CategoryReviews of Irish Literature

If you love nice long sentences, this is a good book for you. It was published in 1908, the year my father was born, and is set in Waterford, Ireland. The Irish author was successful, having been the first author to have two top-ten best selling books on The New York Times list in one year (1905). She died when she was only 36. It tells the struggle of one family to become middle class in...

Recently I read a book that extolled the virtues of cricket; this one centers on a love/hate thing with soccer, or football, as they call it in Ireland. First, I learned that a Panenka is a surprise move, kicking the ball directly in the middle of the goal in a shootout kick with the hope that the goalie will leap to one side or the other to block the ball. It is named for Antonin Panenka, a...

It was Ron Charles’ review in The Washington Post that induced me to read this 645-page book, and it was the memory of his enthusiasm that kept me at it when I nearly gave it up after two grim sections, one featuring a teenage girl and the other her pre-teen brother. Then came a section describing a horror that was averted by the entrance of a woman speaking about black dogs barking outside...

I hesitated to read this, wondering if it would be too grim. Now I am grateful to have overcome that worry as it was so full of life, so complex, and so unexpected in many ways. It is set in Northern Ireland just outside Belfast in 1975, during the Troubles. This is the story of Cushla, who is Catholic and teaches in a school with both Catholic and Protestant children. Her brother runs the family...

Set on an island off the west coast of Ireland in 1979 in the midst of The Troubles, this is the story of a summer-long visit of an English artist and a French linguist to the island. The island is losing population; fishing can no longer sustain the population and in fact was dangerous in itself. One of the main characters is a widow whose father, brother, and husband were killed the same night...

I have read two of Bernard MacLaverty’s books, one in the pre-blog days (Grace Notes) and The Anatomy School and am very much a fan of his work. This one from 2017 is also worthy, if you can manage the bleakness. An older couple, Stella and Gerry, are preparing to leave their home in Glasgow for a short trip to Amsterdam. They were from Northern Ireland and had left to escape the Troubles...