Recommended In October, Dublin-born novelist and short story writer Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction with her latest novel The Gathering. The book takes a close look at how the past haunts one large Irish family. The Hegartys at the center of Enright’s tale are shaken when son Liam (one of nine Hegarty children) commits suicide while living in England. … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Issues
The Unbearable Lightness of Kevin Bruen
By Darina Molloy
December / January 2008
December / January 2008
It’s no exaggeration to say that Ken Bruen could have stepped from the pages of one of his own novels. In fact if he didn’t already exist, he would have had to make himself up. Not that Bruen, a long-established crime writer, needs any help with the plots of his darkly gripping novels. But his life story is a page-turner in its own right. “You couldn’t make it up,” he notes … [Read more...] about The Unbearable Lightness of Kevin Bruen
Roots: The Proud History of the Reidy Clan
By Maeve Molly, Contributor
December / January 2008
December / January 2008
The Reidy family surname (also Reedy, Riedy, Reid, and O’Reidy) is an Anglicized version of the Gaelic name Ó Riada. The family was part of the Dalcassian sept and in early Gaelic times lived in the southwest of Ireland, in the Munster counties of Clare and Kerry. The Ó Riadas can claim lineage to the legendary King Oiloill Olum, who was Monarch of Munster in the third … [Read more...] about Roots: The Proud History of the Reidy Clan
Photo Album: The Legacy of Grandma Bell
In this photograph taken in 1925, my mother Kathleen (far left) and her ten siblings pose with their parents, Sam and Ellen Bell, as they leave their home in Crossgar, County Down, Northern Ireland. The family immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago where, after only four years, my grandfather died, leaving Grandma Bell to raise a family of eleven children. In … [Read more...] about Photo Album: The Legacy of Grandma Bell
Sive and the Ghosts of Ireland’s Past
It was Frank McCourt who first brought Sive to New York. A friend at the Irish Players, a 1950s New York theater group, now defunct, that showcased Irish classics, requested that he carry her over. And so the playwright John B. Keane traveled up to Limerick from Listowel to hand Sive over to Frank, who dutifully carried her across the water. The National players decided not … [Read more...] about Sive and the Ghosts of Ireland’s Past