In the strangers’ house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. And then a secret is revealed and suddenly, she realizes how fragile her idyll is.Winner of the Davy Byrnes Memorial Prize, Foster is now published in a revised and expanded version. Beautiful, sad and eerie, it is a story of astonishing emotional depth, showcasing Claire Keegan’s great accomplishment and talent.

    Human Chain also broaches larger questions of transmission, of lifelines to the inherited past. There are newly minted versions of anonymous early Irish lyrics, poems that stand at the crossroads of oral and written, and other "hermit songs" that weigh equally in their balance the craft of scribe and the poet's early calling as scholar. A remarkable sequence entitled "Route 101" plots the descent into the underworld in the Aeneid against single moments in the arc of a life, from a 1950s childhood to the birth of a first grandchild. Other poems display a Virgilian pietas for the dead--friends, neighbors, family--that is yet wholly and movingly vernacular.Human Chain also includes a poetic "herbal" adapted from the Breton poet Guillevic--lyrics as delicate as ferns, which puzzle briefly over the world of things and landscapes that exclude human speech, while affirming the interconnectedness of phenomena, as of a self-sufficiency in which we too are included

    Curious and funny, tender and scathing, O'Faolain's columns were never less than trenchant and were always passionate. "I was blinded by the habit of translating everything into personal terms," she writes apologetically, but this is the power of her journalism. Through the prism of casual, everyday encounters, O'Faolain presses her subject, reaching beyond the prompting of the moment to transcend topicality. The result is a cumulative historical narrative, an inadvertent chronicle of a transformed Ireland by one of its sharpest observers and canniest critics.Praise for A Radiant Life:"This book is a gift." -The Boston Globe

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    It concerns the lives of its three young narrators, children of a bereaved father and witnesses to a shared grief. This nuanced and heart-breaking account of one family’s struggle – for work, shelter and happiness – enters the imagination through this braided, pitch-perfect tale of a family whose lives fracture around two tragic events. It is a story of what happens when self-sustenance turns to isolation, a story about the hard scrabble to find a home. Despite their sufferings, this is not yet another tale of an unhappy Irish childhood. What makes this novel unique is not only the calibre of the writing, but also its depiction of the love that binds the family together as they suffer blow after blow to their lives.

    The Wisdom of Oscar Wilde collects both his best-loved quotes and longer excerpts, revealing a man wise to human nature and his times, and never shy with his searing comments on men, women, art, behavior, children, politics, youth, and a range of other topics. Drawing from his plays, articles, reviews, speeches, letters, and other works, this definitive volume is an entertaining immersion into the world of this charming genius.

    Emerging from a life behind books, raw suburban truths are exposed as Francis slowly unravels the secrets of the avenue.

    The anthology includes plays, experimental performance documentation, and a visual essay that reveal the impassioned creativity thatilluminates and invigorates the margins of culture.

    London, 1933 – An uninvited man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery turns up at retrospective of paintings done by French artist, Jacques Tissot. The subject of the paintings is the man’s mother.London 1870 - A marriage is arranged between Kathleen Kelly (Kate) and Isaac Newton, a surgeon in British army serving in India by her father, Major Charles Frederick Ashburnham Kelly. Kate, beautiful and feisty is devastated at her lack of say or choice but consoles herself she will be returning to India. On the outward journey, Captain Palliser becomes obsessed with her, remains with the party when they reach Agra where he tries to seduce her. After the marriage, though before consummation, Kate, on the recommendation of her confessor, tries to explain to Isaac about Palliser. Certain she is ‘sullied’, Isaac returns her, penniless, to England and institutes divorce proceedings. Palliser catches up with her in Bombay and puts up money for the voyage with proviso she becomes his mistress. Back in London, although pregnant, she refuses to marry him. Her father arranges for her to live with her married sister Polly and husband Gussie. Violet is born on the day the decree nisi is finalized and every time Kate looks at Violet she is reminded of Palliser.Kate leads a narrow Victorian existence until she and Polly holiday in Paris where she meets painter Jacques Tissot. They are mutually attracted but fearful of rejection she refuses to divulge her past. They attend Carmen; visit House of Worth; take a boat trip on Seine and at a reception for Charles Stewart Parnell, Kate speaks out on Irish landlordism. Her comments are reported in The Times, Gussie orders them back to London. Kate is again pregnant. When their son (Cecil) is a year old, accidentally she and Jacques meet. In view of his leanings during the Franco-Prussian war, Tissot had deemed it wise to settle in London where he enjoys commercial and social success.Explanations follow, their love is acknowledged and Kate and children move in with Jacques. He is enchanted by the conflict of her Irish Catholic background and divorced and unmarried mother status. She is his mistress and muse and he encourages her talent for painting. They live in domestic harmony and luxury in St John's Wood, her relationship with Violet improves and he devotes himself to her happiness, painting dozens of portraits including Mavourneen, La Frileuse, A Type of Beauty and domestic and garden scenes. He encourages her to paint and her dedication to her art becomes ‘almost religious in its fervor’. For months she hides the extent of her illness of tuberculosis from Tissot. In November 1882, unable to watch his despair at knowing she is dying, she hastens her death by overdosing on laudenham. Epilogue London 1897 - Jacques Tissot returns to London for an exhibition of his series of drawings of incidents in the Life of Christ.