3.5 I finished listening to Long Island, Colum Toibin's sequel to Brooklyn, about a week ago, but I have been in a quandary about what to write. On the3.5 I finished listening to Long Island, Colum Toibin's sequel to Brooklyn, about a week ago, but I have been in a quandary about what to write. On the surface, the plot seems like a recipe for a soap opera.
Irish immigrant Elish Lacey leaves her small village and the love of her life, James Farrell, and marries Tony Fiorello, an Italian immigrant with a thriving plumbing business. They move to Long Island, live in a cul-de-sac with his extended family, have two children, and live without significant complications for twenty years. Then comes the knock at the door.
The irate husband of one of Tony's customers confronts Elish and tells her that her husband has impregnated his wife and he will be dropping the baby at their doorstep after it is born. Elish does not want any involvement with the baby and decides to visit Ireland for her mother's 80th birthday. It will be her first time seeing her mother or friends from the village in twenty years.
Back in the village, Elish's best friend Nancy has been widowed for five years and has secretly taken up with Elish's old heartthrob, Jim Farrell. They plan to announce their engagement after Nancy's daughter's wedding, and then Elish arrives.
While this may sound a bit melodramatic, Colum Toibin makes it work. Once Elish arrives in Ireland, Toibin tells the story from the alternating perspectives of Elish, Jim, and Nancy. Toibin is a master at character development and understands the nuances of Irish village life. He subtly ratchets the tensions, leaving the reader to ponder the ending.
Jesse Buckley does a great job narrating the audiobook. It's a great summer listen.
"A woman suffering from severe neurosis went to Freud and asked if he could cure her. Freud said no, he couldn't do that, but he believed what he coul"A woman suffering from severe neurosis went to Freud and asked if he could cure her. Freud said no, he couldn't do that, but he believed what he could do was restore her to a state of normal unhappiness."
John Banville's April in Spain is a subtle mystery filled with irony and richly developed imperfect characters. The 8th book in his " literary mystery series" centers on Dublin pathologist Quirke, who is vacationing with his psychiatrist wife Evelyn in San Sebastian, Spain. A freak accident lands Quirke in the local ER, where he encounters an Irish doctor who resembles his daughter's close friend, April Latimer, a member of a prominent political family. April's brother had confessed to murdering her four years ago before driving over a cliff. However, her body was never found.
The doctor's strange behavior heightens Quike's suspicions. He calls his daughter and asks her to come to Spain, setting off a tragic chain of events. Banville is a master at pacing and slowly building suspense. The story would make a great Hitchcock film. I highly recommend April in Spain if you want to escape and enjoy a well-done thriller....more
I love Claire Keegan. In this collection of three short stories about the uneasy relationships between men and women, she once again demonstrates her I love Claire Keegan. In this collection of three short stories about the uneasy relationships between men and women, she once again demonstrates her finely crafted prose and subtle, low-keyed depiction of character.
Highly recommend for fans of Small things Like These and Foster....more
I finished Paul Murray's The Bee Sting a week ago and have been mulling over what to say. I liked the novel and found itShortlisted 2023 Booker Prize
I finished Paul Murray's The Bee Sting a week ago and have been mulling over what to say. I liked the novel and found it very engrossing. It is a family saga reminiscent of Franzen, set in a small Irish town about two hours outside Dublin in 2008 during the financial crisis. The book examines the crash's impact on the once affluent Barnes family, Dickie, Imelda, and their two children, Cass, 17, and PJ, 12, after the family auto dealership goes bust.
Murray tells the story from each character's perspective, providing engaging tragicomic backstories for the parents Dickie and Imelda. Like their flawed but likable parents, Cass and PJ's lives are upended by the family's falling status, and they respond with characteristic adolescent and preadolescent angst.
The author has a lively writing style and a gift for character development. While the book is long (650 pages), it was a pleasure to read. However, the implausible ending didn't work for me, detracting from my overall estimation of the book. While I would still recommend it, I would be disappointed if it won the Booker Prize....more
" History is a silent record of people who didn't know when to leave."
Prophet Song kept me up reading late into the night. Winner Booker Prize 2023
" History is a silent record of people who didn't know when to leave."
Prophet Song kept me up reading late into the night. It is an emotionally draining novel with Orwellian themes and scenes that propel the reader forward with the intensity of a Hitchcock film.
In a dystopian future, Ireland's far-right National Alliance Party (NAP) comes to power. To maintain order, they create a secret police with supplemental powers that strip citizens of their fundamental rights. The story centers on the impact of the new order on a middle-class Dublin family, the Stacks; Eilish, a microbiologist; Larry, an official in the Teacher's Union of Ireland, their four children; and Eilish's aging father, who is struggling with dementia.
The nightmare begins when secret police attack a peaceful teacher's rally for higher wages. Larry and other union officials are arrested and disappear. Legal due process starts to erode, and the NAP replaces people in jobs nationwide with party hacks, causing Eilish to lose her job. Lynch chronicles Eilish's struggles to keep her children and aging father safe as the nation descends into a violent civil war, and they become refugees.
At first, I found Lynch's writing style difficult to follow. There are no paragraphs, and he doesn't use conventional indicators for dialogue. Scenes proceed without interruption until a gap appears, indicating a new section's start. However, once I grew accustomed to his style, I found his writing had almost a cinematic flow that drew me deeper and deeper into the nightmare.
Prophet Song is a powerful novel as it crystalizes the trauma that so many people worldwide are experiencing. In an interview, Lynch stated that two competing sentiments motivated him to write this novel. First, he is troubled by the lack of empathy for refugees, which he feels is prevalent in the West. Lynch also wanted to explore how much agency individuals possess in times of societal collapse. He succeeds on both fronts. Prophet Song is a mesmerizing, provocative read. I highly recommend it....more
3.5 Ireland- In the early 1950s, just after the end of World War II, Rosa Jacobs, a 27-year-old graduate student at Trinity College, is found asphyxiat3.5 Ireland- In the early 1950s, just after the end of World War II, Rosa Jacobs, a 27-year-old graduate student at Trinity College, is found asphyxiated in her car at her lock-up (parking garage) outside Dublin in what looks like a suicide. However, Medical Pathologist Dr. Quirke finds marks on Rosa's mouth that indicate that someone gagged, anesthetized, and placed Rosa in the car with the motor running. Quirke and DI Strafford must figure out why.
Booker Award winner John Banville creates an intricate plot that examines Rosa's connection to the family of a wealthy German emigre and the hit-and-run death of an investigative reporter in Tel Aviv. While the storyline is well designed, Banville's greatest strengths lie in the development of character and setting. Both Quirke and Strafford are finely drawn, flawed, and very human, and very much of their time. Not only are the characters contextualized, but Banville captures the ambiance and mood of post-war Dublin.
It is a well-done mystery and a perfect summer (or fall) escape. ...more
In the Woods, Irish- American Tana French's award-winning debut is a cut above the traditional pol3.5
Winner 2008 Edgar Award for a Debut Mystery Novel
In the Woods, Irish- American Tana French's award-winning debut is a cut above the traditional police procedural. It is a psychological thriller focusing on the gradual unraveling of the novel's narrator, protagonist Rob Ryan, a troubled detective on the Dublin murder squad. Ryan must investigate two possibly interconnected cases.
Twelve-year-old Katy Devlin's body has just surfaced in the woods near a small town outside Dublin in the identical place where two children went missing twenty years ago. Rescuers found their friend, Adam Ryan, covered in blood and without memory of what happened. To complicate matters, unknown to everyone but his partner, our detective narrator Rob Ryan is Adam Ryan, the child survivor. The story moves back and forth in time as Ryan mentally struggles to come to terms with what happened in his childhood and the current crime.
French's writing is subtle, low-key, and realistic. Her characters are flawed and complicated, especially Ryan, and she does an excellent job with the plot. If you are looking for an escape from the news, this is a book I'd recommend.
Thanks to GR friend Dolors for inspiring me to read Kennedy.
Louise Kennedy's impressive debut novel provi4.5
Shortlisted Women's Prize for Fiction 2023
Thanks to GR friend Dolors for inspiring me to read Kennedy.
Louise Kennedy's impressive debut novel provides a nuanced depiction of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Set in a small, "mixed" town outside of Belfast, the story centers on Cushla Lavery, a 24-year-old teacher at a Catholic primary school who enters into an affair with Micheal Agnew, a married Protestant barrister twice her age.
Cushla's father has recently died, and she lives with her grieving, alcoholic mother and often helps out in the family bar after work, where she meets Michael. Both Cushla and Micheal care about their work and attempt to do some good in a world gone array.
Micheal defends young Catholics accused of crimes against the state. While Cushla tries to help Davey, a seven-year-old child in her class whose father was severely beaten and left for dead. Davey is the product of a "mixed" marriage (father Catholic, mother protestant) who lives in the Protestant council flats and is subject to bullying in his neighborhood and at school. The threads of Cushla's life intertwine in an ironic yet disastrous manner reflective of the time and place.
Kennedy's prose is stark, and her pacing is slow yet measured. She evokes time and place with precision. There is a delicate balance between humor and pathos. Highly recommend....more
Tom Kettle is 66 years old. He retired from the Dublin Detective Squad nine months ago and enjoys living in the Long-listed for the 2023 Booker Awards
Tom Kettle is 66 years old. He retired from the Dublin Detective Squad nine months ago and enjoys living in the country doing nothing. He has earned it. However, the inevitable knock on the door brings two young detectives who want his help with an old cold case dealing with the death of a priest.
Kettle lacks sympathy for the clergy. He and his deceased wife, June, were orphans raised by church officials, Tom by monks, and June in a convent laundry. From a young age, Tom was sexually abused by a monk and June by a visiting priest. Both were traumatized by years of abuse and when they met as young adults forged a bond rooted in compassion for each other's trauma. They were determined to find happiness, have children, and provide them with a happy family life.
" two babies in their bed and June in their own...Tom would be thinking of the early rise in the morning to get out to the bus, the long trek into town, head nodding from broken sleep, and the passing of his character as father and husband into his character as policeman and colleague, a curious transition that in the evening would be reversed in the eternal see-saw of life, of everyone's life."
While the initial knock on the door often signals a quest to solve a cold case, Old God's Time is not a mystery novel. The case serves as a trigger that causes Tom to try to come to terms with his life and the painful losses of his wife and two children.
n a sense, Tom is an unreliable narrator. He is not dishonest, but he has blocked many sad and painful memories that unfold as the novel progresses. Barry is a beautiful writer. His prose is taunt and subtle, and while written in the third person from Tom's perspective, Barry manages to capture Tom's interior thoughts in a rhythmic stream of consciousness.
Old God's Time is a sad story and was often painful to read. However, I loved the book. It is my first book by Sebastian Barry, and I am excited to read more. Highly recommend....more
Claire Keegan, longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize for Small Things like These, has again created a powerful novella of subtle beauty. In Foster, KeeClaire Keegan, longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize for Small Things like These, has again created a powerful novella of subtle beauty. In Foster, Keegan's unnamed narrator is a young girl from a large family whose parents sent her to spend the summer with relatives, the Kinsellas, a childless couple she has never met. The couple provides the attention and care that the young girl never received at home, and the young narrator begins to thrive and develop a heightened sense of self. She describes her journey and deepening relationship with the Kinsellas in the voice of a sensitive and inquisitive child. It is a moving tale that I highly recommend....more
I am new to the world of Booker Prize longlists and predictions. I started reading the lists during Covid out of boLonglisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
I am new to the world of Booker Prize longlists and predictions. I started reading the lists during Covid out of boredom and found an array of authors I might not have encountered on my own. So I continued this year and am perplexed about the criteria they use to select the list. Thus far, I have read Nightcrawling, Oh William, Small Things Like These, The Colony, and half of Booth. All good books, and yet the only book that stands out to me thus far is The Colony.
I liked Audrey Magee's writing, the pacing, style, structure, and nuanced characterization. She deals with serious issues: colonialism, language and identity, art, and appropriation. And yet, she does this with subtlety without using the language of polemics.
The story takes place in 1979, at the height of the Troubles, on an island off the west coast of Ireland, three miles long and a half mile wide, with a population of 92. It centers on an intergenerational family that has rented out rooms for the summer to two men, J.P. Masson, a linguist from France, and Llyod, an English artist. Masson is working on his dissertation documenting change in the disappearing Irish- Gaelic language. Llyod sees himself as a modern-day Gaughin capturing island life, as Gaughin did in Tahiti. They instantly hate each other when they first meet.
The book revolves around the men's pretensions and interactions with each other and the islanders. Stylistically, the author intersperses short nonfiction reports of murder and violence that overwhelm the region between chapters providing a timely context to the interactions on the island.
I feel that The Colony is an innovative novel that tackles essential questions. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Ireland or literary fiction.
"He found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another."
Orders of Roman Catholic Nuns in Ireland ran theSpoiler Alert
"He found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another."
Orders of Roman Catholic Nuns in Ireland ran the Magdelene Laundries from the 18th century until 1996 to house "fallen women," prostitutes, unwed mothers. The Nuns forced these women to engage in unpaid manual labor, washing, ironing, and packing laundry as "penance for their sins." From 1922-1996, 10,000 girls passed through the laundries where abuse was commonplace(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/wo...).
In Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan provides the reader with entre into this world. Her writing, like the story itself, is subtle and low keyed. It centers on Bill Furlong, a local coal and timber merchant in New Ross, a small town in County Wexford. Furlong is married and has five daughters. His mother, an unmarried domestic worker, avoided the laundry when her employer took in mother and son when at 16, she gave birth to him.
The novella occurs at Christmas time, a busy delivery season for Furlong. When he delivers to the local convent, he finds a young girl, dirty and cold, locked in the shed. She has recently given birth, is lactating, and asks Furlong desperately about her baby. He brings her to the Mother Superior, who feigns ignorance and provides him with a hefty tip. After that, he leaves and must decide what to do.
Keegan juxtaposes scenes of an idyllic Irish village at Christmas time with the harsh realities of the residents of the laundries, a reality that most village residents are aware of but don't want to confront. It is against this backdrop that Furlong deals with his moral dilemma.
I highly recommend this short work. I want to thank GR friends Candi and JimZ for bringing this book to my attention!...more
An unusual thing occurred when I marked the Heart's Invisible Furies as currently reading on my Goodreads feed. Three of my GR friends Adina, Ann, andAn unusual thing occurred when I marked the Heart's Invisible Furies as currently reading on my Goodreads feed. Three of my GR friends Adina, Ann, and Caroline, independently commented, " You are really going to love this book." Right, they were.
John Boyne's epic novel spans seven decades from 1945-2015 and takes place in Ireland with sojourns in Amsterdam and New York during the AIDS pandemic. It is a coming-of-age novel set against the background of toxic homophobia and sexism fueled by the Catholic Church. It is also an examination of shifting social attitudes.
The book centers on Cyril Avery, a gay man who grew up in Dublin when engaging in gay sex was a criminal offense punishable by jail time. Boyne does an excellent job chronicling the confusion and fear of Cyril's youth and his search for identity and a meaningful relationship. While there is much pain and sadness in the story, there are also numerous incidences of humor and hope.
Boyne is an outstanding writer, skilled at creating loveable, flawed, multidimensional characters and capturing the ambiance of shifting historical periods. In addition, he provides his narrator, Cyril, with wry wit and an ironic sense of humor that gives the reader subtle social commentary throughout. I've enjoyed his story and his company this past week and felt sad when I finished reading. However, this was my first novel by John Boyne, so I can look forward to reading his other work.
In my pre-covid life, I volunteered at the Irish Reparatory Theater in NYC and saw many excellent plays that came directly from Dublin. The Pull of thIn my pre-covid life, I volunteered at the Irish Reparatory Theater in NYC and saw many excellent plays that came directly from Dublin. The Pull of the Stars reminds me of this fine theater. Set in Dublin at the end of World War I at the height of the Influenza epidemic, the story focuses on life in the “fever- maternity ward,” a converted hospital supply room set aside for pregnant influenza patients. It takes place over three days. The compressed time frame, the close examination of the tensions of the delivery room during a pandemic, the insightful characterization, and dialogue combine to give this book a theatrical quality.
The fever ward staff consists of Julia Powers, a 29-year-old nurse and midwife who lost her mother to childbirth, and one assistant, Bridie McSweeney 22, a new and untrained volunteer. Dr. Kathleen Lynn, who is wanted for her role in the 1916 Easter Uprising, is the only physician on call at the hospital with any experience in childbirth. The patients include women of varying ages, religions (one Protestant amid a group of Catholics), and social classes who bond through the strain of giving birth while infected.
Emma Donoghue creates an ambiance that seems to reach across time. Her depiction of life during a pandemic and the drama of childbirth seem eerily familiar. Her accounts of relentless on-going emergencies chronicle the daily heroism of front line workers in difficult times. However, Donoghue also delves deep into the past and, through different characters’ backstories, provides a vivid portrait of life in Dublin close to 100 years ago. Ireland is under British rule and is impoverished and highly politicized. Women can’t vote, have few options and little choice in life. Nursing is one of the few ways women can eke out a meager, yet respectable living. Midwifery is a means through which women can help and support each other in situations that, at times, could be life-threatening to mothers and infants alike.
Wendy Smith, in her Washington Post review, aptly states, “Many novels depict the brotherhood of men at war. Donoghue celebrates the sisterhood of women bringing life into the world and those who help them along this perilous journey.” This celebration of sisterhood is the novel’s great strength. I highly recommend it....more
Brooklyn is a well-written coming of age story. It is the tale of a young Irish immigrant, Eilis Lacey, , who moves to Brooklyn after World War II. ThBrooklyn is a well-written coming of age story. It is the tale of a young Irish immigrant, Eilis Lacey, , who moves to Brooklyn after World War II. There are some great scenes. Her passage on the third class carrier across the Atlantic is memorable; as are the descriptions of boarding house living and her work as a sales-woman in a department store. These scenes evoke a portrait of a world where women's choices were more constrained than they are today and Eilis is very much a product of her era. After building a life for herself in Brooklyn, Eilis is suddenly called back to Ireland and must decide between remaining in Ireland and her new life in Brooklyn. Ultimately, social convention dictates her decision. ...more
Fascinating book! Keefe provides an in-depth analysis of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Key players such as Gerry Adams, Brendhan Hughes, Dolours aFascinating book! Keefe provides an in-depth analysis of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Key players such as Gerry Adams, Brendhan Hughes, Dolours and Marian Price are neither lionized or demonized. One comes away with a clearer understanding of their motivations, the chaos of the times and its impact on their lives and the lives of their countrymen.
Keefe is an excellent researcher and storyteller. I couldn't put the book down. I highly recommend it....more
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