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Books Ireland (Nov. 2001): Review Brian Cosgrove, The Yew-Tree at the Head of the Strand (Liverpool UP 2001), 240pp.; Cosgrove raised in Newry in the 1940s and 1950s, son of publican; ed. QUB; an Uncle Johnny had a farm at Lislea; raised in Catholic/Nationalist ethos. Ciaran O’Driscoll, A Runner Among Falling Leaves (Liverpool UP 2001), 172pp.; reflects on relationship with his father, a teacher, whose mental and physical abuse affected him profoundly throughout his life; ‘the feelings do not age’. Shirley Kelly, ‘Putting a Brave Face on It/The surgically enhanced Terry Prone’ [interview], (Books Ireland (Nov. 2001, pp.287-88. Recounts sequel to series accident in collision with another car travelling westward to Galway at Lucan, her legs being reduced to ‘eggshells in a polythene bag’. Sue Leonard, review of Bernard MacLaverty, The Anatomy School (London: Jonathan Cape 2001), in Books Ireland (Nov. 2001, p.289). A coming-of-age novel in which Martin Brennan, an insecure seventeen-year, is facing school-leaving examinations amid uncertainty vis a vis his peers and an enigmatic and incommunicative family; befriended by the new boy Kavanagh and makes a threesome with Blaise Foley, who hatches a plan to steal the exam paper for a sneak preview; loses his virginity to an Australian while conducting a night-time experiment; quotes, from the exam scene: ‘The moist palms. The incredible difficultyu of beginning the first sentence. The writing until his fingers were sore and the blood seemed ot have drained from his arm. The certainty that he was being processed and graded so that society could utilise him.’ Pauline McLynn, Better than a Rest ([2000] Headline 2001), 318pp.; by former actress; centres on female private eye Leo Street; Annie Sparrow, Said and Done (Townhouse), 368pp. Gerry McDonnell, Mud Island Elegy (Lapwing), 42pp.; concerns the Jewish community outside the walls of Dublin, and their graveyard, the twenty-four poems; taking their departure from the inscriptions on the tombstones; by author of RTE plays, The Dream of James Clarence Mangan and More than Strangers; foreword by Gerald Davis. Michael Coady, All Souls (Oldcastle: Gallery Press), 140pp.; reprint, with alterations, of 1997 collection; translations from Gaelic, incl. “Five Airs from an Older Music”; quotes: ‘The black potatoes/scattered our neighbours,/Sent them to the poorhouse/across the sea;/They are stretched in hundreds/in the mountain graveyard,/May the heavenly host/take up their plea. (”Na Prataí Dubha”); incls. prose piece consisting in a discussion of the stories of his father and uncles and their relation to Ireland during the age of emigration. Ben Lander, ed., Women’s Voices: Irish Women on Love, Men, Sex and Relationships (Meath: Winklecraft 2001), 152pp. Clodagh Corcoran, reviewing Patricia Boyle Haberstroh, ed., My Self, My Muse: Irish Women Poets Reflect on Life and Art (Syracuse UP 2001), quotes Boland: on her own attempts to transcend the ‘restrictions and flawed permissions’ of the male voice, and the ‘reordering of the Irish poem that women poets have accomplished’. Also Ní Chuilleanáin: ‘[An] Irish woman writing in the internatoinal void of English has to define herself in relation to a vital masculine tradition and reach out to a rapidly developing movement of women’s writing all over the world.’ Books Listed [Copied to Datasets 21/02/02 BS]
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