Fiction A few years back, Irish novelist Joseph O’Connor wrote Star of the Sea, an ambitious, multi-layered novel set mainly during the voyage of an Irish famine coffin ship. The book was a best-seller, despite the fact that it was a demanding read. Using flashbacks, jumbled chronology and other trickery, O’Connor took readers all over the British Isles, and his narrative … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Reviews
Music to Fall For
By Ian Worpole, Contributor
August / September 2007
August / September 2007
A few months ago I wrote a column for Irish America called “Songbirds,” a review of my favorite female singers of the Celtic idiom. There were many to include, so many that my editor described it as a bit breathless, but even so, I received a letter from a reader pointing out a serious omission, Áine Minogue, a spellbinding Irish harper/singer now settled in New England. It … [Read more...] about Music to Fall For
Review of Books
The earlier decades of the 20th century provide the settings for two new works of Irish-American fiction.Dream When You’re Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg explores life on the homefront during World War II, as seen through the eyes of the three Irish-American Heaney sisters from Chicago.Kitty, Louise, and Tish each have differing conflicts, and Berg masterfully divides time … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Review of Books
Fiction In books such as The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto, Patrick McCabe has displayed a great interest in the macabre. McCabe’s latest, Winterwood, could be his darkest work yet, with a strong dose of Stephen King tossed into McCabe’s reliably strange brew. Once happily married, Redmond Hatch can only stand by as his family crumbles before his eyes. So distraught is … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Book Corner
Tom Deignan reviews the latest Irish and Irish-American books Recommended: Nothing But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, The Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation It’s been 25 years since Bobby Sands and his fellow Irish nationalists launched their hunger strikes in 1981, which resulted in Sands’s death after 66 days. That may seem like a long time ago, but as … [Read more...] about Book Corner