Christmas books

The Christmas Season is by long-established tradition, the season when most books are bought in every civilised centre. The books bought need not themselves be civilised, but they must have some suitable connection with the time of year and the seasonal feelings that it arouses. Books, it is so often said, “make a nice present”. So here, as in other years, we present a selection of books for all the family.

Sister Stan’s last book
Sacred Stillness: A Book of Meditations from the Sanctuary,
by Sr Stan & Sile Wall
(Red Stripe Press, €16.99)

This is the last book which the legendary Sr Stan created, this time along with Sile Wall. For many years, her books have been special favourites at Christmas time. Here, the pattern is always a collection of contributors, which aims to impress upon the readers through the genuine experiences a sense of the spiritual.
Sacred Stillness, the editors claim, “offers real, practical, profound and creative meditation practices through a variety of themes and poems. It is a tapestry woven from the unique contributions of the many people, coming from different faiths and wisdom traditions, who are part of the Sanctuary.
“Each meditation is like an open door, inviting the reader or the listener through insightful ways to connect, reconnect, with an experience of stillness. In a world filled with constant noise and distractions, discovering stillness is a sacred experience.”
Sr Stan will be missed; but others will try and carry on her work at the Sanctuary.

The life line of the Pope
Leo XIV: The New Pope and Catholic Reform,
by Christopher Altieri
(Bloomsbury, £20.00)

Over the recent weeks, with the travels of the Pope to the Middle East, the world has been able to see something of his own unique style. He brought to his meetings in Muslim Turkey and largely Christian Lebanon a message of hope, one which stands in contrast to so much of what we hear from that region.
It had been thought that, as the first North American elected to the Papacy, he might go there first. But now he shows a little of what he was made of by going to the war front of the world.
In this first biography, experienced American journalist and teacher Christopher R. Altieri lays out aspects of the new pope’s identity and past experiences, especially in Peru, to suggest that he will be an effective leader, seeking to unite rather than divide, while also taking a strong line on matters that vitally concern the Church. Essential reading, not only for Vatican watchers, but for everyone concerned with the development of the world in the next few years, which seem to be overshadowed by the threat of all kinds of dangers from several directions.

Fooling some of the people, some of the time
The Dodger: D. J. Carey and the Great Betrayal,
by Eimear Ní Bhraonáin
(Merrion Press, €18.99)

This is perhaps the most revealing Irish book of the year. The deceits of D. J. Carey have been well aired in the trial and the follow-up, but I think there is a positive side to the book, which reflects well on the Irish character.
Carey seems to have been one of those people who seem to have been born to deceive others – we have all met people like him, though not on his scale of activity. But the ready way in which a wide variety of Irish people, from the very wealthy to the very ordinary, responded to his appeals with ready empathy seems reveals an essential empathy on the part of Irish people to those in need.
Those who helped him have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hold against themselves. They were asked to help, and they responded kindly. But his trading on people’s beliefs with his claims to a miracle cure shows another aspect, where the spirituality of people was abused as well. A most instructive book in its way

Dispersing the gathering clouds
Weathering Storms,
by Alice Taylor
(O’Brien Books, €19.99)

Alice Taylor has long been a favourite read, drawing her material from her own rural life, she presents a point of view which is at once real and inspiring.
“As we go through life we weather many storms”, she writes. “We lose family members, close friends and animals we love.” Here though, her sense of loss is focused on a much-loved tree. But her real subject is people and their response to trial and grief.
This made her wonder how we can continue to make life beautiful even after it has been marred by change. That tree stands perhaps for the degradation of the natural world around us; but her counsels of courage in hard times is as heart-warming as always.

The essential Irish poet
The Poems of Seamus Heaney,
edited by Rosie Lavan, Bernard O’Donoghue and Matthew Hollis
(Faber & Faber, €39.99)

This large tome presents “the definitive edition of Seamus Heaney’s poetry”, with illuminating critical notes by the editors, including a substantial number of uncollected poems, and a selection of some poems never before published.
In these pages, Heaney’s full accomplishment can be seen for what it is: a triumph of the power of language over human circumstance. He now stands with Yeats and Patrick Kavanagh as an essential Irish voice.
An Ulster poet in a time of strife, he enlarged the vision of his readers by drawing upon his own family background and early experiences, but places them in a context of European culture, drawing inspiration, for instance, from other elements of Northern European rather than just Northern Irish cultures.
His limpid grace and always focused observation are part of the consciousness of most Irish people, one way or another. This book, large and expensive as it is, has been widely bought; perhaps by many who do not usually read poetry.

An authentic voice of the American life
The Land of Sweet Forever,
by Harper Lee
(Hutchinson Heinemann, €24.99)

Harper Lee’s first novel To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the great best sellers of all time, and it remains in the memory of many as a book essential to the understanding not only of America, but of humanity itself.
Her original version of that novel, Go Set A Watchman, came out after her death and was a disappointment, with many feeling that it should not have been published at all.
This book however, is different. It contains a collection of her early stories, and her later non-fiction, drawing together the rural world of her Southern childhood with a later experience of life in New York. The material had been edited by Casey Cep, her official biographer, who sets the material in context. A return to authenticity perhaps?

Travels in a troubled land
Michael Palin in Venezuela,
by Michael Palin
(Hutchinson Heinemann, €23.00)

Forget about “Monty Python”, Michael Palin as a traveller has proved an agreeable guide for a wide variety of people. In this book, he visits Venezuela, a country in our immediate news headlines, for its political state and American threats of invasion.
However, Palin manages, as he moves around the country, manages to find a humanity which the headlines perhaps obscure. For the many people who have read his earlier forays into Iraq and Brazil this would be an ideal Christmas present.

Facing off over Ireland
Charlie v. Garrett,
by Eoin O’Malley
(Eriu, €23.99)

Eoin O’Malley is a lecturer in politics at Dublin City University, but perhaps this narrative has less in common with ordinary political writing than it does with a saga of heavyweight boxers.
Mr Haughey and Dr Garrett Fitzgerald presented two very different versions of Irish life, the Squire of Kinsealy in combat with the number cruncher. The whole saga of the years of conflict between the two is presented in a vital narrative. This is perhaps, like The Dodger, an essential read for understanding the Irish character.

An honest man of achievement
David Trimble: Peacemaker,
by Stephen Walker
(Gill Books, €27.99)

Given the fissures that have riven Northern Ireland since the 1880s, David Trimble’s achievements as a leader, which were awarded a Nobel Prize, is remarkable.
This book has been written from interviews with his wife and family, as well as extensive research, so that it gives a vivid but detailed account of the man’s life, career and the lasting achievement which was the Good Friday Agreement.
Here in the Republic, there is a widespread opinion that in due course Ulster will change to accommodate us. But every book that is published in Northern Ireland suggests that it is the Republic that will have to change.
Despite all that is said in the Dáil, do our TDs really look forward to a day when their ranks are enlarged by deputies from the North, eager to make their influence felt on the way that the South lives and manages. Perhaps a perusal of this book will give a sense of reality to such dreams of insular unity.

What the future might hold for Israel
Israel on the Brink: Eight Steps to a Better Future,
by Ilan Peppé
(Oneworld, £20.00)

The attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, wrought a major change in the Middle East. There began a war in Gaza which eclipses many previous campaigns in Europe and elsewhere.
It has also exacerbated the social and political division with Israel. The religious right, the conservative centre, and liberal left are at loggerheads, as the continuing trial of the Prime Minister for fraud and the constant demonstrations illustrate.
Ilan Peppé, who is an academic based in England, has a long-standing engagement with the affairs of Israel and Palestine. He sees Israel losing the sympathy and support, not just of many countries in the West, but also of the global Jewish community, especially in North America. The present situation cannot continue.
He suggests how it might be resolved. But his scheme, which demands a great deal from both sides, is challenging. Those in Ireland and elsewhere who are concerned about the future of Israel need to consider what he says.

Despite its democratic nature, Peppé sees Israel as verging on becoming a “failed state”. But a resolution of her problems demands that something be done to resolve the situation with the Palestinians.
Peppé puts forward among the steps which will need to be taken for this more hopeful future to emerge, including: among them g the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes, an new definition of the Jewish dimension in Palestine, a plan for the future of the now illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank (formerly Jordanian territory), and a new way forward for the divided Palestinian national political movements.
His approach will mean a climate of justice must be created that will involve both sides changing and giving up some of their claims. It will also entail that Israel cease to be a “Western state” in some way and engages itself more effectively with the Middle Eastern Arab world. This book provides serious food for thought as the New Year approaches.

Solving the mysteries of Irish crime
Deadly Evidence,
by Marie Cassidy
(Hachette Books)

Author Marie Cassidy was for many years Ireland’s state pathologist: she knows the real world of criminal death intimately. However, this is a novel in which her protagonist, also a pathologist like the author, gets to scientific grips with cold cases arising from brutal gangland murders, in the course of which many challenging secrets emerge from the characters’ lost pasts. This is Marie Cassidy’s fifth book: she looks set to be an Irish literary fixture for some time to come.

Jolly scrumptious stuff
Mary 90: My Very Best Recipes
by Mary Berry
(BBC Books, €29.50)

Whatever about all those triumphant contestants, Mary Berry herself has surely been the real winner of Bake Off. In a time when cooking seems to be dominated by crotchety and combative males of one kind or another, her rather old-fashioned style and quietly charming approach to the task at hand of feeding a family, has its own highly attractive style.
Though acting as a judge in herself, she is a reminder of what cooking ought to be about, making food that is attractive, palatable, and family-oriented. It may be old-fashioned, as I say, but surely it is what the harassed mothers of four really want: decent food that comes without large amounts of mandatory chilli.