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
Writers and Poets
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
Review of Books
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
P.J. O’Rourke
“The funniest writer in America” talks to Chuck Leddy about some serious issues. P.J. O’Rourke, one of America’s most popular political satirists, has built his career skewering the absurdities and hypocrisies of political life. Time magazine has called him “the funniest writer in America,” and he’s the bestselling author of a dozen books that blend his laugh-out-loud humor … [Read more...] about P.J. O’Rourke
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