Friday, 16 March 2007

St Patrick's Day

Celebrate St Patrick's Day with some Irish fiction from the Library:

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Paddy Clarke, a ten-year-old Dubliner, describes his world, a place full of warmth, cruelty, love, sardines and slaps across the face. He's confused; he sees everything but he understands less and less.


That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern

Drama unfolds during a year in the lives of a group of characters who have come home to Ireland in search of a different life from that in London.






The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien

The country is Ireland. The girls are Cait and Baba and this is the story of their escape from countryside and convent to the alluring 'crowds and lights and noise' of Dublin.








The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin

It is Ireland in the early 1990s. Three Women, Dora Devereux, her daughter Lily and her grand-daughter Helen, have arrived, after years of strife, at an uneasy peace with each other. They know than in the years ahead it will be necessary for them to keep their distance. Now, however, Declan, Helen's adored brother, is dying and the three of them come together in the grandmother's crumbling old house with two of Declan's friends. All six of them, from different generations and with different beliefs, are forced to listen to each other and come to terms with each other.





Wednesday, 7 March 2007

Hidden Treasures


These are great reads which are not brand new, so you may have missed them when they were first published, but are well worth trying:
Stravaganza: City of Masks by Mary Hoffman

A magical time travel story. Lucien's father buys him a beautiful notebook, and when he falls asleep clutching it he wakes up in Bellezza, a parallel Venice. Bellezza is a city of contrasts that values magic and science in equal regard. And Lucien finds himself in a position of power, danger and intrigue as he continues to 'stravagate' between the two worlds...