Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning (15), which explores a form of hi-tech brainwashing, will strike a chord with those of us who were horrified by TikTok’s recent postings of reckless young motorists driving on the wrong side of the road for thrills, and the people who ‘get off’ by watching such carnage. It also made…
I wrote about the weight of pain last week. It didn’t let up. Time (BBC One, Sunday) was a hard-hitting prison drama series that ended last weekend. This was its third series, from writer Jimmy McGovern, and it was marked as before by gritty realism, with a strong helping of empathic humanity. It made for…
One sad aspect of the reputations of both Padraic and Mary Colum is their neglect by Irish publishers. This is an old story, of course; the desire to only support the new seems unique in Europe, where most countries have well established series keeping their classic writers in print, not just in expensive academic editions,…
Mary and Padraic Colum: Lives and the Dream, by Margaret Kelleher (UCD Press, €25.00 / £21.50) I am one of those who for years has been curious about the lives of Padraic and Mary Colum: here at last is the book we have longed to have, the whole story of their lives told from…
Freedom of Speech in the Press in Times of Conflict: Historical Perspectives from Ireland and Europe, ed. by Richard C. Allen, Felix M. Larkin, Oliver O’Hanlon and Aoife Whelan (Peter Lang, in association with the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies, €49.40 / £36.45) Life is short, art is long: this book began its life…
Colleen Hoover self-published her first book. That isn’t unusual. Since then she’s sold twenty million of them. That is. The first time I saw a novel of hers on screen was It Ends With Us. She followed it up with It Starts With Us. (That sounds like an Irish sequel). It Ends With Us dealt…
Sometimes the weight of pain from watching the news can become too much. Thursday of last week was a case in point. There was the ongoing bombing of civilian targets in Ukraine by the Russian army – in particular the strikes on two buses which killed 33 people – particularly cynical and brutal. An apartment…
This year marks the 300th anniversary of the appearance of Gulliver’s Travels in the autumn of 1726 from a printer in London. The publication date is usually held to be November 30, but it is today often compounded with the date of the demented Swift’s death on October 19 (in 1745), which is to be…
Méiní: The Blasket Nurse, by Leslie Matson (Mercier Press, €15.99 / £13.99) This book was first published back in 1999, and I cannot believe that at the time I missed it. But as it has remained in print down to today, I think it worth saying a few words about it now, as for…
John Boyle, the Freeholder and pre-Famine Cork Society, by Neil Cronin (Four Courts Press / Maynooth Studies in Local History, €12.95 / £11.95) The despicable John Boyle was a man of appalling character. His current biographer, Neil Cronin, must have had to hold his nose while shovelling through the toxic detritus of gutter journalism…
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello