Read Ireland Book Reviews, Feburary 1998

Celtic Goddesses by Miranda Green
Celtic goddesses presided over war, nature, animals, healing and fertility. Terrifying battle goddesses were often invoked in times of war; a Mother Goddess was venerated, often in triple form, and supplicated for fertility of animals and crops. Divine and semi-divine femals abound in Wlesh and Irish myths, often associated with themes of virginity and sexuality, promiscuity and destruction. The concept of partnership is prominent in Celtic religion and myth, and it is possible to trace evidence of the divine marriage in both European iconography and Irish story. Goddesses were often linked with animals: birds, dogs, bears, pigs, snakes and horses all hard their divine protectresses. The author, one of the leading scholars of Celtic myth and religion, examines the significance of the female in Celtic belief and ritual as expressed in archaeological remains and written sources. The transformation from polytheistic paganism to monotheistic Christianity in the Celtic west is examines in a final chapter. This book is a stimulating study and contains 68 black-and-white illustrations.

Gaff Topsails by Patrick Kavanagh
Set in Newfoundland, this marvelous story of an Irish Catholic community largely takes place on Midsummer’s Day 1948. Yet in the breadth of its imaginative sweep it encompasses the events, both great and small, since the founding of the parish in the fifteenth century. Father MacMurrough, newly arrived and in fear of the Devil, reflects on a failed love-affair. Young mute Michael Barron falls in love and is puzzled by the way that his life like the tremendous iceberg he explores becomes fraught with danger. His pious younger brother, Kevin, is terrorized by mysterious whispering monsters. Adolescent dreamer Mary invokes the pagan aspect of Midsummer. A woman sitting alone on a rooftop spends her waking hours on watch for the return of her fisherman-husband. Meanwhile old Johnny, the mad lighthouse-keeper, remains haunted by a horrifying experience when his deceit saved others from a terrible death. Behind all these looms the founding father of the village, a castaway, the son of a monk in flight from an Irish famine, whose spirit still affects every soul in the community.

[ top ]

The Irish in America narrated by Colm Meany
On the 150th anniversary of the Irish Famine which sparked the wave of emigration that forever changed the face of Ireland and shaped the course of American history, these tapes celebrate the comprehensive and vibrant history. Through illuminating essays and contributions from noted Irish American personalities, the audiobook paints a vivid picture of the Irish experience in the United States of America. This history is told through selections whose themes are taken from the most important institutions of Irish life: the Parish, the Precinct, the Work, the Players and the Family. The Irish identity in America is captured through the personal stories of families, workers, local churches, entertainers and many others, culminating in an unusually moving and modulated social, cultural, and political history of Irish Americans. Contains essays written and read by Frank McCourt, Pete Hamill, Dennis Duggan, MaryHiggins Clark, Malachy McCourt, Peggy Noonan, and Roy and Patty Disney.

Celtic Mythology by Simon Goodenough
The myths and legends of the ancient Celts have fascinated and enthralled succesive generations for more than 2000 years. For centuries, these enchanting tales of magic, monsters, heroes, and villains were handed down by word of mouth, often changing in the repeated tellings. Then, in the middle ages, Christian monks, long intrigued by the stories they had heard, began to write them down in manuscript form, thus preserving these fascinating accounts forever. The very word Celtic conjures up a mysterious world of Druids and their strange rituals, great warriors, star-crossed lovers, witches and warlocks, poets and musicians. This book brings together some of the best known myths and legends from the Celtic lands of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and parts of mainland Europe. They include the saga of the mighty warriors, Cu Cuchlainn, the Hound of Ulster; Deidre and the Sorrows; the battle furies; the Prince of Dyfed’ Tristan and Isolt; and Celtic versons of the Arthurian legend. The myths and legends of the Celts come alive on the pages of this beautifully-illustrated volume. A complete history of Celtic lore is highlighted with over 100 colour and archival images, vibrantly capturing the history and drama of this mysterious, ancient civilisation. 

The Potato Year by Lucy Madden
365 ways of cooking potatoes. This book is written in calendar form, with a recipe for each day of the year. It is a personal collection; not just of ways of cooking potatoes but scattered with information about the cultural, social and historical role of the world’s best loved vegetable. A sometime journalist, keen cook and gardener, the author, together with her husband, own and run Hilton Park in County Monaghan, and are founder members of Hidden Ireland, an association of country houses accommodating paying guests. Potatoes flourish in the Hilton organic gardens; in the house they feature in soups and salads, in combination with other vegetables, meats and fish, in breads, baking, drinks and preserves. Visitors from all over the world who stay at Hilton have helped put together this eclectic collection so that the potato year comprises both the simple and exotic including of course the traditional Irish ways with potatoes.

Country Cooking 2 by Jenny Bristow
Based on her immensely successful television series, Jenny Bristow’s new book contains a further collection of delectable recipes from other cuisings and will inspire you with its range of traditional dishes from around the world. Each has had jenny’s special magic applied to make it straightforward and simple to prepare. And as always, the accent is on combining healthy eating with wholesome, tasty ingredients.

Shadow Dancer by Tom Bradby
This novel is a chilling, complex and utterly compelling thriller about the choices we make and why we make them. It is a riveting portrait of a group of people torn apart by the strife of civil war and the overwhelming pull of family attachments. Colette McVeigh: widow, mother, terrorist. A woman who has lived the Irish Republican cause for all of her 33 years. A woman whose brothers are both heavily involved at a senior level in the IRA, whose husband was killed by the British security forces. A woman who is now an informer for the British Secret Service, MI5. Apprehended by the police in an aborted bombing raid in London, Colette is given a simple choice: talk and see her children again, or stay silent and spend the rest of her life watching them grow up from behind the bars of a prison cell. Gradually and unwillingly she is led to betray her past by her young MI5 handler, David Ryan, who has never doubted where his loyalties lie. But when he follows Colette across the Irish Sea to Belfast, the very tenets of his existence trust loyalty and honesty are quickly sacrificed on the pyre of the province’s history. And, as he watches Colette put herself in increasing danger to fulfil her side of the bargain, he realizes that his professional integrity is irrevocably and fatally compromised.

The Wexford Rising in 1798: Its Cause and Its Course by Charles Dickson
Local tradition is silent on the subject of the Wexford Rising: the social and political wounds it inflicted went too deep for storytelling, and the passions and controversies it arounsed were so violent that, writing almost 160 years after the event, Charles Dickson is one of the first to have attempted an account that is objective and non-partisan. This book is a classic exploration of this telling episode, a vital moment in Ireland’s history, and characteristic of so many struggles that preceded it and followed it: Catholic against Protestant, people against establishment; just Irish cause and savage English repression; courage and idealism, faction and betrayal, brutality and military incompetence; the vain hope of international intervention. Dickson’s fascinating biographical notes on the key players, his critical bibliography and his use of unpublished letters and documents add scholarship and substance to his account of this brief but horrifying piece of history. The Tellicherry Five: The Transportation of Michael Dwyer and the Wicklow Rebels by Kieran Sheedy paperback; 9.95 IRP / 15.00 USD) In another age they would have passed their lives as sheep farmers and brewery workers. But this was the year 1798 and as the defeated rebel forces sought refuge in the Wicklow mountains a band of local men, led by Michael Dwyer, fought a stubborn rearguard action which continued for five years until their surrender in the aftermath of the rebellion of Robert Emmet. The subsequent transportation of Michael Dwyer, Hugh Vesty Byrne, Martin Burke, Arthur Devlin and John Mernagh to New South Wales in the convict ship Tellicherry, ostensibly with the rights of free settlers, brough them instead in direct conflict with the dictatorial governor William Bligh of the Bounty. As they struggled to attain economic independence for their families, the harsh reality of life in the penal colony involved them in further struggles with an uncomprehending system of justice. This book is a ‘popular’ history: a compelling account of ordinary men and women who survived a period of unimaginable horror and whose ultimate triumph came in the shape of their descendants who helped to shape the destiny of the new land of Australia. Far From the Land: Contemporary Irish Plays edited by John Fairleigh and forward by Sebastian Barry (paperback; 9.99 IRP / 15.00 USD) This anthology contains 6 startling and often provocative plays by playwrights working in the north and south of Ireland, have each been viewed as groundbreaking events in contemporary Irish theatre. They trace the restless urban ambition in contemporary Irish drama to turn the past on its head and look back at the land with scepticism and sometimes a rough, rude glee. The plays: At the Black Pig’s Dyke by Vincent Woods, Language Roulette by Daragh Carville, Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh, Bat the Father Rabbit the Son by Donal O’Kelly, Frank Pig Says Hello by Patrick McCabe and Hard to Believe by Conall Morrison.

[ top ]

The Last Fine Summer by John McKenna
“Last night, for the first time in weeks, for the first time since you died, I dreamt. I’ve been wanting to dream. I believe in dreams and in the life that goes on inside them. Not some fantastic otherworld but a place where those of us left behind can regain our sanity. And so I waited, I knew, in the end, those dreams would come. And with them would come hope.” Tim lives in the house he grew up in, and teaches at the school he went to as a child. As the days lengthen and the heat shimmers over the meadows, he looks back to the last fine summer, when he was eighteen. He and his friend Kevin were on the threshold of leaving home to go to the university in Dublin, ready to experiment with life and love in any way that they presented themselves. But part of Kevin is vulnerable and unstable, wanting to provoke violent confrontations and a depth of emotional intensity which Tim is unable to comprehend. Tim’s memories of Kevin intertwine with his painful recollections of Jean, a student in the class he taught. He recalls the beginning of their love affair, and the secrecy and constraint that they became accustomed to, always putting off their happiness until a future in which all obstacles would be removed. Until he is left only with the reminders of their love and its perpetual postponement. With subtle and masterful prose, John MacKenna has captured the tangible, sensual pain of grief perpetuated by memory, and created a hauntingly beautiful double-love story. John MacKenna was born in Castledermot in County Kildare. He has won a number of awards for his writing, including a Hennessy Literary Award in 1983, the 1986 Leitrim Guardian Award, and a Cecil Day Lewis Fiction Award in 1989 and 1990. His previous publications are: The Fallen, Clare, The Occasional Optimist, Castledermot and Kilkea, The Lost Village, A Year of Our Lives.

Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural Hisotry edited by John Wilson Foster
How has Irish nature been studied? How has it been expressed in literature and popular culture? How has it influenced, and been influenced by, political, economic and social change? These long-neglected questions are pursued in this book, a pioneering collection of original essays by leading naturalists, science writers and cultural historians who bring us from the geological prehistory of the island to the environmental threats of the late twentieth century. Nature in Ireland is an indispensable reference source, containing definitive histories of Irish botany, mammalogy, entomology, fish and fisheries, geology, meteorology, ornithology, woodlands, demesnes and bogs. These essays reclim the study of nature as a major contribution to Irish culture and a significant field of Irish studies, drawing out the links between scientific study, history, art and popular culture. Others focus on specific cultural aspects of nature in Ireland: Sean Lysaght explores the question of nomenclature in a bilingual society; Michael Viney gives a lively critical history of hunting, shooting and other field sports; Dorinda Outram examines the relationship between the standard continental models of natural history and the Irish experience; John Feehan writes of the challenges of conservation and environmentalism; J. H. Andrews presents the history of the mapping of Ireland’s physical geography; David Cabot discusses the essential texts of Irish natural history; and in three magisterial essays editor John Wilson Foster traces the traditions associated with perceptions of Irish ‘nature and nation’ in the nineteenth century, and, in ‘The Culture of Nation’, takes the reader on a dazzling tour from Yeats, Wilde, Kavanagh and Heaney to the cultural implications of eco-tourism, deep ecology, genetic engineering and artificial life. Over 50 photographs, maps, paintings and engravings, which illustrate the visual culture of Irish nature, accompany the essays. In Nature in Ireland, the disciplinary boundaries that have partitioned the study of nature are cleared away with wit, style, and scrupulous scholarship. It is a landmark publication in the study of Irish history, science and culture.

[ top ]