Book picks similar to
The Astrakhan Cloak by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
poetry
irish
irish-literature
as-gaeilge
Good Behaviour
Molly Keane - 1981
I have always known...'Behind the gates of Temple Alice the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires.
Parallax
Sinéad Morrissey - 2013
S. Lowry’s studio after his death, and peering into the illicit worlds of the Victorian Mutoscope, these poems document what is caught, and what is lost, when houses and cityscapes, servants and saboteurs are arrested in time by photography. Assured and unsettling, Sinéad Morrissey’s poems explore the paradoxes in what is seen, read, and misread in the surfaces of the presented world.Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2013
Harvesting
Lisa Harding - 2017
When they are thrown together in a Dublin brothel in a horrific twist of fate, a peculiar and important bond is formed . . .This is a novel about a flourishing but hidden world, thinly concealed beneath a veneer of normality. It’s about the failings of polite society, the cruelty that can exist in apparently homely surroundings, the bluster of youth and the often appalling weakness of adults.Harvesting is heartbreaking and funny, gritty, raw and breathtakingly beautiful, where redemption is found in friendship and unexpected acts of kindness.Harvesting was inspired by Harding’s involvement with a campaign against sex trafficking run by the Children’s Rights Alliance. Although it is a fictionalised account, the text has been read and approved of by representatives for NGOs in both Moldova and Dublin.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Oscar Wilde - 1896
One hundred years after his release from Reading Gaol, the life and work of Oscar Wilde has lost none of its fascination. In his day, his wit and writings enchanted and scandalized society in equal measure; his downfall came at the height of his powers. Devastated by his notorious trial for indecency, imprisoned for ``homosexual offenses,'' he was to spend two ruinous years in solitary confinement. As he was later to tell Andre Gide, Reading Gaol ``was not fit for dogs. I thought I would go mad.'' The Ballad was written from personal experience, and there was to be no more writing after this. As Wilde observed: ``Something is killed in me.'' Bankrupt, disgraced, and in exile, Wilde was to die not long after his release at the age of 46. His final resting place is the cemetery of Pere Lachaise in Paris. His tomb bears an inscription from The Ballad of Reading Gaol: ``And alien tears will fill for him/Pity's long broken urn/For his mourners will be outcast men/And outcasts always mourn.'' This commemorative edition of the poem is illustrated with the powerfully moving wood engravings of Garrick Palmer. 48 pp 5 x 8 8 wood engravings
The Rising: Ireland: Easter 1916
Fearghal McGarry - 2010
As it chronicles the activities of members of Sinn F�in, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Cumann na mBan, and the Irish Volunteers, this compelling volume addresses a range of key questions that continue to divide historians of modern Ireland: What led people from ordinary backgrounds to fight for Irish freedom? What did they think they could achieve given the superior forces arrayed against them? What kind of republic were they willing to kill and die for? Fearghal McGarry deftly interweaves the oral history of the rank-and-file revolutionaries of the Rising into a comprehensive, yet powerfully affecting narrative--one that The Boston Globe called "vivid and compelling" and "a poignant mosaic of idealism, bravery, and humanity."
Dancer
Colum McCann - 2003
Spanning four decades and many worlds, from the horrors of the Second World War to the wild abandon of New York in the eighties, Dancer is peopled by a large cast of characters, obscure and famous: doormen and shoemakers, nurses and translators, Margot Fonteyn, Eric Bruhn and John Lennon. And at the heart of the spectacle stands the artist himself, willful, lustful, and driven by a never-to-be-met need for perfection.
Brown Lord of the Mountain
Walter Macken - 1967
But Donn longs for a wider kingdom. He deserts his bride, roams the world, fights in wars, is footloose - yet finds that he is homesick. Sixteen years later he returns to take up the threads of his old life, to learn to love his afflicted daughter, and to bring progress to the neglected green valley. Light comes, water flows, the land prospers. Then, on a night of innocent festivity, a monstrous crime is perpetrated. His kingdom violated, Donn dedicates himself to a terrible revenge that can only destroy the avenger as well as the hunted
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally RooneySally Rooney - 2021
In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
The Mercy Seat: Collected and New Poems 1967-2001
Norman Dubie - 2001
Whether illuminating a common laborer or a legendary thinker, Dubie meets his subjects with utter compassion for their humanity and the dignity behind their creative work. In pursuit of the well-told story, his love of history is ever-present—though often he recreates his own.“With its restoration of so many out-of-print poems and its addition of new works, The Mercy Seat was one of last year’s most significant publications.” —American Book Review“The voices of Dubie’s monologues are full of astonishing intimacy.” —The Washington Post Book World
Collected Stories
Frank O'Connor - 1981
From “Guests of the Nation” to “The Mad Lomasneys” to “First Confession” to “My Oedipus Complex,” these tales of Ireland have touched generations of readers the world over and placed O'Connor alongside W. B. Yeats and James Joyce as the greatest of Irish authors.Analyzing a Robert Browning poem, O'Connor once wrote: “Since a whole lifetime must be crowded into a few minutes, those minutes must be carefully chosen indeed and lit by an unearthly glow.” Each of the sixty-seven stories gathered here achieves the same incredible feat of the imagination, laying bare entire lives and histories within the space of a few pages. Dublin schoolteacher Ned Keating waves good-bye to a charming girl and to any thoughts of returning to his village home in the lyrical and melancholy “Uprooted.” A boy on an important mission is waylaid by a green-eyed temptress and seeks forgiveness in his mother’s loving arms in “The Man of the House,” a tale that draws on O'Connor’s own difficult childhood. A series of awkward encounters and humorous misunderstandings perfectly encapsulates the complicated legacy of Irish immigration in “Ghosts,” the bittersweet account of an American family’s pilgrimage to the land of their forefathers.As a writer, critic, and teacher, O'Connor elevated the short story to astonishing new heights. This career-spanning anthology, epic in scope yet brimming with the small moments and intimate details that earned him a reputation as Ireland’s Chekhov, is a testament to Frank O’Connor's magnificent storytelling and a true pleasure to read from first page to last.
Every Inch of Her
Peter Sheridan - 2004
Philo announces herself at their door one Sunday evening with the words, "God pointed me here." A large presence, weighing 240 pounds and bearing tattoos on her arm, Philo smokes, swears, and loves to eat. She is also a mother of five and in flight from her abusive husband, Tommo. In no time at all, Philo has made herself indispensable. At the senior Daycare Center, she gets the old folks talking to one another, singing old favorites, and playing bingo again. And with all the love she's got to give, it's only natural that she helps Cap and Dina-two people at the Center long separated by a bitter feud-come together again. By turns comical and tender, Peter Sheridan's novel is a beautifully written portrait of an unforgettable woman who touches everyone she meets through the sheer force of being herself.
The Crocodile by the Door: The Story Of A House, A Farm & A Family
Selina Guinness - 2012
The Crocodile by the Door by Selina Guinness is a remarkable, compelling and moving memoir of a farm, a family and a home.When Selina Guinness and her partner Colin, both young academics, moved in with Selina's uncle Charles, an elderly bachelor, they had no idea what the coming years held for them: a crash course in farming, tense discussions with helicopter-borne property developers, human tragedy, and the challenge of dragging a quasi-feudal estate at the edge of Dublin into the twenty-first century.The Crocodile by the Door - a dazzling debut memoir that will appeal to fans of Edmund de Waal, William Fiennes and Richard Benson's The Farm - tells this remarkable story.
The Copper Beech
Maeve Binchy - 1992
But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems.
From the Hardcover edition.