Ireland – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 DARK TIMES IN THE CITY by Gene Kerrigan /2014/dark-times-in-the-city-by-gene-kerrigan/ Sat, 04 Jan 2014 13:59:57 +0000 /?p=23631 Book Quote:

“I got into trouble a long time ago. I was a kid. Then the other thing happened and I went to prison. I don’t steal, I don’t hurt people – that other stuff, it’s like someone else’s history.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JAN 4, 2014)

I’ve become an avid fan of Gene Kerrigan’s Irish mysteries. They are literate page-turners that are complex in plot with wonderful characterizations. This is the second one that I’ve read and I plan on reading each of them.

In this novel, Danny Callaghan has gotten out of jail seven months ago after serving an eight year term for manslaughter. He beat a man to death with a golf club when he was 24. He is now 32 and trying to live by the letter of the law, working for his bar-owning friend Novak, doing pick-ups and deliveries of people and materials. While he was in jail, his marriage to Hannah ended in divorce and he is alone with little support except for Novak, who is his confidante. While he was in jail, Novak was basically the only person who visited him there.

One evening, Danny is sitting in the Blue Parrot, Novak’s bar, when two gunmen come in. Danny isn’t sure if they are coming in to kill him or someone else. It happens that they are trying to kill a small-time punk named Walter Bennett. The gun doesn’t fire properly and Danny ends up saving Walter’s life. This puts Danny in a very precarious position because Walter is wanted by some big-time gang who feels like he’s been snitching on them to the police. Now Danny is in the middle of things. However, Danny is also worried that they were coming for him because when his trial was going on, the cousin of the man he killed told Danny that he would seek retribution: “Blood for blood.”

The two gunmen, Karl Browse and Robby Nugent are young and bad, looking for people to kill. They have been hired by a mob boss named Lar Mackendrich who controls a portion of Dublin’s territory. This is the first assignment he’s given to these two and he’s not happy with the outcome. He wants it rectified, and soon. He wants to see Walter dead and wants to know why Danny got himself in the middle of things.

Danny lives in a small apartment, so small that you can probably touch the walls on each side by standing in the middle and holding your arms out straight. He misses his ex-wife, Hannah, and many nights he drives by her house and parks nearby just staring at it. It’s not that he wants her back but he misses the warmth and love that he once had.

There is a lot of blood and gore in this book and it is not for the faint of heart. It is remediated a bit by some humor but it is hardcore through and through with a noir bent.

The environs of Dublin, where it takes place, is after the real estate bust, and people are clamoring for work. The economy is up the creek and there is no more easy money to be had. This is a sharp contrast to the way things were before Danny went to jail. Prior to being incarcerated, he had a kitchen cabinet business and was happy working with his hands. He no longer wants to be an entrepreneur. Passing the time picking up people and packages with a car is perfect for him at this time in his life.

Kerrigan can really write. He knows how to get deep into a character’s soul and put him out there with all the accoutrements for the reader. That’s what I like most about this author. I have a feel for each and every one of the characters in the book. There are no red herrings and everyone in the book is there for a meaning and the reader gains a depth of feeling for everyone.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 13 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions (October 1, 2013)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Gene Kerrigan
EXTRAS: Europa page on Dark Times in the City
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

]]> THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ by Anne Enright /2011/the-forgotten-waltz-by-anne-enright/ Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:19:46 +0000 /?p=21666 Book Quote:

“I don’t think I saw the way he was threatened by his own desires, or how jealousy and desire ran so close in him he had to demean a little the thing he wanted. For example, me.

Or not me. It was hard to tell.“

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 21, 2011)

Anne Enright, author of the 2007 Booker Prize winner, The Gathering, has written a new novel called The Forgotten Waltz. It is told from the point of view of Gina Moynihan who has a lust-filled affair with a married man, Sean Vallely. They first meet at a garden party hosted by Anne’s sister Fiona, and progresses from there. At first there are innocent (and not so innocent) looks, and then on a business trip in Switzerland, the affair begins in earnest.

When Gina first sees Sean at Fiona’s garden party, she is happily married to Conor. There are no outward signs that there is trouble in the marriage and, as I read this book, I did not see the marriage and any shortcomings as a reason for the affair. Gina saw Sean, felt lust, and let her impulses prevail. Sean is married and has a child named Evie who, at the time that Gina first meets Sean, is four years old.

The novel is not told in any particular linear order. It is related to the reader in fragments of memory that Gina recalls. “So don’t ask me when this happened or that happened. Before or after seems beside the point. As far as I was concerned, they were happening all along.”

Always playing a key role is Evie, Sean’s daughter. When she is five she begins to have childhood seizures that continue for many years. Annette, Sean’s wife, is vigilant about Evie’s medical care and appears not to notice that Sean is otherwise preoccupied with Gina. Evie, however, has the sense that something is happening in her home that is not quite normal. At one point, she even sees Sean and Gina kissing on the stairs of her home.

The novel takes place at the start of Ireland’s economic boom in the nineties and progresses to the depressions that hits later on. As the novel starts, people are making more money than they know what to do with, buying second homes with ocean views and dropping hints about all the money that they have. By the time the novel ends, people are lucky just to have jobs. Their houses have been on the market for a very long time and no one is buying. The market has seen a real depression.

Gina tells the whole story in the first person and we go along with her as she does her best to remember what happened between her and Sean. She strongly believes that Evie is responsible for her and Sean’s love. Evie’s watchful eyes, times of poor health, and perspicacious study of her father and his lover mark an ever-present omen for Gina.

As the affair progresses, Gina finds out that she is not the first person Sean has been unfaithful with. There was a young woman in his office, many years ago, that Sean had courted and loved. Gina is careful not to ask Sean too many questions about this as she wants to see their relationship as special and romantic, which it is, but as life goes, it is not that unique. “Every normal thing he said reminded me that we were not normal. That we were only normal for the twelve foot by fourteen foot of a hotel room. Outside, in the open air, we would evaporate.”

During the course of the affair, Gina deals with the death of her beloved mother, Joan, her estrangement from her sister, Fiona, and the breakdown of her marriage to Conor. She tries to see these events in relationship to the affair but they all have a full life separate from her love for Sean.

It takes Sean a long time to leave his wife, time that Gina waits for him in agony and pain. She had hoped they’d be together by Christmas but as April comes around, Sean is just beginning to move into Gina’s home. “It was delicate business, being the Not Wife.”

The affair takes on a triangular pattern – Sean, Gina and Evie. “I said it to Sean once – I said, if it had not been for Evie, we would not be together – and he looked at me as if I had blasphemed.” “As far as he is concerned, there is no cause; he arrived in my life as though lifted and pushed by a swell of the sea.”

The book is filled with musical metaphors and reads poetically. Enright is a master of the inner mind and our deepest thoughts. She not only tells a story but she captures lives, sparing no moment, no movement and no detail. Nothing is too small for her to notice and reflect on. In fact, it is the small things that make up the big deeds that change our lives from one second to the next.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 27 readers
PUBLISHER: W. W. Norton & Company (October 3, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Anne Enright
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

]]> A DEATH IN SUMMER by Benjamin Black /2011/death-in-summer-by-benjamin-black/ Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:23:36 +0000 /?p=20420 Book Quote:

“You think you’ve seen the worst of the world,” she said, “but the world and its wicked ways can always surprise you.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  AUG 25, 2011)

Irish author John Banville continues to pick up a number of literary prizes (including the Booker Prize in 2005) for his novels, but he sidelines with the pseudonym Benjamin Black for a series of ‘50s crime novels set in Dublin. Banville aka Black has produced these crime novels steadily over the past few years: Christine Falls (2006), The Silver Swan (2007), The Lemur (2008), Elegy for April (2010), and now A Death in Summer.  The Lemur is a stand-alone mystery which shifts from New York to Dublin, but the other novels comprise the Quirke series–a series of mysteries featuring a Dublin pathologist. Banville states that reading the roman durs of Simenon inspired him to try his hand at writing crime fiction. While reading Simenon, he noted the “simple language and direct, lightweight narrative,” accompanied by existentialist thought and decided to “try it.”

In A Death in Summer, pathologist Quirke, a slipping-off-the-wagon middle-aged alcoholic with a fascination for amateur sleuthing is called to the scene of a death. The dead man is the fabulously wealthy newspaper tycoon, Richard Jewell, known to his few friends and his many enemies as Diamond Dick “a ruthless bastard, …, who would tear out your heart as quick as look at you.” Jewell is dead from a shotgun blast at close range, and someone put the gun in the victim’s hands in a poor attempt to pass the death off as a suicide. Only a rudimentary knowledge of guns is enough to know that a shotgun is not the natural or easy choice for a suicide, so Quirke who arrives on the scene soon after Inspector Hackett knows he’s looking at a murder case.

The book’s opening scene takes place at Brooklands, the palatial country estate of Dick Diamond. What should be an entrancing, delightful summer day is marred by the bloody, violent crime:

“It felt strange to Hackett to be standing here, on a fine country estate, with the birds singing all about and a slab of sunlight falling at his heels from the open doorway of Jewell’s office, and at the same time to have that old familiar smell of violent death in his nostrils. Not that he had smelled it so very often, but once caught it was never forgotten, that mingled faint stink of blood and excrement and something else, something thin and sharp and insidious, the smell of terror itself, perhaps, or of despair—or was he being fanciful? Could despair and terror really leave a trace?”

This scene, the juxtaposition of calm countryside beauty side-by-side with violent death sets the tone for the rest of the book as Quirke pokes around those connected to Jewell. These are the wealthy society elite of Dublin–an impenetrable set who holiday together, conduct business together, party together and whose lives contain many dark secrets. Quirke senses that there’s something not quite right about the family scene at Brooklands. Jewell was murdered and yet apparently no one noticed. Jewell’s servants, including the shifty yard manager Maguire, are noticeably shaken by the crime whereas Jewell’s family treats his death like some sort of minor social inconvenience. Jewell’s cool, elegant French wife, Francoise d’Aubigny, a woman Quirke met once before at a social event, was off riding one of her horses when the murder took place, and Jewell’s half-sister, Dannie is disinterestedly lounging on the sofa drinking gin and tonic when the police arrive:

“Dannie Jewell lifted her glass from the arm of the sofa and took a long drink from it, thirstily, like a child. She held the glass in both hands, and Quirke thought again of Francoise d’Aubigny standing at the window in the embassy that day, with the champagne glass, of the look she had given him, the odd desperateness of it. Who were these two women, really, he wondered, and what was going on here?”

With a man as despised as Dick Jewell, there’s no shortage of suspects. Carlton Sumner, Jewell’s crass business rival who is trying to take over Jewell’s newspaper empire declares he’s amazed that it took this long for someone to murder this much-hated man. Jewell’s wife, the French trophy wife, Francoise doesn’t seem to exactly be the grieving widow. While Inspector Hackett finds himself comparing Francoise to the cool impeccability of Ingrid Bergman, Quirke is inexorably attracted to the new widow. He’s intoxicated by her perfume and her glance. Turning a cold shoulder to his actress girlfriend, Isabel Galloway, Quirke begins peppering his thoughts with French phrases, buys French newspapers, and tries desperately to limit his alcohol consumption to just a few drinks a day.

As with any series detective novel, the private life of the protagonist (Quirke in this case) is juggled with the crime under investigation. A Death in Summer finds Quirke half-heartedly investigating while struggling with his interest in Francois. A large portion of Quirke’s private life in this novel contains Phoebe, Quirke’s daughter and her relationship with Sinclair, a pathologist who works with Quirke. For those late to the Quirke series, some mention is made to the story threads from earlier volumes in the series, but these references are woven into the plot so effectively that it’s easy to catch up with these prior relationships.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 62 readers
PUBLISHER: Henry Holt and Co. (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Benjamin Black
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

 

Also by John Banville:

 

Bibliography:

Stand-alone:

]]> SOLACE by Belinda McKeon /2011/solace-by-belinda-mckeon/ Sat, 28 May 2011 15:00:17 +0000 /?p=18225 Book Quote:

“Work. Tom knew what work was; knew what the work really worth doing was, too. Work in rain or shine, the work of keeping a good farm on the go. He knew Mark liked to read, liked to write, and Tom liked to read, the odd time, himself, but there was no way you could think of that, truly as work.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (MAY 28, 2011)

Solace, by Belinda McKeon, is a novel about love and longing. As a noun, “solace” means to find comfort or consolation in a time of distress or sadness. As a verb, it means to give solace to someone else or oneself. This book is about people who find solace in the small things of this world and find it difficult to talk about the bigger things. They hang on to what they know, especially when they face tragedy or their worlds turn upside down.

Tom and Mark are father and son. Tom works his farm in Ireland and Mark is working on his doctorate at Trinity University in Dublin. Tom finds it difficult to understand a life that does not consist of working the land and he finds it very difficult to understand his son.  Mark comes to his father’s farm when he can to help out, usually on a weekend. There is a huge emotional distance between them and they often end up fighting. Maura, Mark’s mother, tries to smooth things out but the gap between father and son is huge.

Mark meets a woman in Dublin named Joanne. Unfortunately, there is bad blood between Mark’s father and Joanne’s deceased father. This makes the relationship difficult for the family dynamics. When Joanne becomes pregnant, issues rise to the surface and even more distance is felt between Tom and Mark.

The novel takes place in the mid-2000’s when Ireland is just beginning to go from a booming country to a place of poverty. What was once a land of opportunity for everyone is becoming a place where housing values are decreasing, unemployment is rising, and large companies are moving out of Ireland to cheaper venues.

Mark has been working on his dissertation for several years without much success. He chose the topic of a woman writer who lived near his father’s farm and to assess her writing and relationships with other writers of her time in a new way. His thesis advisor is not impressed and Mark makes one false start after another.

Symbolically, these false starts are similar to the attempts at conversations that Mark and his father have. They start and stop, try to meet one another at some common ground but fail. When tragedy befalls both of them, Tom becomes very dependent on Mark but Mark distances himself even further from his father, burying himself in his studies.

The prologue opens with Tom and Mark alone on the farm with a baby girl named Aiofe. There are no adult females present and Aiofe is very enamored of her grandfather. Tom takes Aiofe with him on errands he has to do in town and ends up in a grand discord with Mark who did not know where his daughter was. No matter how they try to bridge their distance, they fail. They can find no solace in one another when they are faced with tragedy or pain.

The solace that they have comes from what is familiar to each of them. For Tom it is his farm and the land, and for Mark it is his child and his studies. We readers sadly watch the fumbling attempts they each make to reach each other and the increasing distance that occurs. At one point, Tom gets a cell phone and attempts to call Mark several times a day. Mark makes it a point not to answer and Tom keeps calling.

This is a story of a father and son, of rural Ireland trying to maintain its identity, and the difference between living in a city and living on a farm. Tom can’t understand cities and Mark abhors life on a farm. The book is very well-written but at times it goes very slowly, losing the pace that it might have carried. Belinda McKeon is a playwright and there is that sense of discourse in this novel. She has an MFA from Columbia University and this is her debut novel. She is a very promising novelist with a poetic sense and a gift with words. I especially love her characterization of Tom and Mark. I look forward to her future work.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 1 readers
PUBLISHER: Scribner (May 17, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Belinda McKeon
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bullfighting by Roddy Doyle

Bibliography:

]]> BULLFIGHTING by Roddy Doyle /2011/bullfighting-by-roddy-doyle/ Sun, 15 May 2011 15:00:06 +0000 /?p=18025 Book Quote:

“It was frightening, though, how little time you got. You only became yourself when you were twenty-three or twenty-four. A few years later, you had an old man’s chest hair. It wasn’t worth it.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (MAY 15, 2011)

The thirteen stories in the collection Bullfighting from Irish author Roddy Doyle examine various aspects of male middle age. Eight of these stories first appeared in New Yorker, and in this volume the post-boom stories collectively offer a wry, bittersweet look at the years past and the years yet to come. We see middle-aged men whose wives have left them, middle-aged men whose children have grown and gone, stale marriages, marriages which have converted lovers into friends, the acceptance of disease and aging, and the ever-looming aspect of mortality. Lest I give the wrong impression, these stories are not depressing–instead through these marvellous stories Doyle argues that middle age brings new experiences and new emotions–just when we thought we’d experienced all that life had to offer.

In “The Photograph,” Martin tallies up the pros and cons of aging:

“Getting older wasn’t bad. The balding suited Martin. Everyone said it. He’d had to change his trouser size from 34 to 36. It had been a bit of a shock, but it was kind of nice wearing loose trousers again, hitching them up when he stood up to go to the jacks, or whatever. He was fooling himself; he knew that. But that was the point—he was fooling himself. He’d put on weight, but he felt a bit thinner.”

As Martin faces his first serious health issue, he recalls the recent death of Noel, a friend from his youth. Martin tries valiantly to make light of his own health problem with mixed success.

In “Funerals,” middle-aged son, Bill starts ferrying his elderly parents around to funerals. What begins as a one-off favour turns into a weekly habit. Bill discovers that his parents actually look forward to funerals and that they view them as outings to be followed by a trip to the chip shop. Instead of feeling burdened by becoming their regular chauffeur, Bill finds himself fascinated by their behaviour and pleasantly comfortable in their company, yet at the same time some sort of seismic shift has occurred in the relationship:?

“He could enjoy their company and listen to them flirting. They weren’t his parents any more; he wasn’t their son. He was a middle-aged man in a car with two people who were a bit older. Once or twice, in a rush that made him hang onto the steering wheel, he was their son and the car was full of himself as a boy and a stupid, awkward young man, hundreds of boys and men, all balled into this one man driving his wife’s Toyota Corolla and trying not to cry.”

Bill isn’t sure why he wants to spend so much time with his parents, but he does know that he’s beginning to feel uncomfortable with his own crowd:

“He stayed clear of the local funerals, the old neighbours. He didn’t want the conversations. What are you up to these days? How many kids is it you have? He didn’t want to talk to men he’d once known who’d lost their jobs so recently they still didn’t understand it. Great, great. Yourself? There’d be too many middle-aged women who used to be girls, ponytailed men he used to play with, a mother he’d fancied–in the coffin. Fat grannies he’d kissed and–the last time he’d gone to one of the local ones–a woman with MS, shaking her way to a seat in the church, the first girl he’d ever had sex with.”

Bill finds his parents child-like, and there’s a comforting sensation to the day trips he takes with them as they attend funeral after funeral. It’s as though Bill is a parent once again–after all his own children are grown and no longer need his care.

If I had to pick one favourite story in this stellar collection, it would be “Animals.” In this particularly poignant story, George, the middle-aged narrator, whose children are now grown and gone, recalls his life as a family man through memories of the animals the family owned. At one point, George tells how he once colluded with the local pet shop, Wacker’s over a lost canary. The canary, Pete, escaped from the cage, and George returns home to find “four hysterical children in the kitchen, long past tears and snot, and a woman outside in the back garden, talking to the hedge.” The woman is George’s wife, Sandra and she’s pretending that the canary is in the hedge:

“–Listen, he said.—I’m going to bring the kids to Wacker’s, to see if Pete flew there. Are you with me?
Sandra looked at him. And he knew: she was falling in love with him, all over again. Or maybe for the first time—he didn’t care. There was a woman in her dressing gown, looking attractively distraught, and she was staring at George like he was your man from ER.

–While I’m doing that, said George,–you phone Wacker’s and tell him the story. You with me?
–Brilliant.
–It might work.”

Some people measure their lives by the holidays they’ve taken, the jobs they’ve held, or the homes they’ve lived in, but George measures his life as a husband and father through the family pets. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that middle-aged George finds that his loyal companion is a dog.

The stories include some gentle humour as we hear of one man who brags about picking up 57-old-twins. Another story tells of a couple whose relationship devolves into insult slinging (“Four decades of arse parked inside a piece of string”) in some sort of aging contest. Doyle’s characters, while sketched lightly, are fully realized individuals who cope with the various problems and disappointments of middle age: loneliness, illness, failure, and boredom. These stories examine middle-aged life from all angles, so we also see that middle-age is a mixed bag with consolations in unexpected places. Bullfighting, a rich mature collection from Doyle, shows us a writer at the top of his game, and Doyle’s stories are infused with generosity and wisdom–even as they examine, so excellently, the foibles of human nature.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 2 readers
PUBLISHER: Viking Adult (April 28, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Roddy Doyle
Wikipedia page on Roddy Doyle
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Barrytown Trilogy:

  • The Commitments (1987)
  • The Snapper (1990)
  • The Van (1991)

The Last Roundup Trilogy:

Paula Spencer Novels:

Children’s Books:

Nonfiction:

Movies from books:

]]> THE DEAD REPUBLIC by Roddy Doyle /2010/the-dead-republic-by-roddy-doyle/ Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:59:50 +0000 /?p=10841 Book Quote:

“You won’t get away with calling the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland a cunt. Three times.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (JUL 25, 2010)

The Dead Republic from Irish author Roddy Doyle is the third volume in The Last Roundup trilogy. In the first volume, A Star Called Henry, Henry Smart is a youthful soldier for the IRA. He participates in the Easter Uprising of 1916 and fights in the Irish War for Independence. In the second volume, Oh, Play That Thing, the action shifts to America with Henry, his wife and two children trying to eke a living in the depression era. Henry loses a leg and becomes separated from his family. The Dead Republic picks up Henry’s saga for the third and final installment.

The first section of The Dead Republic, the weakest part of the novel, finds Henry in Ireland. It’s 1951, and Henry works as the IRA consultant to director John Ford. Flashbacks reveal Henry’s life in Hollywood and his sometimes difficult relationship with Ford. In one scene, John Ford shows Henry “The Informer,” a film that Henry finds inaccurate but still strangely entertaining:

“None of the corners or accents were real. And some of it was just ridiculous. There was a bit at the start, a flashback, where Gypo and Frankie, old comrades and pals, stood at a bar, singing and drinking, with rifles on their backs. All through the film the lads in the trenchcoats were afraid that the informer would point them out. But they still brought their rifles when they went out for a few pints. It was full of things that made no sense at all.”

Ford also makes “The Quiet Man” starring Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne–a film that at first enrages Henry because he thinks it’s based on his life. The Ireland in the film, however, doesn’t exist anywhere. It’s a Hollywood concoction–a fantasy version designed to win at the box office:

“It’s the story of Ireland. Catholics and Protestants side by side in harmony. Fishing and horse racing. It’s every German’s idea of paradise. And it’s sexy as well.”

Later Henry breaks with Ford and settles back in Ireland where he lands a job as a caretaker of a boys’ school. He strikes up a relationship with a widow called Missis O’Kelly, and yet there’s something about her that reminds Henry of his long-lost wife, Miss O’Shea As time goes on, Henry finds himself dragged back into politics.

The second section of The Dead Republic is the strongest part of the novel, and this is in spite of the fact that Henry serves less as a character and more as a witness of history in the ever-changing face of Ireland. As a survivor of the Easter Rebellion, he’s the subject of great interest, and he finds he’s become a “holy relic.” While Henry agrees with some aspects of the fight, he disagrees with others. As an old warrior, he notes that thanks to the British, the IRA never has problems with recruitment, and that makes Margaret Thatcher the greatest recruitment tool ever:

“The hunger strike had been lost. But it hadn’t. Defeat was always more valuable–the better songs came out of it. Thatcher had done what she’d always been supposed to do. She’d let Irishmen die. They nailed themselves to the cross and she sat in the shade and watched. Cromwell came, slaughtered the innocents, and left. The surviving Irish, in the absence of a grave, pissed on his memory. But Thatcher came, and she stayed. The strikers died in 1981, but she was still Prime Minister years later. She killed Argentineans, she broke the heads of her own coal miners. She was the Provisionals’ greatest asset. She was living, breathing evil and she was on the telly every night.”

The novel raises some interesting moral questions about the choices Henry has made; an old enemy returns from his past, and even though these differences have supposedly resolved themselves over time, the relationship still boils down to a matter of dislike. Both men ask themselves if the sacrifices they made were worth it–after all the fight continues and is muddier than ever–at one point Henry is used by the IRA while at another juncture he’s accused of being an informer. The novel also makes it clear that with a civil war, it’s impossible to avoid involvement. The political situation surrounds Henry and sometimes he’s aware of it–at other times he makes the discovery. While character is repeatedly sacrificed to history, Doyle uses a deft hand when it comes to placing Henry in his role as a witness to the ugly events: the kidnapping of Shergar, the collusion of the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force with British agents, the in-fighting between splinter groups, the hunger strikes and the Five Demands of political prisoners. Henry is the amazed and sometimes sickened witness to events that pass before his eyes as though they are produced by a Magic Lantern.

Almost sixty years of Irish history is swept through in just over 300 pages. That’s a huge undertaking and the novel suffers as a result. Those who know little about Irish politics in the last few years will feel their heads reeling. However, if you have a foundation of Irish history, then The Dead Republic won’t be confusing. The story should be approached with the idea in mind that the book is less a novel and more a testament.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 6 readers
PUBLISHER: Viking Adult (April 29, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Roddy DoyleWikipedia page on Roddy Doyle
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Barrytown Trilogy:

  • The Commitments (1987)
  • The Snapper (1990)
  • The Van (1991)

The Last Roundup Trilogy:

Paula Spencer Novels:

Children’s Books:

Nonfiction:

Movies from books:

]]> FAITHFUL PLACE by Tana French /2010/faithful-place-by-tana-french/ Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:34:25 +0000 /?p=10539 Book Quote:

“The rules in my road went like this: no matter how skint you are, if you go to the pub then you stand your round; if your mate gets into a fight, you stick around to drag him off as soon as you see blood, so no one loses face; you leave the heroin to them down in the flats; even if you’re an anarchist punk rocker this month, you go to mass on Sunday; and no matter what, you never, ever squeal on anyone.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUL 13, 2010)

The emotions in Tana French’s new book Faithful Place explode on the page and inside the reader. I felt tackled by this book. I started reading it and was grabbed and held down by a force-field hard to describe except that all my senses were caught up in the narrative. I had difficulty coming up for air though I knew it was necessary once in a while. I lived this book 24/7 until I had finished it. That’s Tana French for you.

The story begins with Frank Mackey, 19 years old, waiting for his true love, Rosie Daly, to meet him. They have plans to run away from their dysfunctional homes and neighborhood in Dublin to make a new life together in England. They are totally and fiercely in love as only first loves are. Rosie never shows up. Frank waits until morning and then proceeds alone, never knowing what happened to Rosie but thinking, deep down, that she’d changed her mind and not wanted to go with him. He doesn’t make it as far as England but he does manage to start a new life for himself in Dublin.

Ever since that time, Frank keeps hoping that he’ll hear from Rosie. No one in her family, nor any of her friends know where she is and no one has heard from her. Frank hears nary a word.

Faithful Place, the neighborhood he’s leaving, is close to Trinity College but is a world away. People in ‘The Place stank of stale nicotine and stale Guinness, with a saucy little top-note of gin.” People held grudges and if they were not on the dole, they worked at the Guiness plant or at odd jobs. Those who worked regularly had nothing to show for it. You knew everyone and heard conversations and arguments going on from windows and in the streets. People grew up together and had decades of knowledge about each other.

Fast-forward twenty-two years. Frank is an undercover detective with the Irish police force. He has been estranged from his family for twenty-two years, except for one sister, Jackie. Jackie gives him a frantic call that a suitcase was found in a derelict apartment building near his family’s home and it appears to have belonged to Rosie. Soon after the suitcase is found, so is Rosie’s body. From that time onward, Frank decides that he must find out what happened to Rosie that night.

Tana French has a wonderful way of juxtaposing the present culture of Dublin with arts, culture, and events of other cities and times. She gives the reader credit for being smart and understanding who she is talking about whether it’s Jim Morrissey, Tim Burton, Jeffrey Dahmer, Mario Lanza or Kojak. She’ll interject wonderful sentences into her writing. For instance, “The dim orange glow coming from nowhere in particular gave the garden a spiky Tim Burton look.” One of my favorites is, “ ‘Kojak’s on the trail’ Shay said, to the gold sky. ‘Who loves you baby?’”

The narrative goes back and forth in time and we’re privy to the horrific family of origin that Frank came from. His “da” is a raging alcoholic and his “ma” gives Olivia Soprano a run for her money. His siblings would just as soon stab one another with an ice pick than share a civil word. The dialogue is crisp and anguished. There is no doubt or subtlety about what is happening in the Mackey family.

When Frank returns to their midst after his twenty-two year absence, things are twisted up a bit. His da realizes that Frank must have an agenda and tells Frank to get the hell out of Dodge. Most people wouldn’t talk to their worst enemy the way that Frank’s father talks to him. This is a family filled and fueled by hatred. Frank, however, is there to stay. He has things to do and information to find out.

The book falls together perfectly. There are no weak spots and the the two primary narratives – the mystery about Rosie’s death and the story of Frank’s family – meld together well. Tana French is a wonder. She has the Irish gift of the gab and I advise you not to start this book unless you’re willing to be grabbed and held captive by its power.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 259 readers
PUBLISHER: Viking Adult (July 13, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Tana French
EXTRAS: Interview and Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another popular 2010 read:

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]]> ELEGY FOR APRIL by Benjamin Black /2010/elegy-for-april-by-benjamin-black/ Thu, 20 May 2010 01:50:54 +0000 /?p=9549 Book Quote:

“Before he went on the latest drinking bout, when he was supposed not to be taking alcohol in any form, he used to take Phoebe to dinner here on Tuesday nights and share a bottle of wine with her, his only tipple of the week. Now, in trepidation, he was going to see if he could take a glass or two of claret again without wanting more. He tried to tell himself he was here solely in the spirit of research, but that fizzing sensation under his breastbone was all too familiar. He wanted a drink, and he was going to have one.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (MAY 19, 2010)

Black’s third 1950s Dublin thriller featuring pathologist Garret Quirke (after Christine Falls and The Silver Swan) finds Quirke in a rehab hospital, from which he will shortly spring himself, for his daughter’s sake.

“Quirke had never known life so lacking in savor. In his first days at St. John’s he had been in too much confusion and distress to notice how everything here seemed leached of colour and texture; gradually, however, the deadness pervading the place began to fascinate him. Nothing at St. John’s could be grasped or held.”

The fog does not dissipate all that much once he’s out, however. Quirke buys himself a fancy car, though he can’t drive – this injects some comic moments into an essentially dark tale – but it can’t quench his thirst for drink, which he fights and succumbs to throughout the story.

Quirke’s daughter Phoebe sets the plot in motion – her friend April Latimer, a junior doctor and very independent woman, is missing though no one will admit it. April’s prominent family has essentially washed their hands of her and most of her friends assume she’s gone off with some man. But Phoebe asks her father to investigate.

Quirke consults his friend Inspector Hackett, stirs up the hornet’s nest of April’s family, and questions April’s rather brittle circle of friends – devious journalist Jimmy, beguiling actress Isabel and exotic and polished Patrick Ojukwu, a handsome Nigerian student, suspected of sleeping with everyone, including April.

Black’s characters, even those who strive for type, like April’s snooty family, become individuals as the story progresses, which doesn’t always make the reader like them better.

Quirke, a canny, opinionated, floundering loner, works at himself, but succumbs easily to temptation. Selfish as he is, though, he is not self-absorbed and his idle reflections often lead to thoughts of others, particularly Phoebe and her concerns.

“Idly he pondered the distinction between solitude and loneliness. Solitude, he conjectured, is being alone, while loneliness is being alone among other people. Was that the case? No, something incomplete there. He had been solitary when the bar was empty, but was he lonely now that these others had appeared?

“Had April Latimer been lonely? It did not seem probable from everything he had heard of her so far.”

Black’s (aka John Banville) plot rises from these well-fleshed characters and the damp, wintry setting as Quirke probes corrosive family secrets and challenges the reign of the Catholic Church in an insular, hidebound city.

Readers of Ken Bruen and Ian Rankin will enjoy Black’s fine atmospheric prose and noirish insight.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 68 readers
PUBLISHER: Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (April 13, 2010)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Benjamin Black
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

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]]> LOVE AND SUMMER by William Trevor /2009/love-and-summer-by-william-trevor/ Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:44:20 +0000 /?p=4869 Book Quote:

“He paused at the windows in case a display had changed overnight. None had: draper’s dummies were as they had been since early spring, the spectacles on an optician’s cardboard faces had been the same for longer. Pond’s beauty aids were still reduced, travel bargains still offered, interest rates steady.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (SEP 12, 2009)

In William Trevor’s novel Love and Summer, past and present don’t collide but instead merge into a shimmering, elusive and painful present. The novel set in the 1950s explores the lives of interconnecting characters following the funeral of Mrs. Eileen Connulty in the Irish town of Rathmoye. Mrs. Connulty was a respectable pillar of the community, and the Connulty family is one of the most affluent in the area. Eileen Connulty was a widow and she ruled the family and the family businesses–a pub, a boarding house, a coal yard and a number of other properties–with a rod of iron. She leaves behind two middle-aged children, a daughter “she was glad to part from,” and a son: “her pet since he first lay in her arms as an infant.” Most of the townspeople mourn Mrs. Connulty’s passing:

“The funeral mass was on the morning for the following day, and when it was over Mrs Connulty’s mourners stood about outside the cemetery gates, declaring that she would never be forgotten in the town and beyond it. The women who had toiled beside her in the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer asserted that she had been an example to them all. They recalled how no task had been too menial for her to undertake, how hours spent polishing a surfeit of brass or scarping away old candle-grease had never been begrudged. The alter flowers had not once in sixty years gone in need of fresh water; the missionary leaflets were replaced when necessary. Small repairs had been effected on cassocks and surplices and robes. Washing the chancel had been a scared duty.”

Mrs Connulty’s death is not equally mourned by everyone. To her daughter, her mother’s passing gives some belated freedom and lifts the oppressive atmosphere in the Connulty home. To Miss Connulty, at least, there’s a sense of impending change.

On the day of the funeral, a young man named Florian Kilderry travels to Rathmoye to photograph the shell of the town’s burned-out cinema. While in Rathmoye he catches a glimpse of young married Ellie Dillahan, and over the course of the next few weeks, the two lonely young people strike up a relationship. No one seems to notice the budding relationship–except Miss Connulty, and watching Florian and Ellie fall in love stirs painful, long-buried memories for the middle-aged spinster.

For readers of William Trevor, this is familiar territory–the Irish Diaspora that still haunts a country devastated by poverty, relationships wrecked by piety, and a society ruled by religious dogma. In Love and Summer, Florian is the by-product of an Irish-Italian match made by feckless, hopelessly romantic parents. While Florian inherited the family home after the death of his parents, it’s a shambles and is rapidly disintegrating around his ears. With no prospects of employment, Florian has put the house up for sale and is gradually selling off the valuables and burning personal property. Florian destroys his past yet faces an uncertain future while many other characters in the novel, Miss Connulty for example, are prisoners to their pasts and their memories.

While Florian’s home is ravaged by neglect and decay, his surroundings are in contrast to the home of Ellie’s much older husband, Dillahan. Dillahan is a character who’s a prisoner of his past, but he survives and endures by absorbing himself into the minuscule repairs required around his farm. Consequently, his farm is in excellent condition but underneath the surface of this immaculate homestead, is the turmoil of Dillahan’s grief and guilt for past events.

These characters merge and then move on into their respective futures in this gentle tale of an Ireland that longs to change while still mired down by immovable religious opinion. Duty permeates everyone’s lives, relationships and marriages, and yet will duty be enough for Florian and Ellie? Or do they want something more from life?

Love and Summer revisits some of the themes of Trevor’s last novel, The Story of Lucy Gault, and while Love and Summer is not Trevor’s strongest novel, yet once again the author shows his skill in recreating a sense of timelessness and a present that is permeated with loss and contaminated with stagnation and slow decay.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 46 readers
PUBLISHER: Viking Adult (September 17, 2009)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AMAZON PAGE: Love and Summer
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on William Trevor
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More William Trevor reviews:

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]]> GREETINGS FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE BY Monica McInerney /2009/greetings-from-somewhere-else-by-monica-mcinerney/ Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:17:04 +0000 /?p=4310 Book Quote:

“Dublin didn’t just look different from Melbourne, it smelled different. The air was a mixture of winter smells, fresh rain on pavements, a hint of smoke from open fires burning in nearby houses, beer and Guinness aromas from the pubs along the street.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Danielle Bullen (AUG 20, 2009)

If you’re looking for a breezy, late-summer addition to your library, pick up a copy of Monica McInerney’s novel, Greetings from Somewhere Else. A combination of an easy to follow main storyline combined with compelling subplots and a likable main character make it a quintessential beach book.

Lainey Byrne runs an event management company in Australia and juggles her relationships with her chef boyfriend Adam and her parents and three brothers. The family receives word that great-aunt May has passed away in Ireland. Her nieces and nephews were her only family and she left them her bed and breakfast, but there’s a catch. One member of the Byrnes must live in and run the inn for a year before they can inherit it. Lainey’s father suffers from an accident he had at a construction site and the family needs money for his care. If they follow the plan, they can later sell the bed and breakfast. Lainey is nominated as the representative.

She takes a leave of absence from her job, breaks up with Adam, and heads to County Meath. When she arrives at the inn, Lainey is in for a shock. The run-down old house has clearly seen better days, the inside is dusty, smelly, and old-fashioned. May’s lawyer tells her that there have been hardly any guests. Around town, Lainey’s aunt had a reputation for being an obnoxious, stubborn old lady, and her bed and breakfast had developed a stay-away status.

Lainey uses money May had left her to redecorate the inn with the help of her friend Eva from Dublin. She throws herself into the project to distract herself from thinking about Adam. Another distraction soon comes along, Lainey’s childhood friend, Ronan, now a handsome documentary filmmaker in the country on assignment. Her flirtation with Ronan forms one of the undercurrents of the story.

Coming up with clever new ways to market and fill Tara Hill, her new name for the bed and breakfast, keeps her busy. Her brother Hugh keeps in touch by sending videos of the family. Lainey sees Adam’s influence in some of the videos and wonders if it had been a mistake to end things with him.

Greetings from Somewhere Else also has another  ingredient that makes for a good story —  a main character who changes for the better. The more Lainey learns about her aunt, the more she sees herself in May’s bossy, single-minded, isolating behavior. “She had to learn to take a step back, let things unfold, let people live their own lives. . .Not be the one in charge of the world. . .It was going to be very, very hard.”

Lainey’s year in Dublin is the catalyst for positive changes in her personality and her relationships, and it mellows her view of the world.

McInerney’s writing is clear and compelling and the pages move quickly. A plot point involving a series of letters May wrote and Lainey inherited could have been fleshed out more; yet, for the most part, the story is well-developed and a good choice for some light entertainment.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 3 readers
PUBLISHER: Ballantine Books (July 7, 2009)
REVIEWER: Danielle Bullen
AMAZON PAGE: Greetings from Somewhere Else
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Monica McInerney
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More late summer reads:The Late Lamented Molly Marx by Sally Koslow

Girl Talk by Julianna Baggott

Tokyo Fiancee by Amelie Northomb

And another enterprising business woman:

Chez Moi by Agnes Desarthe

Bibliography:

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