No one tells stories like Irish writer Maeve Binchy. Humane, down-to-earth, funny, her novels have captured imaginations on both sides of the Atlantic in a way most authors only dream of. Millions of her fans were disappointed when she announced last year she was retiring from both novel writing and her weekly column with The Irish Times. The newly released Scarlet Feather … [Read more...] about Maeve Binchy Reflects on Her Career
Books
Book Reviews: The McCourt Family Chronicles
MEMOIR Malachy McCourt's new memoir Singing My Him Song picks up where his best-seller A Monk Swimming left off. As the old saying goes, you'll laugh and you'll cry, right along with Malachy, as we follow the actor/raconteur from Hollywood to Broadway, as he boozes, befriends famous men, and bucks the system. In his latest book, there's plenty of partying with … [Read more...] about Book Reviews: The McCourt Family Chronicles
Nora, an Excerpt
Even now, here 30 years since, when I turn to the southwest in Ennis from Shannon, and head out on the peninsula that ends at Loop Head, and somewhere on that road get my first wind of turfsmoke, I remember the first time and the sense that I had then of coming home. "The name's good," the man in the customs hall had said, letting my bags pass without a look. I had a hundred … [Read more...] about Nora, an Excerpt
Roddy Doyle Has The Last Laugh
By Frank Shouldice
January / February 1994
Irish writer Roddy Doyle's book, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha [Viking Press] won the prestigious Booker Prize last month, and the next day 28,000 copies were sold in England alone. Frank Shouldice profiles the Dublin author, whose movie The Snapper, directed by Stephen Frears, is currently being distributed in the U.S. by Miramax films. Just seven years ago he worked as a primary … [Read more...] about Roddy Doyle Has The Last Laugh
The Long Shadow
Tim Pat Coogan, author of The IRA: A History, talks to Patricia Harty. "I really think the Irish-Americans are crucial to this. I'm historian enough to know there would be no independent Irish state without Irish-American pressure in the 1920s. The cabinet records are there and the ambassador's records are there to show how much Irish Americans were involved." However, "one … [Read more...] about The Long Shadow