In Holy Cow!, pathos was blended with comedic bombast, prolixity with wordless groans, and irony with genuine feeling. The ending was incredibly moving, reminding us of Joyce the man and the writer. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction …
Emotional Intelligence and Family Crisis
Book Review by Frances Devlin-Glass David Park: Travelling in a Strange Land, Bloomsbury, London, 2018 ISBN: 9781408892787 RRP: £11.69 This is an extraordinary novella from a Northern Irish writer I was not aware of, but it makes me very curious to read more of his fiction. It’s a tale of a snow-locked father and son (with … Continue reading
Waterford in Fiction
… he tells a great story and knows how to keep his readers interested. Continue reading
An Irish Family in WWII
The book’s success, however, depends significantly on the accuracy of her portrayal of the grim reality of what the individuals experience in their varying engagements in the war Continue reading
A Legacy of Myths
Book Review by James McCaughey Colm Toibin House of Names, Picador. May 2017 RRP: $29.99 h/b 261 pp ISBN: 978 1760 551421 The ancient Greeks have left us a legacy of myths. Some of them are still current – the stories of Oedipus or Antigone, for instance. Others, though less known, the story of Pygmalion say, have … Continue reading
The Wing Orderly’s Tales.
It might all lead to dull or grim stories, but Gebler’s characters are all human, damaged certainly, but each with his own story.
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Bloomsday 2017 – Getting Up James Joyce’s Nose
James Joyce, and Steampunk? Circus? Vaudeville? and the squiffy liffey, and worse? Continue reading
Anne Enright – Family and Fiction
‘This is an Irish novel that is afraid of nothing, least of all of being thought of as an Irish novel.’
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The Trilogy that Grew – Adrian McKinty’s Belfast Noir
Duffy is a smart and determined Catholic in a police force that is overwhelming Protestant; and he resides and survives in a Protestant estate because he has a ‘good relationship’ with the leader of the para militaries who run that estate. Continue reading
The troubles of DI Sean Duffy
That Sean Duffy, McKinty’s main character, is a Catholic means that his Northern Irish police superiors are unsure of him and that he is as much an outsider on the Gerry Adams side of his society as on the Ian Paisley side. Continue reading
