Two new Irish novels that both deal with the same subject have been published recently. Words to Shape My Name by Laura McKenna and The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small by Neil Jordan deal with the former slave Tony Small, servant of United Irishman Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Though both novels tell the same […]
Read more "No Small Feat"I’ve written about Irish novelist John Banville several times. I regard him as one of the finest contemporary prose stylists working in English. He is not everyone’s cup of tea. For every person who is a fan, you’ll find a detractor. His characters are ghastly, they say (well, this is true, but then again, great […]
Read more "The Book of Evidence"From month to month, their routine barely deviates, yet a lot has changed … ageing has something to do with it … they have evolved to where they are now and to who they are, each massively influencing the other’s growth … people in love or in what they might in their own delusional state […]
Read more "My Coney Island Baby"This is the second – yes, only the second – review for my 20 Books of Summer Challenge Excepting some engravings and that postage stamp portraying One Pound Jimmy, I had never seen an Aboriginal. They were all far away in dusty history, or in hot places where they threw stones at passing cars … […]
Read more "A Long Way from Home – 20 Books of Summer"Is it a YA novel disguised as a cyber thriller? A treatise on love? A condemnation of our hyperconnected selves, our slavish devotion to technology? A philosophical evaluation of what it means to be human in the 21st century?
Read more "Connect"The title hints at one of the themes of the novel, which is that there are two Istanbuls, the one above ground and the one below, and each is ‘transformed’ in sense through acts of creation and imagination. The prisoners transform their surroundings through imagination and fantasy, parables and riddles, and likewise the city above is changed by time and love.
Read more "ISTANBUL ISTANBUL"Composed almost entirely of short monologues by the ghostly inhabitants of the cemetery, it reads less like a conventional novel and more like a drama, or perhaps a scrapbook
Read more "Lincoln in the Bardo"If I look slightly guilty, it may be down to having Kentucky Fried Jesus peering over my shoulder
Read more "Bray Literary Festival"From the Willesden Herald
everyday etymology
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I'm working on this so bear with me!
The Omagh Literary Festival: Honouring Benedict Kiely
WRITER & NOVELIST
"I wanted to read or hear the narrative of someone else – a woman and a poet – who has gone here and been there." (Eavan Boland 1944-2020) 🚫 #VAWG
Fiction reviews, Bookblogger, Fiction book reviews, books, crime fiction, author interviews, mystery series, cover, love, bookish thoughts...
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Those Who Say "You Only Live Once" Have Never Read a Book. ~John Hughes
The Fluff Is Raging 