| Book Corner. 270307.jpg) FICTION
After novels about grungy Irish blues bands and coming-of-age boys, Roddy
Doyle surprised readers with his 1996 bestseller The Woman Who Walked
into Doors, about a woman trapped in an abusive marriage.
In his latest novel, Doyle resurrects the main character from Doors.
In fact, the book is named Paula Spencer and catches up with this character
now that she is sober and a grandmother.
Paula is trying to reconcile with her son, who is living with his own
substance- abuse problems. Her oldest daughter seems a model of the Celtic
Tiger generation “a successful businesswoman,” but under intense
pressure.
The newfound prosperity of Ireland, meanwhile, affects Paula’s
own day-to-day life. Though she still works hard, she is also managing
to make a little money for herself – a new experience, to say the
least.
Paula Spencer is a quieter novel than The Woman Who Walked into Doors,
with simple things such as parent-teacher conferences providing the drama.
Still, Doyle is to be credited for never taking the easy way out: Paula,
for example, is still able to admit she craves booze, despite the trouble
it caused her. Doyle also does not give Paula a clichéd miserable
childhood to explain away her problems.
Paula Spencer may not be made into a movie as The Commitments and The
Snapper were. But Doyle can still dazzle readers.
($24.95 / 288 pages / Viking)
Colm Toibin’s body of work is so impressive and wide ranging that
he has transcended the title of mere “author.” Aside from
brilliant fiction such as his recent biographical novel of Henry James
(The Master) and The Blackwater Lightship, Toibin has also written or
edited anthologies of Irish fiction,revisionist explorations of the Irish
famine and a meditation on the state of Catholicism in Europe.
Toibin returns to fiction with his latest book Mothers and Sons, but
he is still trying something different. This time he has written a collection
of short stories.
The title outlines the main theme of Toibin’s stories, though
there is great diversity of character, form, language, even length in
this collection. In “The Use of Reason,” a lifelong criminal
is nearly exposed by his own mother, while “A Priest in the Family”
can be seen as a morality tale involving child abuse and Mother Ireland. ($24
/ 288 pages / Scribner)
Billy the Kid was famously slain by Sheriff Pat Garrett at the age of
21 in New Mexico and became an icon of the West. But legend has it that
his parents were Irish immigrants from the slums of the Bowery in New
York City. Michael Wallis (author of Route 66 and Pretty Boy) does his
best to separate fact from fiction in Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride.
Wallis, incidentally, is quite an interesting character: he hosts the
PBS series American Roads and has done voice work for Hollywood films
such as Cars.
($25.95 / 288 Pages / W.W. Norton)
Recommended
270307.jpg) Nothing But
an Un½nished Song:
Bobby Sands, The Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a GenerationIt’s
been 25 years since Bobby Sands and his fellow Irish nationalists launched
their hunger strikes in 1981, which resulted in Sands’s death after
66 days. That may seem like a long time ago, but as author Denis O’Hearn
makes clear in his powerful new biography Nothing But an Unfinished Song,
the hunger strikes are still with us today in the fragile peace process
still unfolding in Northern Ireland.
O’Hearn’s book, which is subtitled Bobby Sands, The Irish
Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation, follows Sands from when he was
first arrested in the early 1970s. In ’76, Sands and others went
“on the blanket”; protesting their treatment as common criminals,
they refused to wear uniforms and wore blankets instead, in an attempt
to regain their previous status of political prisoners. Attempts to break
the protest by brutalization of prisoners saw the escalation to the “dirty
protest” of 1978 when repeated beatings during “slop-out”
led to prisoners living in squalor by smearing excrement on the walls.
Few knew such a gesture would escalate into a crisis for the likes of
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, while captivating revolutionaries
such as Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela. (There had been an earlier hunger
strike in the autumn of 1980, which had ended when the British government
appeared to concede to prisoners’ demands. When that strike was
over, the governmentreverted to its previous stance.)
O’Hearn’s chronicle of Sands (who was quite a talented writer
and musician) is powerful enough, but this book’s strength is that
it offers a broader view of English and Irish politics. An Irish-American
professor at Queen’s College in Belfast, O’Hearn argues that
Sands’s eventual death was the start of a process which brought
Irish nationalists into the mainstream of political debate about the future
of Northern Ireland.
True, some readers might like to read more about how Irish America was
inspired and outraged by the hunger strikes, but there is plenty of compelling
new material in this book to move almost any reader with an interest in
Irishhistory and politics.
($16.95 / 448 pages / Nation Books)
270307.jpg) NONFICTION
Bryan Sykes is a professor of human genetics at Oxford University and
also operates a company that traces human genetic backgrounds. Think of
him as a CSI detective for history buffs.
Sykes tackles the Irish genetic code in his new book Saxons, Vikings,
and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland. He traces the genetic
makeup of many royal families, even those distant descendants who live
all around the world in the 21st century.
Sykes (author of The Seven Daughters of Eve) conducted a ten-year DNA
survey that involved 10,000 volunteers, seeking the genetic makeup of
British Islanders and their offspring. Sykes also provides historical
context and color, visiting Welsh caves and vividly describing burial
rituals from thousands of years ago.
A highlight for American readers is the chapter devoted to the genetics
(and royal bloodlines) of the Irish in the U.S.
($26.95 / 320 Pages / W.W. Norton)
270307.jpg) Some great
novels about the experience of the Irish famine have come out in recent
years, such as Kevin Baker’s Paradise Alley and, more recently,
The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens. However, The Prendergast Letters:
Correspondence from Famine-Era Ireland, 1840-1850 (from the manuscript
collections at Boston College’s John J. Burns Library) offers readers
the actual words and experiences of a single family from Kerry.
Not unlike The Diary of Anne Frank, the details of the letters seem mundane
(weather reports, check cashing and gossip appear alongside comments of
a more political nature), but because we know of the looming horror, these
observations seem all the more striking.
James and Elizabeth Prendergast raised six children in Milltown, County
Kerry. These 48 letters were sent to children who left Ireland for Boston.
“What comforts I anticipate at the thoughts of embracing each and
everyone of you so long parted from me,” Elizabeth wrote in 1850.
The Prendergast Letters also includes essays by historian Ruth-Ann Harris
and genealogist Marie Daly, which provide valuable context.
($29.95 / 202 pages / University of Massachusetts Press)
270307.jpg) Just in time
for St. Patrick’s Day, a paperback edition of The Wearing of the
Green: A History of St. Patrick’s Day has been released. This book
(first released in 2002) doesn’t quite live up to its far-reaching
title. Both authors are academics, and it shows. Daryl Adair is a Lecturer
in Sports Humanities in the Centre for Sports Studies at the University
of Canberra, Australia, while Michael Cronin is Senior Research Fellow
in the History Department at De Montfort University, Leicester, England.
For a book about boisterous celebration, the tone of this book is extremely
analytical. 270307.jpg) Still,
it does offer some useful facts about how St. Patrick’s Day has
developed into a global holiday, celebrated in Ireland, America, Australia,
Canada and Britain.
($19.95 / 328 pages / Routledge)
Carmel McCaffrey reached a wide audience writing the companion book to
the PBS special In Search of Ancient Ireland. Now comes a follow-up, In
Search of Ireland’s Heroes. This is a broad, chronological overview
of the past 10 centuries or so. Much of this might seem familiar to some
readers, but for those looking to brush up on the basics of Irish history,
this is as good a general history as any.
The recurring theme of this book is Irish conflict with England, which
has defined the Irish experience going back to the 12th century. McCaffrey
is to be credited for lively narrative writing, while offering insightful
portraits of towering
historical figures such as King Dermot MacMurrough, Oliver Cromwell, Charles
Stewart Parnell and, more recently, Pearse, De Valera and Collins.
McCaffrey does not rely solely upon previously published summaries, but
instead gives readers plenty of material drawn directly from letters,
political records and other documents from the era.
($26.95 / 290 pages / Ivan R. Dee)
270307.jpg) MEMOIR
John Doyle’s excellent memoir A Great Feast of Light combines recent
history with coming-of- age angst and ultimately captures how Ireland
was transformed when TV became more widespread in the early 1960s.
Doyle’s portrait of everyday life in Nenagh, Tipperary alone is
vivid. He skillfully expands his narrative outward, exploring sex, poverty,
civil rights and more. All of these topics are seen through the prism
of television, how it depicted, reflected and ultimately changed Ireland
and the world.
The “boob tube,” in Doyle’s mind, delivered subtly subversive
messages to Irish audiences, changing a culture stubbornly clinging (Doyle
believes) to the past.
Who would have believed Gunsmoke, Monty Python and The Man From UNCLE
could do such a thing? But if you don’t believe it, read A Great
Feast of Light.
($15.95 / 321 pages / Carroll & Graf)
270307.jpg) I Never Knew
That About Ireland is a great St. Patrick’s Day gift book. Flipping
through it offers up a bounty of trivia, facts and figures about Ireland,
its landscape and its most famous figures. Author Christopher Winn is
a former question writer for the TV hit The Weakest Link, so he knows
his way around trivia.
($24.95 / 320 pages / Thomas Dunne)
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