Galway stories of positive working lives

Literature Reviews Thu, May 23, 2019

Over her broadcasting career, Marie Louise O’Donnell has had the opportunity to work closely with many individuals, sharing their working lives, gaining a unique insight into their day to day duties, and learning what motivates and inspires them in their sometimes unusual occupations.

Poets from opposite ends of the universe

Literature Reviews Thu, May 09, 2019

CHRISTINE VALTERS Paintner and Patrick Chapman are, in most ways, poets from opposite ends of the universe. Dreaming Of Stones is Valters Paintner’s debut collection while Open Season On The Moon is Chapman’s ninth.

Liam O’Flaherty’s Hollywood sojourn

Literature Reviews Thu, Apr 04, 2019

BORN ON The Aran Islands in 1896, Liam O’Flaherty was to become one of the most distinguished and prolific writers of 20th century Ireland. His first book, Thy Neighbour’s Wife, was published in 1923 and was followed by an avalanche of novels, short stories, and poems in English and as Gaeilge, as well as travelogues.

Trevor Conway and the poetry of fear

Literature Reviews Thu, Mar 14, 2019

HAVING PUBLISHED his first collection with Salmon, Trevor Conway has taken the courageous decision to self-publish his second, Breeding Monsters, which, in every way, looks as good as the books currently emerging from any of the main Irish poetry publishers.

Nicole Flattery and the essence of absurdity

Literature Reviews Thu, Mar 07, 2019

THE FIRST paragraph in the first story of Nicole Flattery’s first collection, Show Them a Good Time, reads: “The schemes were for people with plenty of time, or people not totally unfamiliar with being treated like shit. I was intimate with both situations. Management interviewed me - bizarre questions through an inch of plexiglass: How long, in hours, have you been unemployed? Did you misspend your youth throwing stones at passing cars?"

Love, death, Shergar, and Arlene Foster

Literature Reviews Thu, Feb 07, 2019

FROM 'MAYA'S Soliloquy to Pablo [Picasso]’, the striking opening of the first poem of White Horses, it is clear Northern Irish poet Jo Burns is in control of what she is doing with her poetry in a way most debut collection poets simply are not.

Johnny Duhan - Last of the wandering minstrels

Literature Reviews Thu, Feb 07, 2019

JOHNNY DUHAN'S newly published book, The Voyage, has something of a confessional feel to it, the black dustjacket with Johnny in profile as if in prayer, sets the tone for what follows.

The reality for asylum seekers in Ireland's direct provision centres

Literature Reviews Thu, Jan 10, 2019

A MONTH or so before Christmas, a rather imposing volume landed on my desk. Bound in a strong blue cloth, the front cover declared the title to be Asylum Archive, the author to be Vukasin Nedeljkovic. The spine declared the publisher to be Asylum Archive.

Susan Lindsay’s linguistic and other challenges

Literature Reviews Thu, Jan 03, 2019

SUSAN LINDSAY'S gorgeously produced third collection of poems, Milling The Air, published by Doire Press, is a book which asks more questions than it answers. And this is no accident, but a deliberate strategy by Lindsay.

Kilroy was here

Literature Reviews Thu, Dec 20, 2018

THE FIRST chapter of Over The Backyard Wall - A Memory Book, Thomas Kilroy’s 'autobiography', is entitled 'The Eye of Memory' and opens thus: “I have been asked more than once to write a memoir and I’ve always had to say no. I couldn’t do it. I could scarcely remember what happened the previous week, never mind the distant past, at least with any degree of accuracy. Then in 2006, at the age of seventy-two, something odd happened to me - rather, something routine occurred - but it had an odd result. I had a cataract operation in both eyes.”

Man gives birth to alarm clock

Literature Reviews Thu, Dec 13, 2018

GALWAY WRITER Brian Coughlan is a clever comedic writer in the Alan McMonagle/Karl MacDermott mode. His characters tend to be no good types, the sort who, in what the career guidance teachers of my youth called the real world, end up in middle management, or as unsuccessful Fianna Fáil county council candidates. Such characters populate Coughlan's short story collection, Wattle & Daub.

The unhinged poetry of Ken Bruen

Literature Reviews Thu, Nov 29, 2018

KEN BRUEN'S writing is like Charles Bukowski’s in that people tend to either love it, or be allergic to it. No one pretends to like Bruen’s writing in the way they do, say, the poetry of Ocean Vuong or Doireann Ní Gríofa because, to paraphrase WH Auden, they think it is the correct opinion to have for the time of year.

A timely reminder of Irish life during the recession

Literature Reviews Thu, Nov 22, 2018

AS WELL as having a successful career in journalism, Declan Varley is the author of four works of fiction - Kittyland (1992), which described his life as a student in the then RTC, Sure It Could Happen (1993), The Elephant’s Graveyard (1994), and Nightmusic (2001).

Novelist commits crime of knowing what he’s talking about

Literature Reviews Thu, Oct 11, 2018

THE PROBLEM some people have with Danny Morrison’s novels is that, throughout them, he commits the heinous crime of knowing what he’s talking about. Had he been a US soldier returned from Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, it would be perfectly acceptable for him to write about his war.

Mary Robinson and the challenge of global survival

Literature Reviews Thu, Oct 11, 2018

“HOLDING HER first grandchild in her arms in 2003, Mary Robinson was struck by the uncertainty of the world he had been born into. Before his fiftieth birthday, he would have to share the planet with more than nine billion people - people battling for food, water and shelter in an increasing volatile climate. The faceless shadowy menace of climate change had become, in an instant, deeply personal.”

The pleasure and danger of chocolate

Literature Reviews Thu, Sep 06, 2018

FOR THE Love Of Chocolate is an attempt at an entire history of chocolate across the 4,000 years since the Mokaya people, in what is now Mexico and Guatemala, began cultivating the cacao tree, the beans of which produce chocolate.

Karl MacDermott - an antidote to dullness

Literature Reviews Thu, Aug 02, 2018

THE PUBLICATION of Karl MacDermott's short story collection Juggling With Turnips – in which there is little juggling, other than the metaphorical sort, and not one single turnip – sees the comedy writer and occasional stand-up, widen his repertoire by adding ‘writer of short comic fiction’ to the list of things he successfully does.

Julian Gough and connections, connections

Literature Reviews Thu, May 24, 2018

THE PHYSICAL presence and classy design of Julian Gough’s new novel, Connect, really does debunk the classic cliché of 'You can’t judge a book by its cover'.

Sunflowers and disintegrating lovers

Literature Reviews Thu, May 10, 2018

THE WORK of some poets is great, or at least initially sounds great, when you hear it declaimed from a festival stage, but is rather less rewarding when read on the page, in the absence of the bells and whistles of performance.

Book review: Will Galway beat Mayo?

Literature Reviews Thu, May 03, 2018

GROWING AFFLUENCE and increased leisure time are said to be the main reasons for the growing presence of sport in the daily lives of more and more people. The sports sections in newspapers are getting bigger, and there is rarely a news bulletin on radio or TV without a sports report.

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