Remember the Children, a novel by Lucy Beckett (Gracewing, £20.00 / €23.50) This novel is the final part of a trilogy, the two earlier parts of which, entitled In the Grieving of Her Days and A Late Finding, were much admired on their publication also by Gracewing. This latest book deals with the experiences…
I have a distinct disadvantage in writing about the new IMAX version of The Odyssey, for I actually studied the Greek original at school. We had on our course over some six years the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, and others. Not mind you the whole of The Odyssey, but only Book VI, which in the…
National Heritage Week is coming up at the end of the month, running from Friday, August 15 to Sunday, August 23. Actually, the events run for nine days, so it is a sort of Irish week with ‘a tilly for the cat’. National Heritage Week is now in its 26th year. According to the organisers,…
Passage to America: the story of Ulster’s emigrants Taking ship: Essays in transatlantic migration from Ulster, edited by Sophie Cooper, Patrick Fitzgerald and William Roulston (Ulster Historical Foundation, £11.99 / €13.99) Felix M. Larkin *** An Post has recently marked the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence with a stamp featuring a portrait…
Temple of God: An Unbroken Vision of the Virgin Mary, by Theo Andreou (Gracewing, £15.99 / €18.99) It can be hard for the rising generation to imagine just how cut off the Ireland of their grandparents and great-grandparents was from the worldwide expressions of Christianity. That all changed, thankfully, with the Second Vatican Council. The…
Remembering Peasants: a Personal History of a Vanished World, by Patrick Joyce (Penguin £25.00 / €29.99; also available in paperback) Often in writing reviews a relevant passage in the Gospels will come to mind. This time from John 4:38 (in the familiar words of the Douay-Rheims version), where Jesus tells the disciples: “I have sent you…
The Gerard Manley Hopkins International Festival, at Newbridge, Co. Kildare, will be opened tomorrow evening (Friday, July 24) at 7.30pm in the theatre of Newbridge College by His Excellency David Gill, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany. As Hopkins is one of the most important literary figures in late Victorian times, the festival has…
The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam, by G. W. Bowersock (Oxford University Press, £45.50 / €38.00) We all talk carelessly about “Muslim countries “, which is a way of rewriting the past, and forgetting that places like the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Yemen were not always Muslim. They were, before…
Ernest Hemingway: Flawed Genius, by Aubrey Malone (Fonthill, £ 25.00 / €29.00). The film critic of The Irish Catholic, Aubrey Malone is also steeped in the American literature of the 20th century, dominated by such names as F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway – the latter three authors winning the Nobel Prize for…
Salt Wind and Rising Water: Planting a Wood on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Coast, by John S. Doyle (Merrion Press, €18.99 / £16.99) I suspect that since the invention of cities there have ever been those who longed to fly from the crowded streets to the flowing streams of the countryside. From the Epic of…