Like Heaney, I too was catapulted back to the powerful impact of reading Wilde’s De Profundis, also penned in Reading Gaol, on me aged 20. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction …
Samhain Stories in Flickers of Memory
Swinging on the front gate with my brother for mother to arrive home with the fruit we only saw once a year: coconuts and pomegranates. My brothers attacking the coconuts with a hammer and chisel. Me, the youngest, given the first taste of the milky juice. Continue reading
My Passion for Cricket
But strangely enough despite all my extensive sports background, I got totally absorbed and immersered listening to cricket games on the BBC radio. Continue reading
Agallaimh le Scríbhneoirí na Gaeilge/Interviews with Irish Language Writers
Childhood memories, family, grief, the beauty of nature, climate change and war are my main themes. I write to make sense of life and to shape my memories and feelings. I have a lyrical style of writing. Continue reading
What we are reading at the moment
Her interior monologues also allow for literary and philosophical references that catch the reader’s heart as the originals do…We learn that Ireland is the result of the collision of two giant rocks (chipped off from ancient continents, Gondwana, Queensland, and Laurentia, Canada) now fused together …This book held a mirror to me with its stark reminder of how lucky I’ve been to have stepped back from the precipice that I’d also found myself standing on. Continue reading
We are reading at the moment…
Most of the stories date from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and many deal with miserable school experiences. You won’t be surprised to read of Bob Geldof tormenting the priests at Blackrock College by asking inconvenient religious questions, or Edna O’Brien recounting how she sinned by the hour Continue reading
Vale Edna O’Brien (1930-2024): an Irish country girl
Edna was a fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed. Continue reading
Flann O’Brien: an interview with Rónán McDonald
Joyce had a huge influence on Flann O’Brien. Like others of his generation, he struggled to get out from under the Joycean shadow Continue reading
Three Irish Novels
For lovers of Tóibín’s Brooklyn, rediscover Eilis 20 years older… Continue reading
Stardust
My aunty and uncle said we were too young to go to the Stardust yet, but promised that when I came up next time we could go, we would be both sixteen then. Continue reading
Tinteán 