Read Ireland Book Reviews, Febuary 1999

Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age edited by H.B. Clarke, M. Ni Mhaonaigh and R. O Floinn
Loscad Rechrainne o geinntib, ‘the burning of Rechru (Rathlin Island, Co. Antrim) by heathens’: thus is the first Viking raid on Ireland recorded i n the Annals of Ulster under the year 795. The 1200th anniversary of this event was marked by an international conference in Dublin, the proceeding s of which are published in this volume. It contains papers devoted to archaeology, history and literature and covers the full span of Irish-Scandinavian relations during the early Viking Age up to c.1000 in the light of the most recent research. It includes reviews of the history an d archaeology of Scandinavia and the Viking west with particular reference to Norway, Scotland, Ireland and the Irish Sea area as well as the early development of towns in Ireland and Britain. Material culture is discuss ed in papers on Insular finds in Scandinavia, Viking burials at Kilmainham a nd Islandbridge, Dublin, and the swords and silver of the Viking Age in Ireland. Evidence from the sagas, hagiography and other literary sources is assessed which sheds light on the Irish and the Vikings. The published proceedings also contain overviews of the subject from both Irish and Scandinavian perspectives.

Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
’I could find her if I chose. I found the others, but they were dead whe n I found them.’ Haunted by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, and tormented by his sense of guilt, former New York City detective Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker is a man consumed by violence, regret and the desire for revenge. Then Bird’s ex-partner asks him to track down a missing girl and Bird embarks on an odyssey that is to lead him into the bowels of organised crime; to an old black woman who dwells by the Louisi ana swamps; to cellars of torture and death; and to a serial killer unlike an y other, an artist who uses the human body as his canvas and takes faces as his prize, a killer known only as the Travelling Man. Steeped in the bes t traditions of classic American crime fiction, Dubliner John Connolly’s stunning first novel pushes back the frontiers of the genre. Complexly plotted, richly textured, with memorable characters and a profoundly mora l dimension, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realised. Truly the mo st terrifying crime-thriller since The Silence of the Lambs!

Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil: 100 Poems by Paul Durcan
Paul Durcan has been at the heart of Irish cultural life for 30 years and his poetry has acquired a huge international following. This new book is his most challenging and engaging collection yet, one that addresses itse lf through Ireland and the Irish diaspora to the whole world beyond. It is his most personal and his most public work, a book of tremendous imaginative power, fusing autobiography with a record of the public life of a nation. By turns lyrical, humorous, angry, whimsical, generous and visionary, it is a meticulously honest record of a writer’s inner life and a bold attempt to fix the soul of his country at a particular time: the years of Mary Robinson’s presidency. Durcan’s unmistakable voice, by turns funny, savag e, tender, wise, sweetly melancholic and ever self-mocking, has matured into an instrument of extraordinary power, able to find an audience far beyond th e usual readership of poetry. The pain and recovery of Paul Durcan’s inner odyssey are mirrored in the images of an Ireland awakening from the nightmare of its violent past. He meticulously catalogues each new atroci ty of his nation bombings, sectarian murder, arson juxtaposing them with images of Ireland becoming freer and more cosmopolitan, and finding in Ma ry Robinson the unifying symbol for this new, more hopeful age.

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Seamus Heaney by Helen Vendler
Seamus Heaney has dealt unflinchingly with the relationship between the personal and political, the aesthetic and the ethical, over four decades, in work firmly rooted in both the English and the Irish literary traditions. His receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 was fitting recognition of his poetic achievements. In this beautifully written, accessible account of the life and work of Seamus Heaney, Helen Vendler traces his development as a poet from 1966 onwards, pausing to look close ly both at individual poems and at Heaney’s political and literary heritage. One of the most acclaimed critics of verse in the English-speaking world, Vendler brings to the reader a sense of Heaney’s struggle to be both socially responsible and creatively free, whilst explaining ‘as much to myself at to others, the power of his extraordinary poetry.’

What the Hammer by Dermot Healy
Dermot Healey’s poems ‘project an open, rugged humanity, celebratory of common life.’ In his second collection he broadens his focus from his communal devotions to the quick of the natural world. Local speech patte rns incorporate idiosyncratic observations and sometimes surreal incursions. In a book busy with life ‘Everything is on the go. Time is moving inlan d’ the poet registers sounds and silences in ultimately peaceful ways.

Selected Poems by Michael Longley
Celebrated for his lyrical intensity, his metaphysical wit, his thematic and formal range, Michael Longley is widely regarded as one of the finest poe ts in these islands. His life in Northern Ireland has contributed to the complexity of a poetic universe in which love, friendship and aesthetics contend with war, death and violence. There are no hard and fast boundar ies between Longley’s love poetry, his nature poetry, his war poetry and his elegies. He looks to the poets of Greece and Rome, particularly Homer an d Ovid, and the poets of the two world wars. His great ability, perhaps, h ad been to distil the large and difficult themes into highly concentrated forms. This book is the poet’s own selection from thirty years of writin g; it reveals the strength and coherence of an extraordinary body of work.

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Portia Coughlan by Marina Carr
Haunted by the death, fifteen years previously, of her twin brother who keeps calling to her, Portia Coughlan has become, in turn, a ghostly figu re. She lives with her husband, who she can’t love, and her three children, w hom she can’t trust to care for herself. The drama of Portia’s sexually char ged relationships and her fierce exertion to sustain her independence grows a nd grows in Marina Carr’s richly textured dialogue, beautiful lyric soarings and visionary flights.

Our Lady of Sligo by Sebastian Barry
In Jervis Street Hospital in Dublin, circa 1953, Mai O’Hara lies, attende d by the young nursing Sister, and visited by the uneasy figure of her husb and Jack, daughter Joanie and her dead father. Fuelled by alcohol, passion a nd despair it is the story of her flamboyant but destructive relationship wi th Jack, and the lost country of her childhood and unfulfilled expectations in the wake of Irish Independence and self-rule. Our Lady of Sligo was produced at the Royal National Theatre in a co-production with Out of Joi nt, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, in April 1998.

Bandanna by Paul Muldoon
Following his highly praised Shining Brow in 1993, which was also written as an opera libretto for the American composer Daron Aric Hagen, Paul Muldoo n’s Bandanna takes us into very different territory. Its action is set in a small town on the Mexican border; it includes illegal immigrants and a corrupt law officer among its dramatic personae; but at its heart is an old-fashioned tale of sexual jealousy and murderous revenge. The drama i s powered by a strong emotional thrust, most of it conveyed in the form of popular song, and leads to a shattering climax. Bandanna demonstrates ye t again the ever-increasing range of this most versatile of poets.

Three Plays by Martin Lynch
Martin Lynch has been a significant figure in Irish drama since the late 1970s when They Are Taking Down the Barricades gave first expression to contemporary Belfast working-class life. Rooted among the political and imaginative forces bearing upon and emerging from both northern communiti es, Lynch explored those forces with humour, anger and compassion. Having committed himself to the values of community-based drama, he wrote a stri ng of popular successes throughout the 1980s. Marked by an accurate ear for dialogue and pungent wit, the plays chalked out a territory securely his own. Out of this commitment have also come three of the most important plays in the last 25 years from the north of Ireland Dockers, The Interrogation of Ambrose Fogarty and Pictures of Tomorrow. Dockers is a boisterous recreation of working class life in Belfast’s famed Sailortown district. Reminiscent of Dario Fo but rigorously placed in the sadness o f real political conflict, The Interrogation of Ambrose Fogarty is a most vivid, pointed and funny play dealing with the ironies and absurdities of police detention. In the character of Willie Lagan, Lynch created one of the memorable comic Ulster figures. With Pictures of Tomorrow, Lynch attempts to deal with the disillusion of left-wing ideals in the wake of the collapse of Communism, against the poignant backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict loaded with Irish resonances. These plays, available for the first time, confirm Lynch as a leading Irish playwright.

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