Melbourne Hosts successful two-day symposium on Irish Language. Next is a review of Australian novelist and diarist Helen Garner’s How to End a Story, much appreciated by those of us who are Garner fans. ‘Priests in the Family’ provides Enright’s intriguing family connection to James Joyce, followed by an ‘Introduction to Ulysses’ where she talks about her personal experience of starting to read that famous book at the age of fourteen, ‘mainlining language, getting high on words’ Continue reading
Filed under Short Story …
Holiday Reading: A Christmas alphabet; This is Our Town; The Best Friend; Conemara Faoi Nollaig
Always in a hurry, the fishmonger would stay in the middle of the street and shout out that he was there. Women rushed out of their houses with their aprons on. Clutching their purses, they queued for the fish wrapped in newspaper. Continue reading
Once Upon a Time in Edenderry
I watched her through the process as her fingers moved so fast as to blur. Constantly she consulted the intricate pattern from a book by her side. Continue reading
What we are reading, hearing, attending, watching
Her final words are to the homeless and to those who become so because home is not safe: ‘To anyone trapped in a place that does not feel like home, and anyone who has ever been asked the question ‘why don’t you just leave?’ This book is for you. Continue reading
Once Upon a Time in Edenderry
I watched her through the process as her fingers moved so fast as to blur. Constantly she consulted the intricate pattern from a book by her side. Continue reading
Small Things Like These
The world of the film is a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, and yet no-one ever speaks of what happens just down the road. Continue reading
Memories of Our Old House
Who can forget the smell of the Ulster fry of bacon, eggs and fadges completely soaked in gravy? Continue reading
Creative Fiction: short story ‘Uncle Jack’
My grandmother and father would sometimes make derogatory references about Uncle Jack’s conduct and deportment on certain occasions, whether he was alone or not, at what hour he arrived, or was the last to leave, or even if he showed up at all, information that was meticulously dissected. Continue reading
Christmas Delights and Disasters: recipes and anecdotes
The main course was a labour of love, requiring a new (double) cherry seeder and a great deal of patience and finding space in the fridge, overstuffed for the season. To me, it looked festive with its glossy cherries and a crisp watermelon. 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