Somewhere In Ireland a Village Is Missing an Idiot

David Feherty. Somewhere In Ireland a Village Is Missing an Idiot. Ruggedland, 2003.

A friend bought me this book because he knew of my passion for Ireland. A happy accident, because there is almost nothing about Ireland except the personality of the writer. But there are unexpected laugh-out-louds. For the golf-challenged like me, the fun is in the language, the hyperbole, the irreverence, the descriptions, and the imagination. Who would dream of describing a bout of intestinal turbulence as if it were a science-fiction plot? 

David Feherty is a former professional golfer turned television commentator and magazine writer.

Ireland In Poetry

Ireland In Poetry: With Paintings, Drawings, Photographs, and Other Works of Art. Charles Sullivan, Editor. Abrams, 1990.

An incredibly beautiful collection. 

Brida

May 14, 2017

Paulo Coelho. Brida. Harper, 2008.

A young Irish woman, Brida, goes to a teacher, Wicca, and a Magus, to be initiated into an ancient tradition. Translated from the Portuguese. 

In the Forest

February 4, 2017

Edna O'Brien. In the Forest. Phoenix, 2002.

Ripped from the headlines. 

I suspect, an artist's frantic attempt to create beauty out of ugliness.

Embers

Embers. J.M. Bridgeman. Jade Mountain Books, 2016.

My display for the Family History Show & Tell last weekend in Cloverdale. These are some of the objects which inspired me to weave them into an imagined story for my novel EMBERS. Just arrived. Available on Amazon.ca and (next week) at Baker's Books in Hope, BC. EMBERS, set in BC and in Ireland, is likely to appeal to open-minded older women interested in art and travel.  

Embers

Embers

Found a stock photo which appeals to me, the way the dying sun over the water, the marsh grasses evoke the two settings of my work-in-progress - southern British Columbia and Ireland. 

Title de jour: Embers. 

Blurb: When things happen around her, Wyn McBride, a mature woman at a crossroads, is forced to move, to come to terms with the past, and to take a serious look at the present she has chosen for herself. A serendipitous trip to Ireland offers the unexpected opportunity for "deep travel" where she encounters, face to face, parts of herself she never knew existed.

Epigraph: It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is a flash of recognition and the embers of kinship glow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing. - John O'Donohue

The Gathering

Anne Enright's The Gathering

The Gathering is the first Anne Enright novel I have read. Winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2007, it is a beautifully told story of one sister, Veronica Hegarty's, grief and of her large family in Dublin gathering for the wake of her closest brother Liam who drowned walking into the sea in England. Grief. Suicide. Family dynamics. Abuse.

My only hesitation with this story is the seeming link at least in the narrator's mind between sexual abuse of children and homosexuality. This theme is more common in literature than I believe the science warrants. (Starting with Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall On Your Knees from as far back as 1996.) The reason it disturbs me is that it seems to assume that both homosexuality and its causes are pathological. For me, this is a problem, the ghost of outmoded ideas. As I suspect it would be to most in the LGBTQ community. 

A Star Called Henry

I just finished reading Roddy Doyle's novel A Star Called Henry. Loved it. A friend recommended it as a great example of a writer who does not use quotation marks. It reads easily, all in the first person, with dialogue introduced by a dash. Yes!

And I loved the Irish setting, Dublin and the countryside, 1916 to 1921, during the fight for independence. It reminded me of a wonderful visit I had to Ireland many years ago. Yet the story of Henry Smart is so current. Poverty. Child soldiers. Women's liberation. The true meaning of freedom. Whether the means justify the ends. And whether it really matters if you merely replace one boss with another. History and political science through the eyes of the workers at the bottom of the chain of command.