June, 1992: Patricia Harty talks to Australian writer Thomas Keneally about his book NOW AND IN TIME TO BE: Ireland and the Irish. Thomas Keneally is a widely-recognized for a wide body of work of a historical and political nature including The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, which explores differences between the white and aborigine cultures. Confederates examined the consequences … [Read more...] about The Irish Experience
Literature
The Exile
By Pete Hamill
October 1986
A Story of Ireland Whenever Michael Walsh thought he was finished at last with Ireland, all of it would come flooding back, like a sudden wave on a glassy sea. He had tried to rid himself of that sad green country with cheap whiskey in too many bad bars in a city that was not his own. And now, on this perfect spring day in his eleventh year of New York exile, he could feel … [Read more...] about The Exile
Then The Walls Came Down – A Prison Journal
Danny Morrison is listening to a Traveling Wilburys' tune and remembering a time in bed with his girlfriend Leslie in 1988. The song goes: And the walls came down. All the way to hell. Never saw them when they're standing. Never saw them when they fell. He suddenly sits upright. It is five in the morning, in October 1990, and he is alone in the Crumlin Road Jail, … [Read more...] about Then The Walls Came Down – A Prison Journal
Angela’s Ashes Loses Its Voice
Anyone who has read Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes -- and by now that probably takes in about half the planet -- knows that what makes McCourt's memoir of an impoverished Irish childhood so magical is the unique "voice" the author uses to tell the story. McCourt struggled for many years until he "started writing in the voice of a child, immediate, urgent and without hindsight … [Read more...] about Angela’s Ashes Loses Its Voice
Fall 2022 Book Reviews
By Darina Molloy Fall 2022
Haven by Emma Donoghue It’s seventh-century Ireland. Clonmacnoise is a newish monastic settlement, with about thirty monks in residence, along with the families who work for them and an order of nuns. The monastery also offers temporary accommodation to guests who come to study or just to retreat from the world. One of these visitors, Artt, believes in harder fasting than is … [Read more...] about Fall 2022 Book Reviews