This polemic against intolerance toward gay men, is vehement about the church in Ireland. It begins with the day the narrator’s 16 year old mother was denounced by the priest from the pulpit in a village in the west of Ireland because she was pregnant. Not only was she denounced as a whore, she was driven from the village that same day by the priest who himself fathered two children. Her...
It was Reading Matters’ announcement that it won the 2019 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year that took me to this book. I had read Park’s book The Light of Amsterdam in 2012 and greatly admired it and now I want to read his other books. The tone of this short book is claustrophobic: a man named Tom set out to pick up his son from college after a snowstorm that closed the airports...
It was Tony’s enthusiasm for this book that moved me to read it and I must remember to thank him. It is set in a small town in western Ireland and Dublin from 2011 to 2015; the characters are in high school, then at Trinity College. Marianne is a brilliant student, not attractive or liked by others; she shows disdain for her classmates. Connell is also brilliant as well as being one of the...
I have made the unusual decision to stop reading this estimable book; though it has much to offer, I find it too oppressive for me at the moment. It was Reading Matters’ review that was the impetus for reading it. She called it “an extraordinary portrait of an ordinary man,” a good description. I’m finding that life too grim. The story of Farley begins in 2010 with his...
I was unfamiliar with this Irish author and listened to the audiobook as a result of Reading Matters’ enthusiasm for her books. The plot had some very familiar elements, but a variation that I found quite appealing. The main character is a free-spirited woman who does free-lance writing and lands temporary university posts lecturing on Irish literature. Clara has just returned from one of...
Maggie O’Farrell’s book was so intense and had so many unforgettable moments that I had to take little breaks to recover. The story is told from multiple points of view so that various characters have their moment to present themselves (or be presented). The chapters may be long or short and the time varies from the mid-80s to 2016, but I didn’t have a problem adding up all the...
I do not remember where I saw a reference to this 2009 book and I don’t know the Irish author, but her work is amazing on several counts. First the perfect descriptions, like this one of early summer on a London street in the 1930s: Bella moved to the front window. Down on the street early summer was showing: more people than usual, walking at a more leisurely pace, in paler clothes made of...
I put off reading this book as I understood it to be grim and I find grim Irish family stories hard to take. Tony’s Book World, however convinced me it was worth the effort, and as usual, he is right. I love his first paragraph about this book: “The world was beginning to seem just too bright and cheerful for me again. It was time to read Anne Enright.” The book opens in 1980...
My ten favorite books list this year may have more than ten books: this is another one that I admired greatly. I read another book by Deirdre Madden (Molly Fox’s Birthday) and like this one as well or better. The Buckley family in Dublin during the flush economic times is the subject of this lovingly told story that centers on Fintan, a man who loves a good hearty lunch and immediately...
This short novel about the life of an Irish woman who moves to New York in 1962 will be in my top ten for the year. It begins with the death of Tess’s mother when Tess was an 8-year-old; joy goes out of the house and her dour father withdraws his meager love. She finds comfort in her sisters, the dog, and Mike Connolly who works on their farm but even so she has lost the ability to speak...