informers, and terrible, drawn-out deaths.

PI in the Sky: A Revelation of the Ancient Celtic Wisdom by Michael Poynder
Our distant ancestors knew the flow of energy from the sun is the life force, and that sunspot activity, planetary influence, the earth’s electromagnetism and the wave-energy properties of light all influence human life. Using the ancient ‘diviner’s’ art, Stone Age cultures set up their megaliths at the intersections of the energy paths flowing around our planet. Their sacred sites modelled and put to work the geometry of the solar system, creating extraordinarily powerful concentrations of the vital force. With the warlike Iron Age culture, and a narrowing of human perception, this higher knowledge was eroded. But the ancient wisdom tradition remains, depicted and enshrined in the carved spirals at Newgrange, the alignments at Carnac, the inbuilt mathematics of the Pyramids, the geometry of the Tara Brooch and countless other sites and artefacts. Michael Poynder has devoted half a lifetime to the painstaking study of this long lost tradition - a quest begun at Carrowkeel, on the shores of Lough Arrow in County Sligo in 1962. Lavishly illustrated and written with great clarity and insight, this book is the magnificent result. Here the author delves into the mysteries of mathematics, cosmology, physics and archaeology to reveal a wealth of ancient knowledge of astonishing sophistication.

Room for a Single Lady by Clare Boylan
Evoking the magic of childhood and adolescence with rare subtlety, wit and warmth, this novel is both delightfully comic and genuinely moving, and shows the author to be at the height of her considerable powers. ‘Reality is immemorial to men.” So says dazzling Sissy Sullivan as she pushes her rubber bosoms into her bra. And for ten-year-old Rose Rafferty there is at last a marker on her map of the earth. To Eugene Rafferty, girls are like money - they have to be saved. His three young daughters, despite living in 1950s Dublin, seem doomed to a childhood of Victorian austerity until a stranger comes to their house, trailing the allure of the world. Bridie, Kitty and Rose are growing up and they no longer trust their beautiful but oppressed mother to lead them into brilliant womanhood. As family fortunes decline, the Raffertys are forced to take in lodgers, and these independent but eccentric outsiders introduce the girls to new experiences - of sex and superstition, of spite, of true love, and tragedy. For in a world caught between the after-shock of the war and the transforming liberalism of the 1960s, there are two states of womanhood: single, and caught up in the comic and desperate search for a suitable husband; or married, and enduring the claustrophobia of suburban life.

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Ballyknockan: A Wicklow Stonecutters’ Village by Seamas O Maitiu and Barry O’Reilly
For over 170 years a community of stonecutters in Ballyknockan, nestling in the Wicklow mountains, has provided granite for many of Dublin’s best known buildings, including churches, public offices, hospitals and banks. This lavishly illustrated work outlines the history of these skilled craftsmen and their tradition. It examines their unique village and highlights examples of their craft in Dublin and elsewhere.

Irish Hunger: Personal Reflections of the Legacy of the Famine edited by Tom Hayden
Why do Irish people still find it so difficult to confront the Famine? In the words of the poet Eavan Boland, the Famine was covered ‘in a silence in which stories were not told, in which memories were not handed on, in which the ordinary sorrow and devastation of a people was neither named nor recorded.’ What is the exact nature of this unspoken trauma at the heart of Irish history? How has it touched our own lives, altered our individual histories? What can we recover of the Famine when so few records were kept? And how can we commemorate the dead when we don’t even remember their names? The Irish Famine or Great Hunger - which saw its darkest point 150 years ago during ‘Black 47’ - killed or displaced millions of people, utterly transforming Irish society. Within a generation, the population of the country had been halved, the Irish language effectively destroyed and the cultural fabric of Ireland lay shattered. This book is a unique collection of highly personal essays, reflections and poems from Irish and Irish American contributors. Contributors include: Seamus Heaney, John Waters, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Seamus Deane, Eavan Boland, Tim Pat Coogan, Nell McCafferty, Paul Durcan, Brendan Kennelly, Helen Litton, Jimmy Breslin, Gabriel Byrne, James Carroll. Complemented by a historical chronology, and a series of eyewitness accounts and commentaries from contemporary documents - newspapers, letters and diaries - this book urges the reader to heal ‘a wound on the Irish psyche that still aches.’

The Dramatic Life and Fascinating Times of Oscar Wilde by Martin Fido
The story of Oscar Wilde, brilliant Irishman and one of the most arresting personalities of his time, is inseparable from the world of arts and high society in the eighties and nineties and this book deals with both. Wilde was the centre of a brilliant group at Trinity College, Dublin which included Edward Carson - later his prosecutor - and his arrival at Oxford immediately brought him into contact with Ruskin, Pater and Newman. He won the Newdigate Prize in 1878 and from that moment went from success to success until the fatal enmity of the Marquess of Queensberry resulted in his ruin. Oscar Wilde is appreciated today as never before; the author of the marvellous comedies, of Dorian Gray, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, has a reputation that no longer suffers from a world bent on striking the moral attitudes of a hypocritical society. The world of Oscar Wilde was the world of Swinburne, Verlaine, Whistler, Frank Harris, Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sarah Bernardt: it was also a world of enormous wealth and privilege which existed beside one of grinding poverty and squalid vice. A wealth of illustrations illuminate the many facets of the world of Oscar Wilde portrayed in this magnificent book.

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I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke
This book is a collaboration, in the shape of a lyrical novel, between writer Timothy O’Grady and photographer Steve Pyke. It tells the story of a man coming of age in the middle years of this century. Now at its end, he finds himself alone, struggling to make sense of a life of dislocation and loss. He remembers his childhood in the west of Ireland and his decades of bewildered exile in the factories, potato fields and on the building sites of England. He is haunted by the faces of the family he left behind, and by the land that is still within him. He remembers the country and the sea-scapes, the bars and the boxing booths, the music he played and the women he loved. The threnody of his days is also a succession of pictures and in their counterpoint - vivid, sensuous text and stark, harrowing, sometimes lovely images - this novel becomes a distillation of the experience of Irish emigration. 

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